by Burke Davis
"About nine thirty last night."
"Where was the firing then?"
"It had stopped around White Oak Swamp bridge by then, over where Jackson was."
Stuart pondered the order in light of what he surmised had happened since Lee dictated it, and called for the buglers. The command was soon in the saddle. They rode eleven miles up the river to Bottom's Bridge and crossed to the south of the Chickahominy. Stuart found the road clogged with marching Confederate infantry, moving so fast and so filling the roadway that he was forced to retrace his steps.
The cavalry moved back downstream to Forge Bridge once more, recrossed the river to the south bank, and turned upstream. The troopers now came up on the left of Stonewall Jackson's troops. Stuart wrote Jackson a note to this effect, saying he would be ready to co-operate, but it was too late. The long maneuver had eaten up the hours with its marching and countermarching.
But there was a moment of rest during the hot afternoon when Stuart lay with the staff beneath cherry trees at a roadside. Men picked the ripe cherries and Stuart clambered atop a fence rail to join them. When he had eaten all the fruit within reach Jeb called to von Borcke:
"Captain, you charge the Yanks so well. Why don't you attack this cherry tree?"
Von Borcke leaped from a fence rail upon a limb, dragging it to earth and breaking down the tree. The laughing troopers had soon picked clean its branches.
They were interrupted by thunder of artillery and Stuart, as if his memory had been jogged, ordered them into the saddles once more.6
As the cavalry sought position, Lee's army was fighting the bloody engagement of Malvern Hill, regiments charging one by one up a slope under the murderous fire of sixty Federal cannon, standing wheel to wheel. Brigades had been decimated through a blundering of orders, and despite the gallantry of the gray columns, only Federal failure to understand the situation saved Lee from defeat. The action roared until after dark, no more than a few miles across the swamps from Stuart's approaching column. Jeb came, long after dark, to Jackson's flank near a stream called Turkey Creek.
Stuart's absence had drawn no criticism, and he probably could not have made effective use of the cavalry in the swamp fighting in any event, yet his report of the final movements of his expedition had a defensive ring:
"Passing Nance's Shop about sundown, it was dark before we reached Rock's house, near which we stampeded the enemy's picket ... soon after ... encountered picket fires, and a little way beyond saw the light of a considerable encampment. There was no other recourse left but to halt for the night, after a day's march of 42 miles."
Stuart thought he had helped to confuse the enemy despite the stumbling marches of the day, for he wrote:
"My arrival could not have been more fortunately timed, for, arriving after dark, its ponderous march, with the rolling artillery, must have impressed the enemy's cavalry, watching the approaches to their rear, with the idea of an immense army about to cut off their retreat, and contributed to cause that sudden collapse and stampede that soon after occurred, leaving us in possession of Malvern Hill."
Morning brought fog and rain. Jeb woke with his staff in an orchard near Malvern Hill, just outside a small farmhouse.
Stuart went in search of Jackson and found him riding restlessly in the fog with Captain Blackford. Stonewall was ready to charge the enemy on Malvern Hill, but Stuart halted him and sent Blackford to inspect the front. The captain rode up the menacing slope toward gun pits on the ridge and saw dim figures. Blackford knew that Stuart meant him to go close enough to draw fire if the enemy were still there, and he went to the crest. He found that the skirmishers were Confederates. The enemy had gone. Blackford took the news to Stuart.
Jeb sent him in the path of the enemy, and Blackford rode to a hill overlooking the James and two magnificent plantation houses of Colonial days, Berkeley and Westover. Around them crowded Federal troops beyond counting, with gunboats lying offshore just beyond. Blackford was near enough to hear voices of command.
Stuart took a column downriver toward the plantation, Shirley, but ran into a strong Federal rear guard and turned back. He spent the rest of the day collecting prisoners, sending captured arms to the rear, and worrying the enemy. Late in the day he galloped in reconnaissance toward Charles City Court House.
