After Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863, he led the Army of Northern Virginia west to the Shenandoah Valley, then north through central Maryland and into Pennsylvania, while Union Gen. George G. Meade, who replaced Gen. Joseph Hooker on June 28, led the Army of the Potomac in pursuit. Confederate cavalry commander Gen. J.E.B. Stuart cut Federal communications and rail lines and captured supplies. The armies collided at Gettysburg on July 1, beginning a battle neither general had planned to fight there, and three days later the defeated Confederates retreated, crossing the Potomac River into Virginia on July 14. Adams County and Fairfield, just north of the Mason-Dixon Line and Maryland, had faced the threat of war from the beginning of the Civil War, and it came twice. The first time was on October 10, 1862, when Stuart and 1,800 cavalrymen crossed the Potomac River into south-central Pennsylvania; the next afternoon they arrived in Fairfield, looted stores, took Postmaster John B. Paxton, Justice of the Peace Andrew Low, and several other male residents prisoner, and captured hundreds of horses. The more significant event came on July 3, 1863, after the Battle of Fairfield fought about two miles northeast of town as the Battle of Gettysburg raged. Union Maj. Samuel H. Starr's 6th U.S. Cavalry clashed with Confederate Gen. William E. "Grumble" Jones's cavalry brigade, Starr was wounded, and his regiment was overwhelmed. Pvt. George C. Platt and Sgt. Martin Schwenk of the 6th U.S. Cavalry later received the Medal of Honor for protecting the regimental flag and for rescuing an officer and attempting to carry a message through enemy lines. The regiment lost 242 killed, wounded, or missing out of 400, and Starr and many other wounded men were cared for in Fairfield's houses and churches. Jones kept the Hagerstown Road open for the Confederates. On July 4 and 5, most of Lee's army retreated from Gettysburg through Fairfield on its return to Virginia, leaving many wounded behind and adding to residents' hardships. Damage claims in Hamiltonban Township totaled $40,000 for the war, including $12,000 from Fairfield. Fairfield had been founded by John Miller in 1784 as Millerstown on land originally part of Carroll's Delight. By the eve of the Civil War, along with Peter Shively's Mansion House hotel, the town had a school, four churches, two tanners and curriers, three blacksmith shops, a huckster, a confectioner, a boot and shoe manufacturer, a Justice of the Peace, and the general merchandise stores of Rinehart and Sullivan and Paxton and McCreary.
