Read Online Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation by Clifford Dowdey - Free Book Online
Authors: Clifford Dowdey
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to screen Lee’s infantry and to provide the general with information about the enemy.
Somewhere between June 9, when he had been hard pressed at Brandy Station, and June 24, when communications with the northward-advancing infantry were severed, Stuart the man superseded Major General Stuart the cavalry leader.
During the two years before the invasion Stuart’s vanity had served him and the army as well as had his devotion and skill. Flamboyant and doting on praise, he possessed the ability to achieve the spectacular, and the dedication to a cause to make his ability useful. People reacted strongly to his vivid personality, and he inspired both the deepest loyalty and the most abiding dislike. This had been true his whole life.
He had been born thirty years before in southern Virginia tobacco-growing country, the son of a lawyer and congressman who served both in Richmond and in Washington. The elder Stuart was too convivial to establish a solid success, although socially he was greatly sought after for his accomplishments as a singer, raconteur, and drinking companion. James Ewell Brown Stuart took after his father in his love of gay gatherings, though he shunned liquor; from his mother he inherited a tougher inner core. She trained him to the iron will that characterized all his undertakings. Stuart’s fixity of purpose was always awesome—and in June 1863 it was disastrous.
His youth was typical of the young Southern gentry who lived in style and privilege, with a rigid code of personal honor and not much cash. At West Point, where he was a college mate of the same Pleasonton whom he fought at Brandy Station, he did well in everything military, finishing as second captain in the corps. He even then displayed that attention to dress which was to make him the beau of Lee’s army.
Beginning as a regular-army lieutenant in Western garrison life and Indian-fighting, the twenty-one-year-old Stuart made an impression by his vast physical strength and endurance and by his fearlessness. There was no question of his courage: he simply did not react with fear. During his tour in the West he made a love marriage with Flora Cooke, a Virginia girl whose father, Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, was a regular-army man commanding the 2nd U.S. Dragoons. Then, in 1859, while he was a first lieutenant in the U.S. 1st Cavalry, Stuart, by a curious circumstance, became personally involved in an incident that served as a prelude to the Civil War.
He and Flora had children by then, and the lieutenant applied for a leave of absence so that his parents in Virginia might meet their grandchildren. Leaving Flora and the children with the grandparents, Stuart went to Richmond as a lay delegate for the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, of which he was a devout communicant. Army business took him on to Washington, where he happened to be when John Brown led his band of insurrectionists into Harper’s Ferry. Lieutenant Colonel R. E. Lee also was in Washington on a leave of absence to settle his father-in-law’s estate at the near-by plantation of Arlington. Thus it was that the former West Point superintendent and one of his former cadets collaborated to suppress John Brown’s insurrection and arrest Brown himself.
This was the first joint action of Lee and Stuart. They remembered it three years later when, in July 1862, Lee was appointed general of the heterogeneous army defending Richmond and Stuart was commanding its small cavalry force. Lee immediately dispatched the young cavalry leader on a reconnaissance mission to discover what the Federal General McClellan was doing in the marshy, heavily brushed country around Richmond. The inept performance of the Union cavalry presented Stuart with his first opportunity of the war to satisfy his penchant for the spectacular.
Instead of returning with his information, he decided to ride around McClellan’s entire army. It was a reckless venture and militarily profitless, but luck
Somewhere between June 9, when he had been hard pressed at Brandy Station, and June 24, when communications with the northward-advancing infantry were severed, Stuart the man superseded Major General Stuart the cavalry leader.
During the two years before the invasion Stuart’s vanity had served him and the army as well as had his devotion and skill. Flamboyant and doting on praise, he possessed the ability to achieve the spectacular, and the dedication to a cause to make his ability useful. People reacted strongly to his vivid personality, and he inspired both the deepest loyalty and the most abiding dislike. This had been true his whole life.
He had been born thirty years before in southern Virginia tobacco-growing country, the son of a lawyer and congressman who served both in Richmond and in Washington. The elder Stuart was too convivial to establish a solid success, although socially he was greatly sought after for his accomplishments as a singer, raconteur, and drinking companion. James Ewell Brown Stuart took after his father in his love of gay gatherings, though he shunned liquor; from his mother he inherited a tougher inner core. She trained him to the iron will that characterized all his undertakings. Stuart’s fixity of purpose was always awesome—and in June 1863 it was disastrous.
His youth was typical of the young Southern gentry who lived in style and privilege, with a rigid code of personal honor and not much cash. At West Point, where he was a college mate of the same Pleasonton whom he fought at Brandy Station, he did well in everything military, finishing as second captain in the corps. He even then displayed that attention to dress which was to make him the beau of Lee’s army.
Beginning as a regular-army lieutenant in Western garrison life and Indian-fighting, the twenty-one-year-old Stuart made an impression by his vast physical strength and endurance and by his fearlessness. There was no question of his courage: he simply did not react with fear. During his tour in the West he made a love marriage with Flora Cooke, a Virginia girl whose father, Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, was a regular-army man commanding the 2nd U.S. Dragoons. Then, in 1859, while he was a first lieutenant in the U.S. 1st Cavalry, Stuart, by a curious circumstance, became personally involved in an incident that served as a prelude to the Civil War.
He and Flora had children by then, and the lieutenant applied for a leave of absence so that his parents in Virginia might meet their grandchildren. Leaving Flora and the children with the grandparents, Stuart went to Richmond as a lay delegate for the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, of which he was a devout communicant. Army business took him on to Washington, where he happened to be when John Brown led his band of insurrectionists into Harper’s Ferry. Lieutenant Colonel R. E. Lee also was in Washington on a leave of absence to settle his father-in-law’s estate at the near-by plantation of Arlington. Thus it was that the former West Point superintendent and one of his former cadets collaborated to suppress John Brown’s insurrection and arrest Brown himself.
This was the first joint action of Lee and Stuart. They remembered it three years later when, in July 1862, Lee was appointed general of the heterogeneous army defending Richmond and Stuart was commanding its small cavalry force. Lee immediately dispatched the young cavalry leader on a reconnaissance mission to discover what the Federal General McClellan was doing in the marshy, heavily brushed country around Richmond. The inept performance of the Union cavalry presented Stuart with his first opportunity of the war to satisfy his penchant for the spectacular.
Instead of returning with his information, he decided to ride around McClellan’s entire army. It was a reckless venture and militarily profitless, but luck
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