Stuart got a message from Pelham the next morning confirming Blackford's report: The enemy lay by the river near Westover with a stream—Herring Creek—to their right. A raised plateau called Evelington Heights overlooked this position. The heights were unoccupied. Young Captain Pelham urged that artillery be hurried to that hill.
Stuart sent the dispatch through Jackson to General Lee, but did not wait for army channels to bring action. He immediately aroused the men and rode to Evelington Heights. The lone Federal cavalry squadron there fell back almost docilely to Westover. Stuart looked down on the crowded regiments of McClellan's army.
Without thought of the unequal odds or concern lest he alert the enemy to the strategic importance of the commanding hill, he made ready to fight. One howitzer opened fire. Shells fell in the packed Union camp, killing men and animals. Stuart enjoyed the sight: "Judging from the great commotion and excitement caused below it must have had considerable effect."
Stuart had another surprise for the enemy, "some foreign chap" with a Congreive rocket battery, whose fat missiles flew straight enough, but once they struck leaped and turned in many directions. They threshed in McClellan's camp, scalding mules with "liquid damnation," but in the end burned only a few tents. Some of them whizzed back toward Jeb's hill, and this ancient weapon was abandoned.
Stuart advised General Lee of the situation, and was told help was on the way—infantry of Jackson and Longstreet.
The gun had opened on the Federals at nine A.M., and Stuart held the heights until two in the afternoon, when the enemy finally pushed a battery across difficult Herring Creek and began firing. Even then he clung to the position while bluecoat infantry inched up on his flank and the battery blazed at him. A courier brought a disheartening message: Longstreet had taken the wrong road, and was at least six miles away at Nance's Shop. The cavalry must soon retreat.
Pelham had just reported two more rounds left, and Stuart had ordered these fired, expecting Longstreet's vanguard at every moment. The sharpshooters trotted back from the front with all cartridges gone. Stuart wrote almost bitterly that they "had at last to retire; not, however, without teaching many a foeman the bitter lesson of death."
But Evelington Heights was lost, and soon swarmed with blue-coats, who began to fortify it.
The next day was July fourth, and Stuart spent it with Lee and Jackson, prowling about Evelington Heights, seeking some way to attack, but though Stuart urged Jackson and "showed him routes by which the plateau could be reached to the left," the high command refused to risk the army against the strong position of McClellan, now shielded by the ridge Stuart had lost.7
On July sixth, as if nettled by his failure to cripple the enemy, Stuart went hunting at the riverside. He rode off in the dusk with two regiments and six of Pelham's guns to lay an ambush for some of the Federal boats which passed so boldly up and down the James.
It was a soft summer night, "full of the fragrance of wild flowers and forest blossoms, and myriads of fireflies glittered," von Borcke wrote. Stuart led them to a landing, had the guns loaded, and settled to wait.
Within a few minutes a flotilla came upstream and lights glowed on the water. Five enemy transports pulled slowly past, decks loaded with troops. They were no more than a hundred yards off when Stuart ordered the gunners to fire. The effect was devastating.
Von Borcke remembered: "We could distinctly hear our balls and shells crashing through the sides of the vessels, the cries of the wounded on board, and the confused random commands of the officers."
A transport sank, and the river was dotted with struggling figures. Above the sounds of the little engagement Stuart heard the approach of gunboats under heavy stea
m. He called off the guns and the party trotted home through the early morning. Behind them, to von Borcke's amusement, the enemy sent hundred-pound shells crashing into the spot from which Stuart's horse artillery had been firing.8
Von Borcke somehow became separated from the party, and since he had been warned that Yankee cavalry was nearby, he rode in the darkness with caution. A horseman emerged from a side path.
"Halt!" von Borcke shouted. "What is your regiment?" "Eighth Illinois," a voice replied.
Von Borcke thrust a pistol against the man's chest. The rider wore a blue Federal uniform. The German took him to camp, noting greedily that the captive rode a fine horse, which would soon be his own. The young man was talkative, full of stories about life in the Yankee army—but when they arrived in the camp of the 9th Virginia the "Federal," laughing, identified himself as one of Fitz Lee's troopers, clad in a captured uniform.
