Jeb Stuart, The Last Cavalier

by Burke Davis

  Troops shouted, "Great God! Old Jack's drawed his bounty money and bought clothes! I'm afraid he won't get down to work."

  Jackson went to a hill overlooking his own front, with A. P. Hill, Stuart and their staffs, "looking out through the white mists of the morning into the plain below, from which rose an indistinct murmur, like the distant hum of myriads of bees."

  Jackson and Stuart were in agreement: They should attack the enemy where he lay and drive him into the river. The commander would entertain no such notion; he would wait. After half an hour, Stuart and his officers left Jackson for the cavalry front.

  Captain Phillips, a visiting Englishman, passed John Pelham a red-and-blue tie, the colors of the Grenadier Guards, which he asked him to wear in battle and return as a souvenir. Pelham blushed as he wound the tie around his cap.

  Stuart rode to the extreme right, where Pelham had posted his guns. There was a cold wait in the dense fog.

  The cavalry was ready, but it seemed unlikely to see action, unless the enemy attempted a flank attack to pry Stuart from the river. Jeb probably gave no thought to one unattended detail on the infantry front which had been pointed out to him by von Borcke. On Jackson's line, in the sector commanded by A. P. Hill, some six hundred yards of marshy, wooded front was unmanned. Von Borcke had suggested that a triangle of woodland be cut down so that the enemy could not hide there. Stuart thought the position safe enough, and A. P. Hill agreed.

  On the upper end of the line, where Longstreet commanded, things were in such a state of readiness that when Old Pete proposed the addition of spare cannon on Marye's Hill, Colonel E. P. Alexander said, "General, we cover that ground now so well that we comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live in that field when we open on it."

  Lee made a last-minute inspection of Stuart's position, with the thought that the Federals might attack there, the weakest point of the line. He warned Jeb to have the Horse Artillery ready.

  Stuart and von Borcke were waiting on the flank when the Federal guns opened with such a crash that they seemed to have fired in unison. Hundreds of shells dropped into the woods on Jackson's front, stripping and felling trees.

  Von Borcke saw the morning as if it were a drama:

  "And now the thick veil of mist that had concealed the plain from our eyes rolled away, like the drawing up of a drop-scene at the opera, and revealed to us the countless corps, divisions, brigades and regiments of the Federal army forming their lines for attack."

  About this time Jeb sent Robert Lee a characteristic message: "Jackson has not advanced, but I have, and I am going to crowd them with artillery."9

  Stuart sent von Borcke to warn Jackson of an attack forming on his front. The German found Stonewall standing amid the fire, using his field glasses. From this hillside von Borcke saw two thirds of the field, with bluecoats marching as far as he could see. He had never beheld such grandeur: "On they came, in beautiful order, as if on parade, a moving forest of steel, their bayonets glistening in the bright sunlight as they came, waving their hundreds of regimental flags ... while their artillery beyond the river continued the cannonade with unabated fury over their heads."

  Von Borcke was anxious, and told Jackson so. Stonewall gave a firm reply: "Major, my men have sometimes failed to take a position, but to defend one, never! I am glad the Yankees are coming."

  He sent the German back to Stuart with an order: Open fire with the Horse Artillery.

  Stuart passed the order to Pelham, who begged Jeb to allow him to hurry to a fork of a road with only two guns, which he could have firing long before he could advance all his artillery. Stuart waved him on and the crews galloped into the open, cheering as they followed Pelham. One piece, an old Blakeley, was soon disabled by enemy fire.

  Pelham and his lone gun opened a duel with the Federal army.

  The brass Napoleon was an old one captured from the enemy at Seven Pines and fought in Pelham's first bid for fame at Gaines' Mill. This morning, on the largest arena of his career, the twenty-four-year-old Pelham fired from the flank down the thick Federal lines as if playing tenpins. The enemy stumbled in confusion, unsure where the shells came from; men fell rapidly. The Confederate army looked downstream from its heights to see the toy figures of Pelham's gunners working with the cannon, whose deadly fire had snarled the enemy flank. Union guns were turned on the exposed crew—four batteries of them. Pelham lost men, but he doubled his rate of fire. One Federal commander thought there was a whole battery in the road junction.

