by Burke Davis
The fighting north of the Potomac raged without respite until July twelfth. There was little food and almost no sleep; running fights flared on all roads of the region. The enemy did not break through, but as Lee's engineers struggled with their pontoon bridges and the river continued to rage at flood tide behind them, the troopers neared the limits of endurance. Toward the end they fought almost entirely on foot. On July twelfth Stuart removed his screen from the infantry position at the river side, but the enemy cavalry found the entrenchments too strong, and waited for Meade's infantry to come to their aid.
Major McClellan went with Stuart to the home of a Confederate sympathizer in Hagerstown. At nine P.M. their young hostess invited the officers to dine. Stuart stirred briefly and shook his head. He would not eat.
McClellan knew he had eaten nothing in twenty-four hours, raised Stuart by his arm, and led him to the table: "His eyes were open, but he ate sparingly and without relish."
The young woman was anxious, thinking that the food was not to his taste. "General, perhaps you would like a hard-boiled egg."
"Yes," Stuart said. "I'll take four or five."
Silence followed, but the young woman soon had the eggs before him. Stuart ate one, then rose from the table. The party returned to the parlor.
McClellan went to the piano and played, and began singing "Jine the Cavalry." Stuart joined in, becoming more animated, evidently for the first time fully aware of his surroundings. When McClellan explained that he had been rude to their hostess, Stuart began an elaborate apology that lasted until they left the house.
McClellan saw him again when the toll of his long expedition seemed too much for Stuart. At night, on a turnpike near Hagers-town, McClellan and Stuart rode with one courier, as Jeb dictated dispatches to McClellan—orders for the next morning's movements of the brigades arid artillery. The major needed light for writing and stopped at a tollhouse, calling for a lantern. The three riders went inside, where Stuart fell asleep as McClellan wrote. When he had finished he shook Stuart, who read the orders. The cavalry dispatches were approved as they were written, but Jeb scratched out the Maryland place names on the artillery orders and penciled in "Aldie" and "Shepherdstown."
McClellan saw that he was still more than half asleep, lost in the memories of the Virginia passes where the campaign had begun. "I aroused him with some difficulty, when my dispatch was rewritten, approved, and sent off."11
On the night of July thirteenth, as the Federal army began digging trenches in his front, Robert Lee started over the river. The infantry and wagons poured across in a night swept by rain, while behind them Stuart's dismounted cavalry manned their vacated entrenchments. There was a thrust by Kilpatrick's cavalry the next day, in which the enemy was allowed to come close to a crossing by the infantry, which mistook the riders for some of Stuart's. There was an hour of fighting, in which General Johnston Pettigrew was killed; the Federal cavalrymen lost heavily.
Stuart wrote of the final moments of the Gettysburg campaign: "The cavalry crossed at the fords without serious molestation, bringing up the rear on that route by 8 A.M. on the 14th."
It was almost exactly a month before that the first riders of Lee's advance had forded the Potomac, bound for invasion of the Yankee cities. It was twenty days since Stuart's brigades had made their rendezvous for the march. The greatest of the army's adventures was over.
If Stuart or the army had a sense of the cavalry's failure, there was no hint of it now, not even in Lee's orders to Jeb in the last phase: "I rely upon your good judgment, energy, and boldness . . . and trust you may be as successful as you have been on former occasions."
Jeb had written Flora on July tenth, amid rear-guard skirmishing:
... I write to say God has mercifully spared me through many dangers and bloody fields. My cavalry has nobly sustained its reputation, and done better and harder fighting than it ever has since the war. Pray, without ceasing, that God will grant us the victory.
And on July thirteenth, from the riverside, he wrote her again:
I had a grand time in Penna. and we return without defeat to recuperate and reinforce when no doubt the role will be re-inacted. I shelled Carlisle and burned the barracks. I . . . went close to Georgetown and Washt. cutting four important railroads and joining our army in time for the battle of Gettysburg with 900 prisoners and 200 wagons and splendid teams....
We must invade again. It is the only path to peace. . . .
Genl. Lee maneuvering the Yankees out of Virginia is the grandest piece of strategy ever heard of. If they had sent 10,000 reinforcements and plenty of ammunition to join him here our recrossing would be with banners of peace
CHAPTER 18
The Receding Tide
THE army streaming southward in the heat of July provided at least one spectacle, for all the suffering of the Gettysburg campaign. Captain Charles Blackford recorded a glimpse of a Jeb unchanged:
"I was much amused to see Stuart pass through Martinsburg with a large cavalcade of staff and couriers and two bugles blowing furiously. Lee, Hill, Ewell and Longstreet passed, each with one or two persons with them and not even a battleflag to mark their rank. ... I scarcely like to write this of so gallant an officer, but all of us have some weaknesses, and should be very liberal to each other."
Stuart approached The Bower in the same fashion, in such splendor that he might have been the conqueror of Gettysburg, rather than the subject of whispered criticism. His mood in camp was as gay as ever.
One day when it occurred to him that Esten Cooke's courage and nonchalance under fire entitled him to promotion, Jeb beckoned the young novelist.