Von Borcke was enraged, and drew his pistol on the private. "Why did you tell me you were Federal?"
"I thought you were a Yankee. Your accent."
The German threatened the laughing boy with murder at any further jesting, and rode to join Stuart.
For months afterward Jeb teased von Borcke:
"Captain, how many prisoners of the 9th Virginia have you taken lately?"
The cavalry pickets hung close to the enemy for a few days, and General Lee kept the infantry in line. But on July eighth the commander concluded that McClellan intended no immediate offensive against Richmond, and most of the infantry was marched nearer the capital. The cavalry screen was pulled back. The Seven Days had ended.
The army would never be the same; Lee had suffered almost 20,000 casualties, against some i5,ooo for the enemy. The country between the Chickahominy and the James was like a vast abattoir.
Esten Cooke had returned to Stuart at the end of the fighting, smarting because his search for a fresh horse had led him into a long journey. He had fretted after hearing the guns of Malvern Hill: "Was Stuart at the heavy fighting last evening? I don't know. I was not. But, mon General, thou canst not say I did it. 'Twas the horse I mounted in an evil hour."
Cooke was back, however, and got astonished greetings. The staff had thought him dead, shot by a Yankee infantry company and buried days earlier.
Von Borcke threw his arms around Cooke. "I cried," the German shouted. "I cried for you, and wanted to go for your remains."
Captain Farley said he, too, had wept for the loss of John Esten. Cooke was amused, and wrote in his diary: "Not this time, mes amis! Here I am writing on the grass under the locusts, the General sleeping yonder."
Stuart did not: seem physically worn after the hard riding of the week, but his reports indicated an awareness that the role of the cavalry might have left something to be desired. At the end of them:
"I regret that i:he very extended field of operations of the cavalry has made this report necessarily long. During the whole period it will be observed that my command was in contact with the enemy. No opportunity occurred, however, for an overwhelming charge; a circumstance resulting from the nature of the positions ... in woods or behind swamps and ditches."
What Jeb longed for, in short, was an "overwhelming charge." Without one, the life of the cavalry seemed incomplete.
His casualties were light, a total of 71—61 of these borne by the 1 st North Carolina, on duty with the main army while Stuart was galloping his long route. But of the casualties only four men were dead, four others had deserted to the enemy. For all its losses, the cavalry corps hardly knew it had been engaged.
Stuart was free with praise of officers and men. His staff was learning:
Colonels Fitz Lee, Rooney Lee, T. R. R. Cobb, and Lieutenant Colonel Will Martin had shown "zeal and ability" in independent command, and deserved promotion.
Captain John Pelham had shown "such signal ability as an artillerist, such heroic example and devotion in danger, and indomitable energy ... that, reluctant as I am at the chance of losing such a valuable limb from the brigade, I feel bound to ask for his promotion, with the remark that in either cavalry or artillery no field grade is too high for his merit or capacity."
Captain Blackford was "always in advance, obtaining valuable information of the enemy.... He is bold in reconnaissance, fearless in danger, and remarkably cool and correct in judgment. His services are invaluable to the advance guard of any army."
Von Borcke was "ever-present, fearless and untiring."
There was praise for new members of the staff, Stuart's kinsman from Mississippi, Hardeman Stuart, a signal officer, and Captain Norman Fitzhugh, just promoted from the ranks to chief of staff. There was mention of Redmond Burke, Esten Cooke, Captain Farley, Chaplain Ball and others.
Like most other commanders of the army, Stuart read with pleasure Lee's general order on July seventh, summing up The Seven Days. The commander said of his new army:
The general commanding, profoundly grateful to the only Giver of all victory for the signal success with which He has blessed our arms, tenders his warmest thanks and congratulations to the army
Today the remains of that confident and threatening host of the enemy lie upon the banks of the James River, 30 miles from Richmond, seeking to recover . . . from the effects of a series of disastrous defeats....