  The firing went on and on, with the one gun somehow surviving the hail of shot from thirty-two enemy guns. So many men were dead or wounded that Pelham himself helped load and fire. From far up the line General Lee peered with his glasses, saw Pelham and muttered, "It is glorious to see such courage in one so young."

  Stuart sent von Borcke to Pelham. He was to pull back the cannon if the Alabaman thought the time had come. Pelham shook his head: "Tell General Stuart I can hold my ground."

  Stuart repeated the message three times, but Pelham hung on, still blazing away. At last, when ammunition was gone, Pelham hitched horses to the gun and pulled it away. He turned then to the full battery, which joined the chorus of the army's artillery. The battle passed to the infantry.10

  The enemy threw waves of men into Jackson's front until two P.M., piling bodies in the open. The attacks were broken everywhere except in the wooded gap on A. P. Hill's front, where the bluecoats penetrated and were driven out only by fierce counterattack. Against orders a few butternuts followed the retreating Federals onto the plain; each time the blue wave receded, officers were hard put to prevent their elated men from leaving the hillside to follow.

  On the upper end of the line, all but hidden from the cavalry by battle smoke, Longstreet's corps faced enemy attack. The blue columns rolled forward and the morning's slaughter was repeated. At the base of Marye's Hill gray infantry behind a stone wall, standing in a sunken road, poured deadly fire on the blue ranks; from overhead the big guns dropped shells precisely in their planned zones of fire. The gallantry of the Union army was marked only by long rows of casualties left at high tide of futile attacks.

  A gunner in the Washington Artillery wrote: "Great gaps appeared; we gave them canister again and again; a few left the ranks-more followed , . . running in great disorder toward the town . . . the field before us was dotted with patches of blue."

  A fresh division stormed toward the hill, and within a quarter of an hour had been broken like the rest, with 2,000 of its 5,000 men dead or writhing on the field. General Lee watched in the grip of powerful emotion: "It is well that war is so terrible," he said to nearby officers, "we should grow too fond of it."

  In late afternoon the last enemy attack was ebbing on Jackson's front when Stuart, evidently impatient from long inaction, gave a rash command.

  Fitz Lee's men were at rest behind a protective hill, most of them lying on the ground, awaiting orders. Stuart ordered the whole brigade to charge the enemy.

  Beyond the hill the way was swept by hundreds of enemy cannon, and within range of most of the Federal small arms. But Fitz Lee did not hesitate. He climbed into his saddle and got the column in motion.

  Charles Blackford was with him at this moment, and as the troopers went into a trot he said, "This will be a second Balaklava."

  "Yes, I know it," Fitz said, "but we must obey orders."

  The foremost riders were spilling onto the plain when a messenger came at breakneck speed from Jackson, waving madly with his saber and shouting. The cavalry halted as Jackson's officer approached.

  "General Jackson wants to know where you're going." "I'm about to charge the enemy under orders from General Stuart."

  "There's some mistake," the messenger said. "General Jackson says to go back to your position or you will not have a man left alive."

  The cavalry returned to its post as daylight ended, and this attack was forgotten.11

  Night was very cold, with a dwindling of gunfire. A
minor chorus of sobs and cries from the wounded rose from the frozen field.

  Not even yet could Stuart relinquish the thought of attack, and this time found Jackson willing. They privately agreed on a night assault, and Stonewall sent a courier to Lee, asking permission. Jackson went so far as to gather white rags to tie about the sleeves of his men to identify them in the dark—but General Lee refused to permit the attack.

  Stuart had ridden forward in darkness on the assumption that the assault was coming off as scheduled. The troopers rode behind sharpshooters, who began clearing the way; for almost half an hour he pushed against the enemy front. Stuart got a bullet through his haversack and another cut the collar of his coat. A messenger from Jackson came with a curt order: General Lee had canceled the attack, and Stuart would return to the lines at once. The horsemen rode back in the garish light of an aurora borealis.

