Jeb Stuart, The Last Cavalier

by Burke Davis

  On July sixteenth, orders had been drawn in Richmond: Stuart was a full colonel, Confederate States Army. They celebrated on Munson's Hill.

  CHAPTER 5

  Gathering the Clan

  VILLAGERS stared in disbelief. A handsome Confederate officer rode at breakneck speed in the dusty street, banging away with both hands at a captured Yankee drum. He careened to a halt at cavalry headquarters. It was Jeb Stuart.

  It was unmistakably Stuart's headquarters. Outside the farmhouse was a gleaming Blakeley cannon. A chained raccoon scrambled along its barrel, snarling, an enormous animal with glistening fur.

  Flora's cousin, John Esten Cooke, had found his way here. He would stay, for this life promised more than that of a captain of artillery. He recorded his first visit, when he found Stuart stretched on a blanket at the roadside, talking with country people:

  His low athletic figure was clad in an old blue undress coat of the United States Army, brown velveteen pantaloons worn white by rubbing against the saddle, high cavalry boots with small brass spurs, a gray waistcoat, and carelessly tied cravat. At his side lay a Zouave cap, covered with a white have-lock, and beside this two huge yellow leathern gauntlets. . . . The figure was that of a man "every inch a soldier."

  The broad forehead was bronzed by sun and wind; the eyes were clear, piercing, and of an intense and dazzling blue; the nose prominent, with large and mobile nostrils; and the mouth was completely covered by a heavy brown mustache, which swept down and mingled with a huge beard of the same tint, reaching to his breast.

  Cooke soon saw Stuart at work:

  In this man who wrote away busily at his desk, or, throwing one leg carelessly over the arm of his chair, you could discern enormous physical strength. ... In five minutes he had started up, put on his hat, and was showing me his Blakeley gun.

  His satisfaction at the ferocious snarling of his coon was immense

  He made the place echo with laughter.

  They went into the house to supper, and Cooke was astonished to see two women captives; one was about seventeen, and pretty, the other was elderly. They had been captured trying to evade Jeb's pickets. The two had at first refused to eat with the Rebels, but were persuaded by Stuart's courtly Maryland aide, Captain Tiernan Brien. Stuart beckoned for entertainers. Cooke was fascinated:

  All were black. The first an accomplished performer on the guitar, the second gifted with the faculty of producing exact imitations of every bird of the forest; and the third was a master of the back-step, the old Virginia "breakdown."

  Stuart wrote, couriers grinned from the door and the women stared. Bob, a young mulatto servant, played "Listen to the Mockingbird"; the bird mimic began to sing. Other songs followed. The young woman was under a spell.

  Stuart turns round with a laugh and calls for a breakdown. The dilapidated African advances, dropping his hat first at the door. Bob strikes up a jig upon his guitar, the ventriloquist claps, and the great performer of the breakdown commences, first upon the heeltap, then upon the toe. His antics are grand and indescribable. He leaps, he whirls, he twists and untwists his legs until the crowd at the door grows wild with admiration. The guitar continues to soar and Stuart's laughter mingles with it. The dancer's eyes roll gorgeously, his steps grow more rapid, he executes unheard-of figures. Finally a frenzy seems to seize him; the mirth grows fast and furious; the young lady laughs outright and seems about to clap her hands. Even the elder relaxes into an unmistakable smile; and as the dancer disappears with a bound through the door, the guitar stops playing, and Stuart's laughter rings out gay and jovial, the grim lips open and she says, "You rebels do seem to enjoy yourselves!"

  Stuart rose. "You have heard my musicians, ladies. Would you like to see something that might interest you?" "Very much."

  Stuart pointed to a coat and vest hanging on a nail over their heads. The clothes were bullet-torn and bloody. "What is that?" the old woman said.

  "They belonged to a poor boy of my command, madam. Shot and killed on picket the other day—young Chichester, from below Fairfax Courthouse. A brave fellow, and I am keeping these to send to his mother."