The service rendered to the country in this short but eventful period can scarcely be estimated, and the general commanding cannot adequately express his admiration of the courage, endurance, and soldierly conduct of the officers and men engaged....
Despite this official rejoicing, Lee sought to improve the blundering system of command which had cost him complete victory. His official report said mildly: "Under ordinary circumstances the Federal army should have been destroyed." And he wrote his wife: "Our success has not been so great or complete as we could have desired."
There were signs of reorganization within the army. For his part, Stuart wanted only an enlarged cavalry corps and promotion for his reckless young officers. When Jeb found time for a note to Flora he wrote:
I have been marching and fighting for one solid week. Generally on my own hook, with the cavalry detached from the main body. I ran a gunboat from the White House and took possession. What do you think of that?
We have been everywhere victorious and on the 3rd I had the infinite satisfaction of slipping around to the enemy's rear and shelling his camp at Westover. If the army had been up with me we could have finished his business
Stuart talked with Esten Cooke of the strategy of The Seven Days, and of his stillborn plan which had been discarded by General Lee at the start.
"Do you know what General Lee's object was at Richmond?" he asked. "No."
"He was building fortifications, in order to hold the city with a small force, and then to attack McClellan on the right flank, as you know. I was in favor of attacking his left flank, on the Charles City Road."
"From what point, General?"
"Well, from about White Oak Swamp."
"Would you have had space enough?"
"Yes. But the other plan was best, after all. But McClellan ought to have struck right for Richmond when we advanced on his flank."
"He hadn't the nerve," Cooke said. "Napoleon would have done it."9 Cooke still carried in his knapsack the biography of Napoleon, and read from it daily.
For nearly a month the Confederate forces rested. The infantry camped outside Richmond and the cavalry was divided between picket duty on the Charles City Road and a training camp at Hanover Court House, where the regiments were being drilled.
Stuart's staff was happy to move to Hanover County, for life on the battlefields; was unpleasant. Von Borcke sketched the "impoverishment and utter destitution of the country . . . numberless festering carcasses of horses and mules... stench from human bodies hastily buried but a few inches below the surface."
The German and Captain Hardeman Stuart dug for a whole day in a garden near headquarters and found only "a few miserable onions and diseased potatoes to
appease our hunger."
All this was soon left behind. Stuart took von Borcke to Richmond, where he went to see President Davis, but the German, his only uniform in shreds, could not be persuaded to make the state visit. Von Borcke went to a tailor and bought a full uniform "of the newest gloss, light gray frock coat with buff facings, dark blue trousers, and a little black cocked hat with sweeping ostrich plume."
Stuart found himself a hero in Richmond, and one morning as he rode through the streets a band of young women besieged him. The girls surrounded his horse and he sat, joking with them as they put a wreath of flowers around the neck of his horse and thrust a bunch of roses beneath his arm. Jeb was reciting poetry to them when a column of infantry marched around a corner onto the scene of hero worship and began gobbling falsetto cries of derision.
Stuart was off in a clatter, shedding roses, with a hasty farewell to the young women.10
The new cavalry headquarters were on the Timberlake farm, on the Virginia Central Railroad near Atlee's Station, some ten miles north of Richmond. The farmhouse was pleasantly shaded by a grove of huge oaks and hickories, with well-tended fields about it. The elderly master of the place had two sons in Stuart's column, and was determined to be hospitable. Jeb arrived here on July twelfth. Flora came to a nearby plantation two days later, and was a constant visitor for meals; the Stuart children were pets of the staff, and there was endless play in the old house.
Jeb staged a review on July seventeenth. Most of the spectators were women of the region, von Borcke noticed, "among whom General Stuart had many acquaintances and admirers." The brigade went through a drill and then paraded in column. Flora watched with the other women. Captain Blackford thought she must have been proud of her husband, who little more than a year ago had been a lieutenant, and now commanded the cavalry of an army.
