HistoricSiteMarkers
Civil War

United States Regulars

Cumberland Township, Adams County, Pennsylvania

Marker Inscription

Erected by the Congress to commemorate the services of that portion of the Army of the Potomac composed of cavalry, artillery, infantry and engineers of the Regular Army of the United States in the Gettysburg Campaign June-July 1863

The Story

Erected by act of Congress, this monument on the Gettysburg battlefield honors the Regular Army — the professional cavalry, artillery, infantry, and engineers who fought beside the volunteers of the Army of the Potomac in the Gettysburg Campaign of June and July 1863. Amid a field crowded with monuments to state volunteer regiments, it singles out the career soldiers of the United States. Their steadiness helped hold the line in the war's pivotal battle.

Why it matters

Gettysburg turned the tide of the Civil War, and this memorial preserves the often-overlooked role of the U.S. Regulars in that decisive fight.

The story behind this marker

AI context

The era

In the first days of July 1863, the war reached a hinge point in the Pennsylvania farm country around Gettysburg. Two great armies collided there almost by accident, and over three days they fought the largest battle ever waged on the continent.

The Army of the Potomac that met the challenge was overwhelmingly an army of volunteers — men raised by their states, mustered from towns and counties across the North. But woven through it was a smaller, older element: the Regular Army of the United States, the nation's permanent professional force of cavalry, artillery, infantry, and engineers.

After the war, Congress chose to honor those career soldiers with a monument on the very ground where they served. It stands in the township countryside of Adams County, amid a battlefield that would become one of the most heavily commemorated landscapes in America.

People & events

Most Gettysburg monuments were raised by states for their volunteer regiments. This one is different: erected by act of Congress, it speaks for the Regular Army as a whole — the professionals who fought beside the volunteers through the campaign of June and July 1863.

The inscription names the branches deliberately: cavalry, artillery, infantry, and engineers. Together they represent the full craft of nineteenth-century soldiering, the disciplined core around which a citizen army could steady itself in the chaos of battle.

Without inventing particular deeds the marker doesn't record, we can say what it honors: steadiness under fire. In a fight this vast and this desperate, the reliability of trained regulars mattered, and Congress judged that service worth a permanent memorial of its own.

Its place in the American story

Gettysburg is remembered as the battle that turned the tide of the Civil War, the high-water mark of the Confederacy's bid for independence. What happened in those Pennsylvania fields echoed through everything that followed.

Among the crowded monuments to state volunteers, this memorial preserves a part of the story that is easy to overlook — the role of the United States Regulars. It's a reminder that the Union war effort rested on both the enthusiasm of citizen-soldiers and the discipline of a professional force, and that the two fought side by side.

That a national legislature chose to build it says something, too. Congress was declaring that the country's own standing army deserved to be remembered on the field where the nation's fate hung in the balance.

If you visit

The Gettysburg battlefield is a landscape of monuments, and part of the pleasure of visiting is learning to read them. This one rewards the effort — pause and notice that it honors not a single state's regiment but the professional soldiers of the whole United States.

Stand a moment and take in the ground. The fields and ridges of Adams County are quiet now, but they hold the memory of three days in July that changed the war. Knowing that the Regular Army fought here gives the scene an added dimension.

Work it into a full day on the battlefield. Among the hundreds of memorials, seek out this congressional tribute and let it remind you that the Army of the Potomac was a partnership of volunteers and regulars alike.

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

Plan your visit

Nearby

Make a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.

Museums & culture

Attractions

Food & drink

Places to stay

Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related events

  • · Gettysburg Campaign
  • · Battle of Gettysburg

Themes & tags

Civil WarMonument

Nearby & related markers

US 150th PA “2nd Reg Bucktail Brigade” Wister / Huidekoper(w) / Jones

Cumberland Township, PA

Erected by survivors in 1888, this monument honors the 150th Pennsylvania Infantry — a regiment of the Bucktail Brigade — for its stand in the First Corps on July 2 and 3, 1863, holding its position under heavy fire until the close of the battle. Among its officers, Henry Huidekoper was wounded and Colonel Langhorne Wister took command amid the desperate first-day fighting. That the veterans themselves raised the stone a quarter-century later speaks to what the ground meant to the men who survived it.

Civil War

59th NY Thoman+ / McFadden

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument marks where four companies of the 59th New York Infantry held their ground at Gettysburg on July 2 and 3, 1863, amid the ferocious fighting along Cemetery Ridge. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Max A. Thoman, fell mortally wounded at the head of his men as the Union line absorbed and finally broke the Confederate assaults. The regiment's losses — six killed and twenty-eight wounded — are cut into the stone.

Civil War

US 149th PA “1st Reg Bucktail Brigade” Dwight(w) / Glenn

Cumberland Township, PA

This monument honors the 149th Pennsylvania Infantry, one of the regiments known as the Bucktail Brigade, who fought in the First Corps on the fields west and northwest of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. Facing Confederate assaults near the Chambersburg Pike and the unfinished railroad cut, the brigade paid a fearful price to buy time for the rest of the Union army to reach the high ground south of town. The 'Bucktail' name came from the deer tails the men wore on their caps, a badge of their marksmanship heritage.

Civil War

106th PA Curry

Cumberland Township, PA

This granite monument stands on the fields south of Gettysburg, where in early July 1863 the Army of the Potomac's Second Corps held the long spine of Cemetery Ridge against Robert E. Lee's invading army. The 106th Pennsylvania Infantry served in the storied Philadelphia Brigade, one of the units that anchored the Union center during the three days of fighting that turned back the Confederacy's deepest thrust into the North. Decades later, Pennsylvania's surviving veterans returned to mark the exact ground their regiments had held, planting stone monuments like this one across the battlefield. The unit designations carved here — brigade, division, and corps — are the veterans' own shorthand for where they stood when the war reached its turning point.

Civil War