  The smiles faded. Stuart told the women of the fight in which the boy was killed, and bowed them to their room. The next morning, when he sent them on toward Richmond as captives, he put the women into a carriage. The girl held out her hand. Stuart kissed it and stood laughing after them.

  Cooke asked him, "Why did you put yourself out for them so much last night, and get up that frolic?"

  "Don't you understand? When they arrived they were mad enough to bite my head off, and I determined to put them in good humor before they left. Well, I did it, and they're my good friends at this moment."

  "I saw you kiss the girl's hand. Why didn't you kiss the old lady's, too?"

  Stuart leaned against Cooke's horse, and said in a low voice, "Would you like me to tell you?" "Yes."

  "The old lady's hand had a glove on it." Stuart's whisper erupted into laughter.1

  But Stuart must have more music. He coveted a banjo player in the Appomattox County regiment of Colonel T. T. Munford, one Sam Sweeney, a dark, handsome man in his early thirties who made such music as Stuart had never heard. Sam Sweeney was the younger brother of Joe Sweeney, said to be the "inventor" of the banjo, celebrated as one of the first blackface minstrels, who had once played for Queen Victoria. Joe had died the year before, and now Sam carried on his minstrelsy. Stuart abducted him. Colonel Munford left a plaint:

  "Stuart's feet would shuffle at Sweeney's presence, or naming. He issued an order for him to report at his quarters and 'detained' him. It was a right he enjoyed, but not very pleasing to me or my regiment."

  Esten Cooke liked to tease Munford: "Why don't you come over and enjoy our music, Colonel?" Munford raged helplessly.2

  So there was always music. Sweeney on the banjo, Mulatto Bob on the bones, a couple of fiddlers, Negro singers and dancers, the ventriloquist, and others who caught Stuart's eye. Sweeney rode behind Stuart on the outpost day and night. Stuart often sang and Sweeney plucked the strings behind him: "Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still," "The Corn Top's Ripe," "Lorena" and "Jine the Cavalry."

  Esten Cooke was one of the most striking of the cast of characters Stuart was gathering. The young novelist spent much time writing in his tent; he rose before day to read the Bible by firelight, or Bourienne's Memoirs of Napoleon. He was soon placed in charge of Stuart's ordnance, but wrote in his diary that he favored "supervising rather than attending to details, which are left to my two sergeants and clerk. My philosophy is to give myself as little trouble as possible. I suppose I will be rated after the war as 'only an ordnance officer,' but I have really been aide-de-camp. That's not important, though."

  He had an eye for odd incidents in camp. Once, for example, Stuart captured a Union officer's trunk and found touching letters from a wife, and obscene ones from a mistress, reveling in the wife's ignorance of the affair. Stuart sent all to the officer's wife. Cooke surmised, "There'll be a fuss in that family."3

  Stuart picked up others who drew his attention. One was a grotesque giant from a cavalry regiment, a Corporal Henry Hagan, evidently a simple soul, but a burly man so hairy that only his eyes were visible through the mat. His voice was like the roar of a large animal. Stuart detailed him for headquarters duty as a bodyguard and pet. He had charge of the stables, and later became chief of couriers. Stuart was much amused by Hagan's inordinate pride, which puffed him so that he became unbearable when praised. A trooper noted: "In a mad freak of fun one day, the chief recommended his corporal for promotion to see, he said, if the giant was capable of further swelling, and so the corporal became a lieutenant upon the staff."

  A pretty woman of the region, Antonia Ford, got a gaudy beribboned "commission" from Stuart and his playful staff:

  Know Ye, That reposing special confidence in the patriotism, fidelity, and ability of Antonia J. Ford, I, James E. B. Stuart, do hereby appoint and commission her my honorary Aide-de-Camp, to
rank as such from this date. She will be obeyed, respected, and admired by all true lovers of a noble nature

  But the strange Stuart, Cooke noted, kept headquarters "looking like work," and the gaiety was deceptive. The trooper Eggleston remembered:

  "For ten days ... we were not allowed once to take our saddles off. Night and day we were in the immediate presence of the enemy, catching naps when there happened for the moment to be nothing else to do, standing by our horses while they ate from our hands, so that we might slip their bridles on again in an instant in the event of a surprise, and eating such things as chance threw in our way, there being no rations anywhere within reach."