"You're about my size, Cooke. But I suppose you're not so broad in the chest."
"Yes, I am," Cooke said.
"Let's see if you are," Stuart said. He stripped off his coat. "Try that on."
Cooke pulled on the coat with three stars on the collar and found it a snug fit. Stuart laughed.
"Cut off two of the stars and wear it to Richmond," he said. "Tell the people in the War Department to make you a major and send you back to me in a hurry. I'll need you tomorrow."
Cooke was delighted, but the knighting ceremony was in vain, for Richmond officials sent him back with the assertion that "Stuart has too many majors." His friends thought Cooke's published criticism of the conduct of the war had offended the Davis administration and made his promotion impossible.
It may have been this that led Cooke to say bitterly: "I wasn't born to be a soldier. Of course, I can stand bullets and shells and all that, without flinching, as any man must if he has any manhood in
him But I never liked the business of war. Gold lace on my coat
always made me feel as if I were a child tricked out in red and yellow calico with turkey feathers in my headgear to add to the gorgeousness. There is nothing intellectual about fighting. It is the fit work of brutes and brutish men."1
Despite his failure in Richmond, Cooke became a major so far as the cavalry was concerned and Stuart afterward called him "Major"—a habit taken up by Robert Lee.
There were more important changes in the cavalry command. Beverly Robertson, who had disappointed Stuart by slow movements and failure to hold mountain passes in the Gettysburg campaign, recrossed into Virginia with only 300 men in his ranks. Robertson asked Lee to return him to the three regiments he had left in North Carolina, or give him a force commensurate with his rank. Stuart forwarded the request with a hearty recommendation that Robertson be once more removed from his command. The troublesome officer was sent to set up cavalry recruiting camps in the rear.
Richmond soon approved two divisions of cavalry, with Wade Hampton and Fitz Lee promoted major general to command them. Into the vacated posts Stuart put Calbraith Butler and Williams Wickham, and into Robertson's place, Lawrence Baker. The brigades were made smaller.
Two able men had been passed over: Tom Rosser, who was making a manful effort to overcome his excessive drinking, and writing pathetic letters ab
out his struggle to his bride; and Grumble Jones, who was so resentful of Stuart that he had asked to be relieved before Gettysburg. Jones was incensed at Jeb's failure to urge his promotion, and an explosion followed.
Witnesses were secretive about what happened, but it was clear that Jones confronted Stuart and probably cursed him venomously. Jeb put him under arrest, charging him with using disrespectful language to his superior. General Lee sent a sketchy report of the affair to Jefferson Davis:
I consider General Jones a brave and intelligent officer, but his feelings have become so opposed to General Stuart that I have lost all hope of his being useful in the cavalry here. . . . He has been tried by court-martial for disrespect and the proceedings are now in Richmond. I understand he says he will no longer serve under Stuart and I do not think it would be advantageous for him to do so.
Jones was sent to command cavalry in southwest Virginia, replaced by Rosser, whom Lee thought "an excellent officer in the field .. . prompt, cool and fearless, and has been wounded twice in this war."2
One more change was forced upon the corps, for Lawrence Baker was wounded in a skirmish, and the gifted James B. Gordon, a country merchant and political leader from Wilkes County, North Carolina, was put in his place.
The cavalry was preparing for action, but its troopers were still in distress. The enemy got word of it in an intercepted signal August seventeenth:
Col. Corley: My command is suffering from want of clothing. What is the difficulty about getting it?
Stuart.
It was two weeks later when the Federal signal corps learned that Jeb's riders were at last fully clothed.
The army fell back to the country near Orange Court House, a little to the south. There was a mood of depression around headquarters, for news from the western front was ominous: Vicksburg had fallen, laying open the Mississippi to complete conquest.
There were controversies in Robert Lee's command. George Pickett complained that his men had been sacrificed at Gettysburg, and only Lee's diplomacy silenced him. Lee himself felt the sting of failure, for he offered his resignation to Jefferson Davis:
... I have been prompted more than once since my return from Pennsylvania to propose to Your Excellency the propriety of selecting another commander for this army. I have seen and heard of expressions of discontent in the public journals. . . . No one is more aware than myself of my inability for the duties of my position I... anxiously urge the matter upon Your Excellency from my belief that a young and abler man than myself can readily be obtained.
Davis rejected the offer, saying: "Our country could not bear to lose you."
Other criticism centered about Stuart's role at Gettysburg. One source of it was Colonel Charles Marshall of Lee's staff, who was thought by Stuart's officers to be hostile to their chief. For weeks Lee urged Marshall to complete his official papers for the report on Gettysburg. Marshall collected reports from all commanders except Stuart. He wrote: "General Stuart was applied to more than once. He said he was busy preparing it, and promised me several times to send it in."
When Marshall told Lee the cause of delay, the commander urged Jeb to hurry the document. At last Stuart took his campaign report to Marshall, asked him to read it with care, and give him his opinion of the handling of the cavalry.