  Kyd Douglas of Jackson's staff reported a brief council at army headquarters this night:

  Most officers thought Burnside would renew his attacks on the heights next morning. Stuart disagreed; he thought the enemy had enough of slaughter. Jackson was silent until Jeb saw that he was sound asleep, and shook him.

  Stonewall opened his eyes and said wearily, "Drive 'em in the river."12

  The cavalry had scarcely suffered, but the army had paid for its victory. Two generals were dead, Maxcy Gregg and T. R. R. Cobb. Flora Stuart's brother, John R. Cooke, was seriously wounded. The enemy had lost about 13,000 men; the Army of Northern Virginia, some 5,000, most of them on Jackson's front. One artillery command on Jackson's hillside lost ninety horses under the heavy fire.

  Stuart's staff showered Pelham with congratulations and watched the smiling gunner return the soiled regimental ribbon to

  Captain Phillips, the grenadier. They also welcomed Lieutenant "Honeybun" Hullihen and his companion from their expedition to rescue Mary Lee: They had found Mary far behind Federal lines, and offered to take her to safety, but her friends dissuaded her. On the way home an enemy cavalry patrol picked them up, and they escaped by overpowering the guard, shooting their captors, and dashing over the river.

  The armies passed the next day watching each other. Troopers noted the woodland in Jackson's front, where trees a foot in diameter had been snapped, the ground was furrowed by cannon shot, and metal and the bodies of men and horses littered the hill. In front of Marye's Hill, William Blackford said, the ground looked as if it were covered with a blue cloth.

  Jeb went out with a flag of truce the next day and met an old friend, Joe Taylor, General Sumner's chief of staff. Taylor, in a strange burst of indignation, told Stuart of General Magruder's attempted treason to the Confederacy. Magruder had first asked President Lincoln to make him a brigadier, Taylor said, and when he was refused, had come south. Jeb wrote in outrage to his friend Custis Lee, the commander's son, in Richmond headquarters:

  Joe thinks he ought to be kicked out of the Confederacy. I think his appointment should be revoked. Do not fail to lay this matter before the President and give its authority.

  He boasted of Fredericksburg:

  The victory won by us here is one of the neatest and cheapest of the war. Englishmen here who surveyed Solferino and all the battlefields of Italy say that the pile of dead on the plains of Fredericksburg exceeds anything of the sort ever seen by them.

  Fredericksburg is in ruins. It is the saddest sight I ever saw. . .. Come up to see us right off. I will share my blanket with you.18

  Rain fell before the brief quiet ended, and the cavalry staff went shivering to headquarters. Stuart growled: "These Yankees always have some underhand trick when they send a flag of truce. They'll be off by daylight."

  The night roared with storm, and before dawn Stuart had word of a Federal retreat. Burnside had crossed the river and gone back into camp without having aroused one Confederate picket.

  Pelham and von Borcke prowled the battlefield in the wet morning. They found numbers of torpedoes, or small mines, left as traps by the enemy, now worthless because of the wetting of their powder. And they came upon the entire band of a Federal regiment, sound asleep in a wooded corner, unaware that their army had retreated. The musicians were aroused, but quickly accepting their plight, seized instruments and broke into "Dixie" as if it were their favorite tune.

  Jefferson Davis and Virginia's Governor Letcher visited the army in the afternoon and took a tour of the grim hill, looking across at the defeated enemy. From the opposite heights, a few days earlier, Abraham Lincoln had peered hopefully at Fredericksburg.

  CHAPTER 14

  Pelham's Last Fight

  STUART'S big tent was a mecca for touring British officers and politicians as the army settled for the winter in cities of log huts. Among the visitors were Colonel Garnet Wolseley, who was to become commander of the British Army, and a Colonel Leslie, chairman of the military committee of the House of Commons.

  Stuart and his officers took these men to the far grander headquarters of Jackson, in the plantation office of Richard Corbin's home, Moss Neck, a dozen miles away. It was a strange setting for Jackson, lined with medical, scientific and sporting books, and the walls decorated with fishing tackle, guns, skins, deer antlers, stuffed birds and expensive prints.

