by Burke Davis
As he was loaded into the crude stretcher he pointed to his leg, lying on the ground where it had been flung by the shell.
"Bring it to me, please," he said.
Farley hugged the bleeding stump in his arms. "It's an old friend, gentlemen, and I do not wish to part with it."
He had a last word as he entered the ambulance: "Goodbye, and forever. I know my condition. I won't meet you again. Let me thank you for your kindness. It is a pleasure to me that I fell into the hands of Carolinians at my last moment."
Farley was soon dead. Esten Cooke saw his body in Culpeper at night, dressed in a new uniform coat that he had left with a girl in the town, telling her: "If anything happens to me, wrap me in this and send me to my mother."
Stuart had lost over 500 men, including two colonels dead; and Rooney Lee and Calbraith Butler would be lost for a long time. But there were 500 prisoners, three guns, and a number of captured battle flags. The enemy loss, it turned out, was over 900.
Stuart called the staff to set up headquarters on the spot of the night before, as if by this gesture he would claim victory beyond challenge. But it could not be done. Bluebottle flies swarmed over the bloody ground so thickly, and the hill was so littered with bodies of men and horses that tents could not be pitched. Stuart turned reluctantly to another place; Blackford thought Jeb's pride was hurt at having been forced from his ground by the surprise attack.
Stuart had fought the war's greatest cavalry engagement against fine young Union commanders who would be heard from: Alfred Duffie, Judson Kilpatrick, David Gregg, John Buford. He had used only fifteen of the twenty-one regiments, perhaps 7,000 against the 10,000 of Pleasanton, and after savage fighting had beaten two assault columns in turn. Every unit that had seen action was hurt, however; it was the first great shock the corps had borne.
The army's critics were not idle. As far away as Richmond, the chief of the Bureau of War, Robert H. G. Kean, wrote in his diary: "Stuart is so conceited that he got careless—his officers were having a frolic at Col. Rosser's wedding party." [Kean was in error. There had been a frolic the night before, but Rosser had been married a year earlier.]
Charles Blackford, now on Longstreet's staff, had a similar idea: "The fight at Brandy Station can hardly be called a victory. Stuart was certainly surprised, and but for the supreme gallantry of his subordinate officers and the men ... it would have been a day of disaster and disgrace. ... Stuart is blamed very much, but whether or not fairly I am not sufficiently well informed to say."
Colonel William Oates of the Alabama infantry advanced a new theory: The firing of Stuart's cannon in the review attracted the attention of the Yankees, who believed that some Confederates had mutinied. "Their anxiety to know, in part, caused them to cross the river . . . while General Stuart and his principal officers were at a ball in the village of Culpeper Court House dancing with the pretty women and having a good time. The Yankees ruthlessly disturbed the Confederates and caused them to rush to the front as the officers of Wellington's army did from the grand ball in Brussels in 1815, at the sound of Napoleon's cannon, the night before the battle of Waterloo."5
One Culpeper woman sent a bitter note to President Davis, anonymously:
... If General Stuart is allowed to remain our commanding general of cavalry we are lost people. I have been eye witness to the maneuvering of General Stuart since he has been in Culpeper. . . . Gen. S. loves the admiration of his class of lady friends too much to be a commanding general. He loves to have his repeated reviews immediately under the Yankees' eyes too much for the benefit and pleasure of his lady friends for the interest of the Confederacy.
"Southern Lady."6
The President's staff sent this note on to Stuart with a playful admonition to "cease your attentions to the ladies or make them more general."
It was perhaps the implied charge of immorality leveled by this critic that moved Jeb to say to Esten Cooke: "That person does not live who can say that I ever did anything improper of that description."