  Eggleston's company, after more than a week of such service, scouted toward Federal lines: "We returned to camp at sunset and were immediately ordered on picket. We should have been relieved next morning, but no relief came, and we were wholly without food. No others came to take our place on the picket line."

  Stuart at last rode by the distressed men.

  "Colonel, do you know we've been on duty ten days, and here twenty-six hours without food?" one of them asked.

  "Nonsense," Stuart said. "You don't look starved. There's a cornfield over there. Jump the fence and get a good breakfast. You don't want to go back to camp, I know. It's stupid there, and all the fun is out here. Besides, I've kept your company on duty all this time as a compliment. You boys have acquitted yourselves too well to be neglected now, and I mean to give you a chance."

  The grumbling pickets thought Stuart was joking; they soon realized that his idea of a compliment to troopers was to push them into the faces of the enemy.

  In these days the army got news of a shift in Federal command: General McDowell was out, and McClellan was in. The Confederates in ranks expected an attack on their position at Centreville in Northern Virginia.

  Stuart overheard this talk as he was wrestling with some young members of his staff, and halted, puffing.

  "We can do this for amusement when we go into winter quarters—if George McClellan ever lets us go into winter quarters at all."

  "Why?" an officer asked. "Do you think he will advance before spring?"

  "Not against Centreville. He has too much sense for that, and I think he knows the shortest road to Richmond, too. If I am not greatly mistaken, we shall hear of him presently on his way up the James River."

  He then talked in a more sober tone, surprising to his staff: "I think it's a foregone conclusion that we will ultimately whip the Yankees. We are bound to believe that, anyhow. But the war is going to be a long and terrible one, first. We've only just begun it, and very few of us will see the end."

  He added slowly: "All I ask of fate is that I may be killed leading a cavalry charge."4

  Stuart enjoyed his growing reputation. The Army talked of what Joe Johnston had said of his work against Patterson:

  "Stuart is like a yellow jacket. You brush him off and he flies right back on." And Johnston was soon to write Stuart, when he was transferred to the West: "How can I eat or sleep, without you on the outpost?"

  Even more flattering to Stuart was Johnston's report to Richmond:

  He is a rare man, wonderfully endowed by nature with the qualities necessary for an officer of light cavalry. Calm, firm, acute, active and enterprising, I know no one more competent than he to estimate the occurrences before him at their true value. If you add a real brigade of cavalry to this army, you can find no better brigadier general to command it.

  This accolade perhaps prompted President Davis to act, for new cavalry troops began to gather near Centreville under Stuart's command. Fitz Lee became a lieutenant colonel in Grumble Jones's regiment. Captain Will Martin arrived with his Natchez Troop from Mississippi, with shining trunks in luggage wagons.

  Stuart ran into big game on September eleventh and fought a skirmish with such skill that army gossip claimed it won him promotion.

  A Federal column occupied the village of Lewinsville between the armies. It was only a reconnaissance but late in the morning someone thought to reinforce the party with most of a brigade. Lewinsville swarmed with bluecoats.

  Stuart galloped out to punish the enemy with 305 Virginia infantrymen, an artillery section, and two cavalry companies. He saw that he was outnumbered, but flung his attack on the Federal flank as if the whole Confederate army were at hand.

  The Federals had been on the point of withdrawal, and now fell back; Stuart's men literally tore away the enemy flank and pushed it from Lewinsville. The affair ended with sixteen Union casualties. Stuart lost not even a horse.

  Jeb had an amusing correspondence with a Federal officer at Lewinsville, an old West Point comrade:

  My Dear Beauty: I am sorry that circumstances are such that I can't have the pleasure of seeing you, although so near you. Griffin says he would like to have you dine with him at Willard's at 5 o'clock on Saturday next. Keep your Black Horse off me, if you please.

  Yours,

  Orlando M. Poe.