  Captain James P. Smith of Jackson's staff looked in amusement as Jeb paid Stonewall his first visit in the place: "With clanking saber and spurs and waving black plume he came, and was warmly greeted at the door. Papers and work were all hastily laid aside. No sooner had Stuart entered than his attention turned to the pictures on the walls. He read aloud what was said about each noted race horse and each splendid bull. At the hearth he paused to scan with affected astonishment the horrid picture of a certain terrier that could kill so many rats a minute. He pretended to believe that they were General Jackson's selections; with great solemnity he looked at the pictures and then at the general.

  "He paused and stepped back, and in solemn tones said he wished to express his astonishment and grief at the display of General Jackson's low tastes. It would be a sad disappointment to the old ladies of the country, who thought that Jackson was a good man.

  General Jackson was delighted beyond measure. He blushed like a girl, and said nothing but to turn aside and direct that a good dinner be prepared for General Stuart."1

  Stuart teased Jackson about a bottle of old wine at the dinner table, and roared with laughter at finding the print of a gamecock on the butter. "I swear, Jackson," he said, "it's your coat of arms."

  Stuart wrote Flora of a small tragedy of camp life, the burning of a Confederate flag she had made for him, which had fallen from its staff into a fire:

  I send you fragments. It had proudly waved over many battlefields and if I ever needed a motive for braving danger and trials, I found it by looking upon that symbol placed in my hands by my cherished wife, and which my dear little Flora so much admired.

  Within a few days Flora came to visit and stayed in a farmhouse half a mile from headquarters, expecting to spend a gay Christmas with him. The cavalry's wagons scoured the country for delicacies, and returned with chickens, turkeys, hams, sweet potatoes, butter and thirty dozen eggs. There was also some apple brandy, hidden from Stuart by the staff—and from the neighboring tent of some medical officers, whisky. Von Borcke planned a party and a feast.

  Most of the cavalry's officers thronged Stuart's tent on Christmas Eve, enjoying the music of the band and the company of Flora and other wives. Stuart was as cheerful as if he might celebrate forever, but he already had marching orders. General Lee had called for a raid in force. There was not a word during the party, but before dawn on Christmas Day buglers called out the men, who were shocked to learn they had only an hour to saddle, collect rations and be off. Von Borcke was once more caught without a decent horse, and left behind. This time he seemed pleased, for Jeb was hardly out of sight before the Prussian took over his tent with musicians and servants, commandeered the thirty dozen eggs, and had guests crowding around a gigantic bowl of eggnog
.

  Stuart led 1,800 raiders almost twenty miles to Kelly's Ford; they crossed without incident, trotted ten miles north of the Rappahannock before dark and camped at the village of Morrisville.

  Their objectives lay far north and east, along the highway from Fredericksburg to Washington, by which the enemy drew many supplies. This road lay almost parallel to the northward course of the Potomac, and was heavily patrolled.

  Stuart divided his force for a three-pronged attack on the highway: Fitz Lee would cut the road on the south, near Quantico; Rooney Lee would hit Dumfries, five miles to the north; and Wade Hampton ten miles farther north, at Occoquan. The forces would unite on the road. They drove hard through December twenty-sixth, for the nearest goal was twenty miles away. The column met no resistance.

  Fitz Lee fell upon enemy wagon trains the morning of the twenty-seventh and herded them north to meet Rooney Lee. There had been heavier skirmishing at Dumfries, where Rooney's troopers took about 70 prisoners and drove out the garrison. When Fitz Lee came to Dumfries there was a clash, but little progress, and when dark approached Stuart concluded that he could not budge the enemy, and pulled away.

  The command spent a miserable night near the hamlet of Cole's Store, where Hampton joined with a few wagons and prisoners. Stuart sent a party homeward during the night, the wagons, prisoners and broken-down guns under an escort.

  Fighting continued through the next day. The command took about 100 more prisoners and rode so far north that they were almost within sight of Alexandria.