The Richmond Examiner scolded Stuart in stinging words:
The more the circumstances of the late affair at Brandy Station are considered, the less pleasant do they appear. If this was an isolated case, it might be excused under the convenient head of accident or chance. But this puffed up cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia has been twice, if not three times, surprised since the battles of December, and such repeated accidents can be regarded as nothing but the necessary consequences of negligence and bad management. If the war was a tournament, invented and supported for the pleasure of a few vain and weak-headed officers, these disasters might be dismissed with compassion. But the country pays dearly for the blunders which encourage the enemy to overrun and devastate the land, with a cavalry which is daily learning to despise the mounted troops of the Confederacy. The surprise on this occasion was the most complete that has occurred. The Confederate cavalry was carelessly strewn over the country....
Events of this description ... require the earnest attention both of the chiefs of the Government and the heads of the Army. The enemy is evidently determined to employ his cavalry extensively, and has spared no pains or cost to perfect that arm. The only effective means of preventing the mischief it may do is to reorganize our own forces, enforce a stricter discipline among the men and insist on more earnestness among the officers in the discharge of their very important duty.
That volley was echoed by the more sedate Richmond Sentinel:
Vigilance, vigilance, more vigilance, is the lesson taught us by the Brandy surprise, and which must not be forgotten by the victory which was wrested from defeat. Let all learn it, from the Major General down to the picket.7
Stuart possibly felt obliged to defend himself against other criticism because of such reports. He had written General Lee in recent days, indicating that he was sensitive on the subject of Chancellorsville. That letter was to be lost, but Lee's reply made the matter fairly clear:
As regards the closing remarks of your note, I am at a loss to understand their reference or to know what has given rise to them. In the management of the difficult operations at Chancellorsville, which you so promptly understood and creditably performed, I saw no errors to correct, nor has there been a fit opportunity to commend your conduct. I prefer your acts to speak for themselves, nor does your character or reputation require bolstering up by out-of-place expressions of my opinion.
If Stuart had written a petulant note to Lee, perhaps in resentment that he had not been raised to lieutenant general with infantry command, it was his first such expression, for it appeared from another of Lee's letters that neither of them had considered Jeb's transfer from cavalry command:
I am obliged to you for your views as to the successor of the great and good Jackson. Unless God in his mercy will raise us up one, I do not know what we shall do. I agree with you on the subject, and have so expressed myself.
There was no note of apology, at any rate, in Stuart's order to his troops after Brandy Station:
. . . Comrades, two divisions of the enemy's cavalry and artillery, escorted by a strong force of infantry, "tested your metal" and found it "proof steel "
Your saber blows, inflicted on that glorious day, have taught them again the weight of Southern vengeance. . . .
Nothing but the enemy's infantry strongly posted in the woods saved his cavalry from capture or annihilation. An act of rashness on his part was severely punished by rout and the loss of his artillery.
With an abiding faith in the God of battles and a firm reliance on the saber, your success will continue.
The army was immediately under way. In the early morning of June tenth, while Stuart was out with Captain Blackford and others of the staff, frightening vultures from the bodies, his troopers watched the foot soldiers moving. Young Luther Hopkins was at his picket post by the river:
"We were quietly resting in the woods, watching the infantry as they tramped by all day long, moving in a northwesterly direction. The
question was asked ten thousand times perhaps that day: 'What is Marse Robert up to now? Where is he taking us?'
"In the afternoon we noticed a long string of wagons of peculiar construction, each drawn by six horses, and loaded with something covered with white canvas. Of course, we are all curious to know what these wagons contained. The secret soon leaked out. They were pontoon bridges. And then we began to speculate as to what rivers we were to cross. Some said we were destined for the Ohio, others for the Potomac."
Just before sunset bugles called in cavalry camp, and Stuart's men moved. The column rode most of the night, crossing the Rappahannock some miles above the Brandy Station field.
The troops Hopkins saw were Dick Ewell's, moving toward Winchester, hoping to drive the Federals from that town, cross the Potomac and strike into the North once more. Robert Lee had made his decision and obtained Richmond's blessing. The Army of Northern Virginia would transfer the fighting from the ravaged home counties to new fields, rich with forage. It would also ruin any Federal plans for a new drive on Richmond, this summer.
