Battle of Falling Waters

Battle of Falling Waters. Union Cavalry Charges Confederate Rear Guard. , On July 14, 1863, fighting erupted here at about 11 A.M. between Confederate Gen. Henry Heth’s Army of Northern Virginia rear guard and advance units of Gen. George G. Meade’s Army of the Potomac. Both armies had been horribly bloodied by the battle of Gettysburg, which had ended on June 3, and Robert E. Lee’s army was nearing the end of a harrowing ten-day retreat from Pennsylvania. Heth’s men were trying to hold off Federal cavalry until the Confederate artillery and wagon train could cross the rain-swollen Potomac River into Virginia. , The previous night, the13th, most of Lee’s infantry crossed the river on a pontoon bridge one and a half miles west of here. Could Heth’s men, exhausted and short of supplies like the rest of their army, hold the line? , Heth’s line was formed on the ridge in front of you and extended to your left across present-day Falling Waters Road for a mile. His men were preparing breakfast when two companies of Union Gen. H. Judson Kilpatrick’s cavalry division came pounding up the road toward you. Confederates desperately swung axes and fence rails to fend off the onslaught. Kilpatrick, supported by Gen. John Buford’s cavalry division, then attacked in strength. In the heavy fighting, Confederate Gen. James J. Pettigrew was mortally wounded, and more than 700 Confederates were captured before the remainder escaped across the river.