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Civil War

6th PA Cavalry Reg "Rush's Lancers" Haseltine

Cumberland Township, Adams County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

Gettysburg July 3 1863. Number engaged 365, killed 3 wounded 7 missing 2.

The Story

This monument honors the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry — famed as "Rush's Lancers" for the long lances they once carried — and its service at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. The inscription records 365 men engaged and their losses: three killed, seven wounded, and two missing. It marks the role Union cavalry played in screening and protecting the army during the battle's final day.

Why it matters

Cavalry units like Rush's Lancers guarded the flanks and rear of the army at Gettysburg, a often-overlooked but vital part of how the Union won the field.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

By the summer of 1863, the Civil War had been grinding on for more than two years, and the Confederate army had crossed the Potomac and pushed deep into Pennsylvania. The rolling farmland around the small crossroads town of Gettysburg, in Adams County, was ordinary countryside — orchards, wheat fields, low ridges — until two great armies collided there over three days at the beginning of July.

The fighting that unfolded on this ground was the largest battle ever waged on American soil. Tens of thousands of men from both North and South converged along the ridges and fields, and by the third day the outcome would help decide the fate of the war in the East.

Amid that vast infantry struggle rode the Union cavalry — the mounted arm of the army, whose work was often less visible than the great charges people remember, but no less vital. This monument stands in that quiet corner of the battlefield country to mark where one such regiment served.

People & events

The regiment honored here is the 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry, remembered by a nickname that has outlived the war itself: "Rush's Lancers." Early in the conflict the regiment was famously equipped with long, old-world lances — nine-foot shafts tipped with steel and topped with a small pennant — a weapon more at home on a European battlefield of an earlier century than in the woods and fences of America. The lances proved impractical and were eventually set aside for carbines, but the striking name stuck.

The inscription fixes this regiment to July 3, 1863 — the climactic final day at Gettysburg. It records that 365 men were engaged, and it counts their cost with plain, sober arithmetic: three killed, seven wounded, and two missing.

Those are small numbers beside the staggering casualty lists of the infantry, and that is part of the story. Cavalry on this day were not usually hurled headlong into the enemy's massed lines. Their work was screening, scouting, guarding flanks, and holding the ground where the army's edges lay exposed. Every one of those twelve names, though, represents a real man who rode onto this field and did not ride away whole.

Its place in the American story

Gettysburg is remembered as the turning point of the Civil War in the East — the high-water mark of the Confederacy's boldest invasion of the North, turned back on ground it had hoped to hold. What happened here helped ensure the war would not be won on Northern soil.

The cavalry's part in that outcome is easy to overlook. The dramatic story of Gettysburg is usually told through its infantry — the desperate stands on the ridges and the great assault of the final afternoon. But an army's flanks and rear had to be watched and screened, and that unglamorous, essential duty fell largely to mounted regiments like this one.

A monument that records only 365 men and a dozen casualties is, in a sense, a monument to that quieter service — proof that victory on a battlefield this size was stitched together from many roles, most of them far from the center of the story.

If you visit

You'll find this marker in the open countryside of Cumberland Township, in the belt of preserved farmland and monuments that rings the Gettysburg battlefield. Unlike the crowded ground near the town center, these outer stretches are hushed, and that stillness is itself part of the experience.

Stand for a moment and read the inscription slowly. It doesn't offer speeches or glory — just a unit, a date, and a careful tally of the engaged and the lost. Let those numbers land. Behind the word "missing" and the word "killed" were young men on horseback, far from home.

If you're making a road trip through the battlefield, treat this stop as a chance to look past the famous names and consider the mounted troops who guarded the army's edges. Bring the nickname with you — picture, just for a beat, a regiment that once carried lances into an American war — and the monument becomes a doorway into a corner of Gettysburg most visitors never pause to notice.

Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.

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