Longstreet was involved in two minor matters at Culpeper, scarcely noted, which would become important to the army.
Old Pete had come back from independent command in Eastern Virginia with more positive opinions, and he now urged upon Lee a strategy of defense to be used even on this invasion. He wrote:
I suggested that, after piercing Pennsylvania and menacing Washington, we should choose a strong position, and force the Federals to attack us, observing that the popular clamor throughout the North would speedily force the Federal general to attempt to drive us out. I recalled the battle of Fredericksburg as an instance of a defensive battle, when, with a few thousand men, we hurled the whole Federal army back, crippling and demoralizing it, with trifling loss to our own troops.
Longstreet beset Lee with his theory for several days, and began the march resolved to see the army apply it in battle. Shortly before he left, too, he sent out a scout, a man known simply as Harrison, a veteran spy who was to sneak into Washington and discover enemy plans.
"Where will I report to you?" Harrison asked.
Old Pete would not divulge the army's goal: "I'm sure the First Corps is big enough for a man of your intelligence to find."
Harrison was off on his errand.
Two slow columns wound north, Ewell to the west, with Long-street following along the Blue Ridge. A. P. Hill's corps was last to leave the Rappahannock. By June fifteenth, Ewell's advance was already over the Potomac, and Winchester fell the next day. Long-street's men were around the Blue Ridge passes, Ashby's Gap and Snicker's Gap. The enemy began a desperate effort to break through Stuart's screen and discover the route of the infantry.
Stuart's corps was divided when the blows fell: The brigades of Robertson, Fitz Lee and Rooney Lee, the latter under Colonel J. R. Chambliss, were to the east of Longstreet's column. Grumble Jones and Wade Hampton, with their troopers, were in the rear southward, shielding A. P. Hill.
June seventeenth was clear and hot. Colonel T. T. Munford, commanding some of Fitz Lee's men, led the 2nd and 3rd Virginia along Bull Run Mountain from Upperville through Middleburg, to the pass at Aldie, setting out pickets. He stopped to gather corn on a farm a mile out of Aldie. Behind him Williams Wickham had brought the three other regiments of the brigade near the village.
Colonel Rosser and the 5th Virginia met the enemy here, as blue riders came in and gobbled up Munford's pickets, a full Federal division under General Gregg. Young Judson Kilpatrick's brigade carried the fight for the enemy—five regiments from New York, Massachusetts, Ohio and Maine. They fought like demons.
Rosser pushed back their advance for a moment with a saber charge and put sharpshooters among haystacks in an adjoining field, with a small mounted reserve behind them. Colonel Munford sent a party of fifteen dismounted men behind a stone wall to hold on until he could call up his two regiments from their corn foraging.
The Confederates were driven slowly back until the 2nd and 3rd Virginia arrived, and firing became heavy. The Federals came on an uphill road, squeezed into column of fours by deep gullies. They were met in this defile, hand-to-hand. The head of the Federal column was almost wiped out. At about this moment the graycoats in the haystacks were captured, and the enemy pulled back into Aldie, holding off Munf ord's final charge. The sharpshooters in the hayfield and along the stone fence had taken terrible toll. Colonel Munf ord noted:
I do not hesitate to say that I have never seen as many Yankees killed in the same space of ground in any fight I have
ever seen We held our ground until ordered by the Major
General commanding to retire and the Yankees had been so severely punished that they did not follow.
Munf ord had lost 119 men, mostly in the 5th Virginia, which furnished the sharpshooters; he had 138 prisoners in tow. Munf ord camped a mile in rear of the battlefield.