  Stuart laughed, but pride in the work of his troopers moved him to scribble on the back of the note, as if with one eye on posterity:

  I have the honor to report that 'circumstances' were such that they could have seen me if they had stopped to look behind, and I answered both at the cannon's mouth. Judging from his speed, Griffin surely left for Washington to hurry up that dinner.

  Stuart became a brigadier general on September twenty-fourth. Just five days before he won his stars one of his troopers wrote of him: "Stuart sleeps every evening on Munson's Hill without even a blanket under or over him. He is very young . . . but he seems a most capable soldier, never resting, always vigilant."

  Another of Jeb's men was less complimentary. Robert W. Hooke, who was soon to die of camp fever, wrote: "Colonel Stuart has been promoted and I don't know who we will get now for a Colonel. I don't think we can be worsted as it regards being kind to his men, for Stuart has treated us very badly. He is a real tyrant to his men!"

  Stuart's happiness seemed complete. Flora had come to nearby Fairfax Court House and rode to see him daily. She was never heard to complain, but Captain Charles M. Blackford of the 2nd Virginia Cavalry saw her concern; "She is always in tears when she hears firing, knowing that, if possible, her husband is in the midst of it

  Her distressed look shows the constant anxiety she must suffer."5

  She did not remain long at the front, for Stuart's duties increased rapidly. In October he was given command of the "Advanced Forces" when Longstreet moved up to major general and left the sector. Stuart called his present camp "Qui Vive." He wrote Flora from there on October eighteenth:

  I have very little time to write nowadays. I have to do what recently was done by Longstreet, Ewell, Bonham & myself. I have a very nice place here for you to visit meI can't promise that you will see much of your husband when you come & you mustn't say it is cruel in me to leave you at short notice for the imperative calls of duty.

  I am very well. . . . Capt. Brien sends best regards to you and La Pet [young Flora].... 3 Cols, are waiting for me.

  In haste

  Yours

  Stuart

  Four days later he wrote her that bad roads made her visit inadvisable, adding, "I am almost out of heart about it." He warned her to take the children to Orange Court House or elsewhere to avoid the epidemics of scarlet fever, mumps and whooping cough, and said, "Be patient, and trust in Him who can alleviate all our cares. I want to see you all very much but must let you decide upon coming, having reference to the health of the children."

  Stuart was having family financial troubles at this time; he hinted at them in letters to Flora, once writing of having met some relatives:

  I don't think much of the party. Be sure My Darling to make no retorts to any of their remarks, dignified silence is the best rebuke. I have paid Sister Mary, Cousin Jane and Brother A— or rather Cousin P— in full of all demands, and Dr. Brewer, but I have not yet paid for my uniform suit, but it is not made yet.

  The S
tuarts felt the pinch of inflation and rising prices, for the salary of a brigadier was niggardly, and there was little other source of income. His brother, William Alexander, owner of White Sulphur and a salt works among other enterprises, voluntarily insured Stuart's life, making Flora the beneficiary.6

  There was apparently friction between Jeb and his cousin Peter Hairston, who left the staff in October. But Stuart recorded a general air of harmony, despite handicaps: "I find Beverly Robertson by far the most troublesome man I have to deal with and Jones and Field and Radford give me no trouble at all."

  Robertson, in command of Stuart's 4th Virginia, was a West Pointer destined to clash with other generals of the Confederacy.

  The colonels of the cavalry were now: W. E. Jones, ist Virginia; R. C. W. Radford, 2nd Virginia; Robertson of the 4th; C. W. Field of the 6th Virginia; Robert Ransom, Jr., of the ist North Carolina; with Major W. T. Martin, of the Jeff Davis Legion from Mississippi.

  Winter began with severe cold, and Stuart's men built scores of log huts in their camp about a mile from the Manassas battlefield. There were frequent brushes with the enemy, who threatened to push the Confederate line southward, but there was a growing suspicion that General McClellan, as Stuart had predicted, might drop down the Potomac and take the water route against Richmond, by way of The Peninsula, the tongue of land between the York and James rivers.