Marshall pored over the pages as if aware of the classic controversy which would ensue. Jeb outlined reasons for his every movement. He had crossed the Potomac east of the Union army, he wrote, because he had thought of making a raid on Washington— but was prevented by orders to rejoin the infantry as soon as possible. He also wrote that he could not obey Lee's order to join the right of the infantry, since he would have drawn the stronger Federal cavalry to that point. This move, he claimed, would have permitted the bluecoats to cross the mountains and fall upon Lee, since the cavalry could not have held all passes against them.
When Marshall had read the document Stuart asked: "Colonel, don't you think I had fair reason for not coming in on the infantry's right? I drew all the enemy cavalry away from the Catoctins, and made General Lee's wagon trains safe."
"I think it would have been far better for you to have obeyed orders, General Stuart," Marshall said. "General Lee did not order you to protect our trains. He had placed his infantry so as to do that himself. The object of keeping you on our right was to inform the army of the enemy's movements. General Lee knew nothing, since you were gone. He did not know that Hooker had crossed the river until days later."
Stuart flushed. "When I crossed the Potomac I found that Hooker had crossed the day before, and sent General Lee a message by way of Ashby's Gap."
"We never got that dispatch," Marshall said coolly. "And if we had got it, we still had no cavalry to get information for us."
"I admit I moved at my own discretion," Stuart said. "I got General Lee's last letter that you wrote for him. It seemed to allow me to take my own course. I was sure I could ride around Hooker and rejoin the army before the enemy came in."
Stuart left Marshall with obvious hard feelings between them. This was only the beginning of the controversy over Stuart's part in the Gettysburg campaign; there were to be interminable discussions of Lee's rather vague orders, and Stuart's bold interpretation of them.
Lee did not hesitate to discuss the matter with his officers. General Hoke approached headquarters one day and found Lee writing at a table. Hoke turned away.
"Be seated, General," Lee said. "I am just preparing my report on the battle of Gettysburg. I have taken all the blame. But had General Stuart kept me informed as he should have done, all would have been different. He stopped to capture a wagon train, and what was a wagon train compared with the tremendous issues we had at stake?"
Not long afterward Lee was discussing the campaign with General Henry Heth, and said to him, "After it is all over, as stupid a fellow as I am can see the mistakes that were made. I notice, however, my mistakes are never told me until it is too late."
Most important of all, perhaps, Lee told General Eppa Hunton: "It took a dozen blunders to lose Gettysburg, and I committed a good many of them."3
But in the field, and especially around the signal post 5n Clark's Mountain, Stuart seemed unaware of criticism. Charles Taylor, a Confederate signalman, recorded a scene at the semaphore station. (The scoffing infantrymen called signalmen "flag flappers"; they often halted a busy semaphorist with his snapping flags: "Say, mister, are the flies bothering you?")
Officers came to Clark's Mountain one day with a number of women. One pretty girl from Charleston, South Carolina, asked if she might send a greeting over the system. She wanted to pay her respects to "a gallant general known as a ladies' man."
The signalmen sent off her message and there was soon a reply. "Do you want me to deliver it?" the grinning signalman asked the girl.
"Why, yes, of course."
"Well, the message is: 'General Stuart sends a kiss to Miss A. B.'"
The girl blushed and left with her laughing escort.
Another witness from the same post saw more:
"General Lee would come up and spend hours studying the situation with his splendid glasses; and the glorious Stuart would dash up, always with a lady, and a pretty one, too. I wonder if the girl is yet alive who rode the general's fine horse and raced with him to charge our station.
"When they had reached the level platform, and Smart left her in care of one of us and took the other off to one side and questioned the very sweat out of him about the enemy's position, he was General Stuart then, but when he got back and lifted the beauty into the saddle and rode off humming a breezy air ... he was Stuart the beau."4
There were several weeks of peace in the country around Culpeper, with the cavalry almost in idleness; the center of Jeb's line was near Brandy Station. The enemy had at last crossed the Potomac in an effort to follow up the victory at Gettysburg, but General Meade appeared cautious and uncertain and remained on the line of the Rappahannock. Private Luther Hopkins, the observant
trooper in Stuart's ranks, kept his journal as usual:
"General Stuart threw out his pickets across the fields, and just in front of us the enemy did likewise. The pickets were in full view of each other, and a long range musket might have sent a bullet across the line at any time, but we did not molest each other. At night the lines came still closer together, and we could distinctly hear them relieving their pickets every two hours. . . .
"For several weeks not a shot was fired, and so well acquainted did the pickets of each army become that it was not an uncommon thing to see them marching across the fields to meet each other and exchange greetings, and often the Confederates traded tobacco for coffee and sugar.... This got to be so common that General Stuart had to issue an order forbidding it."
Stuart spent the days in keeping watch over the enemy and in an almost frantic effort to recondition the cavalry. In late July he ordered "Company Q" abolished, saying that it shamed crippled men, degraded the cavalry in general, and hampered operations. There was no more banding together of unfit men and horses when the corps was moving.
He asked General Lee for better firearms, and tested the commander's patience on this score. Lee replied that he had sent an ordnance expert to Richmond to see what could be done, but added: