by Burke Davis
In one skirmish Stuart's troopers captured a Federal captain and took him to headquarters, where Jeb questioned him:
"Why don't your cavalry boys show themselves more?"
"I know they're not much for quality. They got bad training. But they'll be better now."
"How's that?"
"New commander. General Philip St. George Cooke. He'll make you smart."
"Yes," Stuart said. "I know he has command, and I propose to take him prisoner. I married his daughter, and I want to present her with her father. So let him come on."7
The affair of his father-in-law in Federal uniform seemed to gall Stuart. He wrote Flora on November twentieth: "The Washington Star announces your Pa's appointment as Brig. Genl."
Four days later he wrote her once more, warning her to keep her name out of the newspapers, where controversies over divided families were raging:
The best thing we can do is to let it go and be forgotten. By calling attention to the matter no one will regard what you say—and it will only revive the recollection of your Pa's course. His own action classes him with [General Winfield] Scott. How can we, however much we may desire to do so, class him otherwise? No, My Dear Wife, for our own and our children's sake let us determine to act well our parts and bear with the mistakes and errors of others however grievous. Read well and con well those words my darling, and be consoled in what you rightly regard as very distressing, by the reflection that your husband and brothers will atone for the father's conduct.
He urged Flora to write her brother John, now an artilleryman, "and cheer him up—and tell him you expect him and us to wipe out every stain on the name by our own brilliant service."
Stuart made another wry comment on his father-in-law. Their son Philip, named for his grandfather at birth, now had his name changed. Stuart wrote Flora:
As for my boy's name, do not my Dear Dear wife ask me to do what I would consider an irreparable injury to our only son and embitter the last days of his father who up to this moment has labored to leave nought for him to be ashamed
of I am willing that he should be called John, Alexander or
Chapman Johnson after him who was such a Dear friend to my boyhood—but never that he should keep any part of his previous Christian name.... Do not think of recalling it and be assured that you will never hereafter regret it.
Flora was forgetful, and in a letter a day or so later, Stuart scolded:
My Darling, don't call our boy by his old name if you please. We settled that ... it is not right to revive it in our letters.
He dwelt on the matter:
I wrote you about our boy's future name and would like to have a reply. I can never consent to any portion of his former name being retained except Stuart. How would you like the name of Stuart Stuart? It would be novel and I think pretty, but J. E. B. would be most suitable.
Later still:
You will find that very few will ever know that his name was ever other than Jimmie.
Flora surrendered; the boy became James Ewell Brown Stuart, Jr. and the name of her father, such an anathema to Stuart, disappeared.
Jeb unbent so far as to write Flora:
I heard by underground railroad yesterday that your Ma is boarding at Brown's Hotel, Washington, and she remarked at the breakfast table the other morning, how much she would "like to hear from her daughter Flora." Now my Darling if you will write a small letter, put it in a small envelope, telling her how well and comfortable we all are and send it to me I can have it put under your Ma's breakfast plate, before the end of next week, and she will never know who brought it.
There was even a word of General Cooke:
Your Pa is dissatisfied with the way he has been served by putting others over him. It is what he might have expected. He would have been Major General this moment had he come over to us.
The letters of these weeks to Flora revealed a Stuart preoccupied with private affairs.
John Esten Cooke had taken her the tale of Jeb's hand-kissing episode with the women prisoners, evidently highly spiced—and jokingly told her Stuart had shaved off his beard. Flora's anxious letter drew admonitions from Jeb not to let "that scamp of a cousin of yours humbug and teaze you so. My beard flourishes like the gourd of Jonah." He then burst into rhyme:
And long may it wave— For I ne'er will shave-While My Flora approves Still to grow it behooves— And 'nary a hair' From it will I spare.
And, as to the other gossip:
If you had seen what passed in the hand kissing affair you would not I know have taken the slightest objection to it, and it was only by Jno. E.'s distortions that it could have been made exceptionable.
He added one of the several urgent declarations of his love he found necessary during the war:
My darling if you could know (and I think you ought) how true I am to you and how centered in you is my every hope and dream of earthly bliss, you would never listen to the idle twaddle of those who knowing how we love each other amuse themselves telling such outlandish yarns ... to see how you would stand it.
Stuart was "quite out of patience" with Esten Cooke, he said, and more:
Jno. Esten is a case and I'm afraid I can't like him. He is like your Pa in some peculiarities.
But the young novelist, unaware of Stuart's displeasure, wrote: "Stuart jested roughly, but you were welcome to handle him as roughly in return. If you could turn the laugh upon him, you were perfectly welcome to do so, and he never liked you the less for it." Perhaps, but not where Flora and other women were concerned.
The letters to Flora were sprinkled with details of her general's life in camp:
It is snowing hard, and the ground is white. I have very
little leisure, in fact none at all
As for that broth of a boy, tell him Lady Margrave [a favorite horse] wants him to ride her again. I wish you could get a little home of your own somewhere to have birds and flowers and books, the very best Society in the world. When 'war's dread commotion is over,' I would step quietly into such a home and xxx xx xxx x xx Kisses Dearest—your own—Stuart.
Jeb found time for chess, despite the constant alarms of patrolling the northern border. A messenger "lost the chess board, and the chess-men are not the kind I wanted. The drawers and shirts are very nice."
There was a glimpse of the musical gaiety of camp, as he wrote Flora:
It is nearly 12 at night, so hoping that at this moment you are dreaming of Hubbie I will close, Send me the words of When the Swallows etc., The Dew Is on the Blossom, Passing Away and Napolitain, those songs which so much remind me of you.. . . Here are Kisses for you sleeping, While at you I am peeping.
He now and then consoled his wife, but often struck a grim note:
If we are victorious my place will be in the pursuit, so you mustn't give yourself unnecessary uneasiness about me. Bear in mind that if I fall I leave in the sacrifice thus made a legacy more to be prized by my children and you Dearest than 10 years of longer life. ... I have no idea of sacrificing myself rashly but I hope to do my duty with a firm reliance on Divine Aid to uphold me.
Again:
I don't care what other Generals do, all I have to say is that while this war lasts I will not leave the van of our Army unless compelled to. Let that answer put to rest any hope of seeing me in Richmond.
In the same letter he showed concern for his position in army affairs:
I have some enemy in the War Dept. or Adjutant General's Office. Ask Dr. Brewer to find out who it is.
In the depths of the coldest weather he seemed to miss his wife:
I would like to be with you Dearest this dreary winter's night. Do you think of your old stove these cold nights? I really think you get up and down too much with the children; it seems to me that you might have your nurse to relieve you much in that respect.
As if in prophecy of tragedy to come, he wrote:
I beg of you My Darling to have Flora's portrait painted. You will never regret the expense if a good one
, and if not adjudged a good likeness let the distinct understanding be to be retained by the artist. My Dear do not neglect this longer and get La Pet's happy expression—Bless her heart Pa wishes he could see it now.
There were glimpses of Stuart's relations with officers of the new army:
Much love to Custis Lee when you see him. He was the most intimate friend I had in my class. Jo Johnston is as good a friend as I have in the C. S.
Jeb was impatient for major action, and wrote on November twenty-fourth:
We are still expecting the enemy. 'Why don't he come?'
And on December fourth:
We still expect McClellan daily. That he will advance, there can be little doubt, but when and where—aye, there's the rub.
In mid-December he held the first of his cavalry drills for admiring generals and the army at large. He described the scene briefly:
I had a splendid Brigade Drill of Cavalry today. The day was very favorable, the ground excellent and the performance admirable. Generals Johnston, G. W. [Smith] and Beauregard and nearly all the others were present. I was congratulated on my performance—putting them through as no Cavalry was ever put through before. I had 8 full squadrons present. They drilled admirably.8
The fields were so muddy that drill soon became impossible, but the army was no less hungry, and on December twentieth General Johnston sent most of the army's wagons to forage for food near the village of Dranesville. Stuart's men were stirred from the comfortable log huts to protect the wagon train.
As if clairvoyant, the Federal command had sent 4,000 infantry under General E. O. C. Ord toward Dranesville to collect forage.
Stuart was given four little infantry regiments and a battery of artillery, some 1,600 men in all, a tenth of them cavalrymen.
Jeb advanced rather incautiously. The Federals reached Dranesville first, and drove out the Confederate pickets. General Ord placed artillery on high ground in the village and threw two regiments into line. This force was soon swollen by the arrival of three more regiments, and Ord awaited Stuart's coming with 6,000 men. Jeb knew nothing of the Federal position until Captain Andrew Pitzer led the cavalry advance to Dranesville; the unprotected wagon train was at the mercy of the enemy. A desperate little battle blazed up.
Federal artillery held all the hilltops and blew Jeb's battery apart. Infantrymen had to drag off one of the guns to prevent its capture, and one caisson was left behind.
Confederate troops became excited, and the 6th South Carolina and ist Kentucky fired at each other. Somehow Stuart held his position for two hours, exchanging fire with the enemy as the wagons rolled to safety, but one regiment lost their knapsacks, forced back over a different road than that on which they had advanced and left their gear.
As the men came off the field a Kentucky officer, one Captain Desha, hobbled with his regiment, obviously wounded. Stuart passed him and started to dismount.
"Take my horse, Captain," he said. But Desha refused and walked on with his men. Stuart rode ahead, his horse draped with harness stripped from dead artillery animals on the field behind.
It was by no means a victory, though Stuart camped five miles away, and went back to the abandoned field in the morning with reinforcements. He buried his dead and recovered a few wounded. He had lost 194 men at Dranesville; the enemy, 68.
To Stuart this little fight seemed a triumph because of his inferior force. He wrote Flora:
Our side therefore came out first best—I am perfectly satisfied that my conduct was right, and I have the satisfaction to know that it meets the approval of General Johnston, and all others who know the facts, and my reputation has no doubt been the gainer. I was never in greater personal danger and men and horses fell around me like tenpins, but thanks to God to whom I looked for protection, neither myself nor my horse was touched.