Stuart got into Middleburg in the late afternoon. An officer saw him in the street surrounded by women: "The scene looked like a dance around a maypole. It lasted an hour or so until they heard the guns."8
Jeb was forced to flee with the staff. Colonel Alfred Duffie and the ist Rhode Island slashed down the street, having snatched Stuart's pickets before they could sound an alarm. Jeb ran for the safety of Robertson's lines, just beyond the village, and sent Robertson to clear Middleburg. Riders fought in the dark, once leaping a barricade in the road and scattering its guard. Von Borcke wrote of the brief stay in this town:
"The General and I remained another hour with our lady friends, who, with their accustomed devotedness, were busy nursing the wounded, large numbers of whom were collected in the residences."
John Mosby reported during the day. He was a changed man, Blackford saw, no longer the carelessly dressed scout on a shambling nag. In recent weeks he had become famous, raiding enemy headquarters and kidnaping generals.
With the splendidly uniformed partisan chief were the rough men of his command. It was the "only time during the war" that Stuart saw these raiders. "They remind me of the story about Captain Scott and the 'coon," he told Mosby, "when the 'coon said, 'Don't shoot, I'll come down!' They'll look like that to the Yankees."
The ranger had news for Stuart: The Army of the Potomac was streaming northward on a line parallel to that of Lee's infantry, but on the east of the mountains. More immediately important, Mosby had captured Federal dispatches disclosing that Stuart faced a division of infantry, as well as the blue cavalry corps. Jeb had only twelve regiments to keep this force from striking Lee's infantry in the rear.
June nineteenth opened with heavy fire at dawn, and dragged on in furious fighting. Stuart's line near Upperville was pushed back half a mile by dismounted Federal riflemen and cannon fire, until Jeb found a hillside to his liking and settled to defend it. Von Borcke was sent to place some cannon and returned with an ominous report: "They are too strong, General. So many that they overlap the line on either side."
Stuart scoffed. "I can hold here all day." He ordered some of Rooney Lee's troops into Aldie to meet another threat, but von Borcke pleaded with him to keep them on the ground. The German was sent back to the front once more.
"You see if you haven't over-estimated their number," Stuart said.
Von Borcke returned to affirm his fears. "You will have to retreat, even if you keep the whole force together."
Stuart laughed. "You're mistaken this time, Von. I'll be in Middleburg in less than an hour. Write out a permit for the Major, here, to go into the village as commissary."
They came under fire while von Borcke wrote, and retreating men poured about them. Federals came in sight.
"Ride after those men, Von," Stuart said. "Rally them. I'll follow you with all I can gather."
As von Borcke got to the fighting line, the enemy was staggered by artillery fire from the flank and a charge by the 9th Virginia, which seemed to save the day for Stuart. Jeb and the German rode behind the lines, cheered by the men. The two were
almost identical in dress, from plumes to spurs, and, as von Borcke said, "... bullets came humming around me like a swarm of bees."
A sharpshooter's bullet snipped gold braid from von Borcke's trousers. He complained to Stuart: "Those Yankees are giving it to me rather hotly on your account."
The German's military career was over in that moment: "I suddenly felt a severe dull blow, as though somebody had struck me with his fist on my neck, fiery sparks glittered before my eyes, and a tremendous weight seemed to be dragging me from my horse."
Blackford was at his side: "I heard a thump very much like some one had struck a barrel a violent blow with a stick. I knew very
well what it meant I looked around to see which one would fall."9
He looked first at Stuart, and saw him firm in the saddle, then saw von Borcke drop his bridle and slide. Blackford saw that the German's spur would catch in the stirrup, and rode beside him, throwing his foot clear; von Borcke went down slowly on his back. He was shot in the back of the neck. His left arm was stiff, and blood streamed from his mouth. There was a whistling from his throat. He could not speak, and motioned to the others to leave him.
Blackford could think of no way to keep the body of the 250-pound major on a restive, bucking horse until he remembered a trick taught him by von Borcke early in the war. He had a courier twist the horse's ear, holding down the head, until they were out of firing range. Von Borcke surprised them by coming to life, helping them to get him seated in the saddle, and thence to an ambulance.