He warned his wife to beware inaccurate newspaper accounts of this action, and he added:
There is a good deal of envy in this army among such as Ransom, Robertson et al—but I assure you I let it trouble me precious little.
There were errors at Dranesville Stuart would not make again. In particular he wanted to improve the artillery. He had in mind a new kind of artillery, something as swift as cavalry itself, able to outrace the enemy to the high ground always so vital on a battlefield. He was already searching the army for talent.
He acquired Lieutenant Beckham, who had fought guns so well at Manassas; he had also snapped up Lieutenant James Breathed, a prewar physician of twenty-three, who had been one of his companions on the train trip to Richmond as the war opened. Breathed had turned up in a cavalry regiment, and Stuart urged him to join the gunners, promising a promotion to first lieutenant. He put John Esten Cooke to work on the artillery, too, and the novelist was soon in Richmond advertising in a newspaper: "100 Patriotic Men Wanted" to fight Stuart's guns for him.
Most telling of all, Stuart picked up a twenty-three-year-old son of an Alabama country doctor, who was fresh from West Point-John Pelham, an almost girlishly handsome lieutenant. Pelham had left the military academy before graduating to slip over the border disguised as one of General Scott's couriers. He had drawn Stuart's attention with his "masterly manner" of handling a battery of guns at Manassas. A cannoneer sketched Pelham: "Of ordinary stature and light build, but remarkably sinewy. He was considered the best athlete at West Point, and he was noted for his fondness for fencing and boxing. ... A boyish appearance, erect and neat address, as modest as a maiden in the social circle."
Cavalrymen told tales of Pelham: The Prince of Wales, visiting West Point in 1860, had been astonished by the boy's horsemanship; once in early youth, Pelham had fought a larger schoolmate "until he fainted with exhaustion."
He had pushed his guns into such exposed positions at the battle of Manassas that an officer had deserted him: "If Pelham's fool enough to stay there, I'm not."
He was Stuart's kind of soldier.
While Esten Cooke was in Richmond trying to persuade the Confederate command to create horse artillery, Stuart wrote impatiently:
Whoever is to be should be appointed at once and come directly here. I need a commander very much to organize the battery forthwith . . . get ayes or no out of the Department.
A few days later Stuart wrote Flora of progress:
The Horse Artillery is growing rapidly. . . . Pelham is in command of it.
And:
The Battery . . . under the energetic management of Pelham is going ahead and will tell a tale in the battle. It has taken the name of the "Stuart Horse Artillery."
There was no other battery like this. Not a man walked when Pelham's guns went into action; all were mounted, even on the horses dragging the big guns and caissons. The pieces literally flew, and Pelham drilled the gunners until they became teams of precision, able to dash into position, unhitch, limber the guns and open fire with astonishing speed.
Pelham began with eight guns, and his force grew as rapidly as Stuart could beg guns and teams, and dragoon promising men from other parts of the army. He gathered a colorful band about him.
One of the first was Major Dabney Ball, his chaplain, his "Foraging Parson," the troopers called him, for he was so skilled as a commissary officer that not a chicken could live in a territory covered by Preacher Ball. He not only foraged; he carried private messages for Stuart, and once set up bakeries for the cavalry. Ball was one of Stuart's myriad kin; he was a thirty-nine-year-old minister who had left a Washington pastorate after eighteen years in the pulpit and offered himself to Governor Letcher as a soldier.
Ball joined a colorful chaplains' corps. Wickham's brigade boasted of the Reverend Captain Thomas Nelson Conrad, who doubled as a scout, often riding the "Doctor's line," a chain of country physicians living between Stuart and Washington which brought information from the very gates of the enemy capital.
This Parson Conrad wrote of one of his warlike exploits: "I met a Yankee plunderer on the highway. His horse was strung with chickens, hams, ducks and
turkeys. I shot him, took his feet out of the stirrups and dropped him on the road."9
Stuart also began to gather scouts to do secret service for him, bold men whose mysterious missions were little known even among the staff. One of the first was William Downs Farley, twenty-six, from Laurens, South Carolina: This handsome boy had won the army's attention by bravery at Manassas, fighting to the end though he could scarcely stand because of a raging fever from a case of measles. He had then turned to scouting along the northern lines. He won Stuart's heart by waylaying a column of several hundred Federal cavalry under General George Bayard, storming from a pine thicket with only three men to fire on Bayard and stampede most of his men. Farley was captured in this foray, however, and spent several months in Old Capitol prison in Washington. When he was released he returned to the area of Centreville.
Farley had "the most flattering proposals" to employ his talents in the West, Esten Cooke wrote, but: "Chancing to meet General Stuart, that officer took violent possession of him, and thenceforth kept him near him as volunteer aide."
Another of Stuart's scouts was Redmond Burke, one of his intimates, a fearless middle-aged soldier who gravitated to the cavalry command in the first months of fighting; he had three sons riding with Stuart. In a letter to Flora, Stuart left a glimpse of his work in enemy lines:
