James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart (February 6, 1833May 12, 1864) was a Confederate cavalry general during the American Civil War. He was known to his friends as "Jeb", from the initials of his given names. Stuart was a cavalry commander known for his mastery of reconnaissance and the use of cavalry in support of offensive operations. While he cultivated a cavalier image (red-lined gray cape, the yellow waist sash of a regular cavalry officer, hat cocked to the side with an ostrich plume, red flower in his lapel, often sporting cologne), his serious work made him the trusted eyes and ears of Robert E. Lee's army and inspired Southern morale.Donald R. Jermann, Civil War Battlefield Orders Gone Awry: The Written Word and Its Consequences in 13 Engagements (McFarland, 2012) p. 129.
Stuart graduated from West Point in 1854 and served in Texas and Kansas with the U.S. Army. Stuart was a veteran of the frontier conflicts with Native Americans and the violence of Bleeding Kansas, and he participated in the capture of John Brown at Harpers Ferry. He resigned his commission when his home state of Virginia seceded, to serve in the Confederate Army, first under Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, but then in increasingly important cavalry commands of the Army of Northern Virginia, playing a role in all of that army's campaigns until his death.
He established a reputation as an audacious cavalry commander and on two occasions (during the Peninsula campaign and the Maryland campaign) circumnavigated the Union Army of the Potomac, bringing fame to himself and embarrassment to the North. At the Battle of Chancellorsville, he distinguished himself as a temporary commander of the wounded Stonewall Jackson's infantry corps.
Stuart's most famous campaign, the Gettysburg campaign, was flawed when his long separation from Lee's army left Lee unaware of Union troop movements so that Lee was surprised and almost trapped at the Battle of Gettysburg. Stuart received criticism from the Southern press as well as the proponents of the Lost Cause movement after the war. During the 1864 Overland Campaign, Union Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan's cavalry launched an offensive to defeat Stuart, who was mortally wounded at the Battle of Yellow Tavern.
Early life and education
Stuart was born at Laurel Hill Farm, a plantation in Patrick County, Virginia, near the border with North Carolina. He was the eighth of 11 children and the youngest of the five sons to survive past early age.Wert, pp. 5–6, lists the children as Nancy Anne Dabney, born in 1818, Bethenia Pannill in 1819, Mary Tucker in 1821, David Pannill in 1823, William Alexander in 1826, John Dabney in 1828, Columbia Lafayette in 1830, James in 1833, an unnamed son who died at the age of three months in 1834, Virginia Josephine in 1836, and Victoria Augusta in 1838. Thomas, p. 7, claims that James was the youngest son of ten [unnamed] children. His father, Archibald Stuart, was a War of 1812 veteran, slaveholder, attorney, and Democratic politician who represented Patrick County in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, and also served one term in the United States House of Representatives.Wert, p. 5. His mother, Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart, ran the family farm and was known as a strict religious woman with a good sense for business.
He was of Scottish descent (including some Scots-Irish).Life of Jeb Stuart by Mary Williamson. Christian Liberty Press, January 1, 1997, page 1 His great-grandfather, Major Alexander Stuart, commanded a regiment at the Battle of Guilford Court House during the Revolutionary War.Thomas, p. 5. His father Archibald was a cousin of attorney Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart.
Stuart was educated at home by his mother and tutors until the age of 12, when he left Laurel Hill to be educated by various teachers in Wytheville, Virginia, and at the home of his aunt Anne (Archibald's sister) and her husband, Judge James Ewell Brown (Stuart's namesake), at Danville.Thomas, pp. 11–12; Wert, p. 8. He entered Emory and Henry College when he was fifteen, and attended from 1848 to 1850.Wert, p. 10.
During the summer of 1848, Stuart attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army, but was rejected as underaged. He obtained an appointment in 1850 to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, from Representative Thomas Hamlet Averett, the man who had defeated his father in the 1848 election.Wert, p. 11; Davis, p. 19. Stuart was a popular student and was happy at the academy. Although he was not handsome in his teen years, his classmates called him by the nickname "Beauty", which they described as his "personal comeliness in inverse ratio to the term employed."Thomas, p. 18. He quickly grew a beard after graduation and a fellow officer remarked that he was "the only man he ever saw that [a] beard improved."
Robert E. Lee was appointed superintendent of the academy in 1852, and Stuart became a friend of the family, seeing them socially on frequent occasions. Lee's nephew, Fitzhugh Lee, also arrived at the academy in 1852. In Stuart's final year, in addition to achieving the cadet rank of second captain of the corps, he was one of eight cadets designated as honorary "cavalry officers" for his skills in horsemanship.Wert, p. 18. Stuart graduated 13th in his class of 46 in 1854. He ranked 10th in his class in cavalry tactics. Although he enjoyed the civil engineering curriculum at the academy and did well in mathematics, his poor drawing skills hampered his engineering studies, and he finished 29th in that discipline.
United States Army Stuart was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant and assigned to the U.S. Regiment of Mounted Riflemen in Texas. After an arduous journey, he reached Fort Davis on January 29, 1855, and was a leader for three months on scouting missions over the San Antonio to El Paso Road.Wert, pp. 22–23. He was soon transferred to the newly formed 1st Cavalry Regiment (1855) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, where he became regimental quartermasterThomas, pp. 40–41. and commissary officer under the command of Col. Edwin V. Sumner.Wert, p. 25. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1855.
Marriage
Also in 1855, Stuart met Flora Cooke, the daughter of the 2nd U.S. Dragoon Regiment's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke. Burke Davis described Flora as "an accomplished horsewoman, and though not pretty, an effective charmer", to whom "Stuart succumbed with hardly a struggle."Davis, p. 36. They became engaged in September, less than two months after meeting. Stuart humorously wrote of his rapid courtship in Latin, "Veni, Vidi, Victus sum" (I came, I saw, I was conquered). Although a gala wedding had been planned for Fort Riley, Kansas, the death of Stuart's father on September 20 caused a change of plans and the marriage on November 14 was small and limited to family witnesses.Thomas, pp. 41–43; Davis, p. 37; Wert, pp. 26–29. Their first child, a girl, was born in 1856 but died the same day. On November 14, 1857, Flora gave birth to another daughter, whom the parents named Flora after her mother. The family relocated in early 1858 to Fort Riley, where they remained for three years.Wert, p. 35. The couple owned two slaves until 1859, one inherited from his father's estate, the other purchased.Wert, pp. 30–31.
Bleeding Kansas Stuart's leadership capabilities were soon recognized. He was a veteran of the frontier conflicts with Native Americans and the antebellum violence of Bleeding Kansas. He was wounded on July 29, 1857, while fighting at Solomon River, Kansas, against the Cheyenne. Colonel Sumner ordered a charge with drawn sabers against a wave of Native American arrows. Scattering the under-armed warriors, Stuart and three other lieutenants chased one down, whom Stuart wounded in the thigh with his pistol. The Cheyenne turned and fired at Stuart with a .36 caliber Allen & Thurber pepperbox pistol, striking him in the chest with a bullet, which did little more damage than to pierce the skin.Davis, p. 40; Wert, pp. 33–35. Stuart returned in September to Fort Leavenworth and was reunited with his wife.
John Brown In 1859, Stuart developed a new piece of cavalry equipment, for which he received patent number 25,684 on October 4: a saber hook, or an "improved method of attaching sabers to belts." The U.S. government paid Stuart $5,000 for a "right to use" license and Stuart contracted with Knorr, Nece and Co. of Philadelphia to manufacture his hook. While in Washington, D.C., to discuss government contracts, and in conjunction with his application for an appointment into the quartermaster department, Stuart heard about John Brown's raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Stuart volunteered to be aide-de-camp to Col. Robert E. Lee and accompanied Lee with a company of U.S. Marines from the Marine Barracks, 8th & I, Washington, DCHoffman, Colonel Jon T., USMC: A Complete History, Marine Corps Association, Quantico, VA, (2002), p. 84. and four companies of Maryland militia. While delivering Lee's written surrender ultimatum to the leader of the group, who had been calling himself Isaac Smith, Stuart recognized "Old Osawatomie Brown" from his days in Kansas.Wert, pp. 37–39.
Resignation Stuart was promoted to captain on April 22, 1861, but resigned from the U.S. Army on May 3, 1861, to join the Confederate States Army following the secession of Virginia. On June 26, 1860, Flora gave birth to a son, Philip St. George Cooke Stuart. However, the following year, upon learning that his father-in-law, Col. Cooke, would remain in the U.S. Army during the coming civil war, Stuart was so disgusted that he changed his son's name to James Ewell Brown Stuart Jr. ("Jimmie") in late 1861.Wert, pp. 42, 76. In a letter addressed to his brother-in-law, John Rogers Cooke (who also joined the CSA, rising to the rank of Confederate Brigadier General), Stuart wrote of his father-in-law's decision to remain loyal to the Union: "He will regret it but once, and that will be continuously." When he heard that George H. Thomas, a fellow Virginian, had also decided to stay with the Union, Stuart wrote "I would like to hang, hang Thomas as a traitor to his native state."Thomas, p. 95.
American Civil War
Early service
Stuart was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel of Virginia Infantry in the Confederate Army on May 10, 1861. Major General Robert E. Lee, now commanding the armed forces of Virginia, ordered him to report to Colonel Thomas J. Jackson at Harper's Ferry. Jackson chose to ignore Stuart's infantry designation and assigned him on July 4 to command all the cavalry companies of the Army of the Shenandoah, organized as the 1st Virginia Cavalry Regiment.Wert, p. 49; Davis, pp. 51–52. He was promoted to colonel on July 16.
After early service in the Shenandoah Valley, Stuart led his regiment in the First Battle of Bull Run (where Jackson got his nickname, "Stonewall"), and participated in the pursuit of the retreating Federals, leading to sensationalist reports in the Northern press about the dreaded Confederate "black horse" cavalry. He then commanded the Army's outposts along the upper Potomac River until given command of the cavalry brigade for the army then known as the Army of the Potomac (later named the Army of Northern Virginia). He was promoted to brigadier general on September 24, 1861.
Peninsula In 1862, the Union Army of the Potomac began its Peninsula Campaign against Richmond, Virginia, and Stuart's cavalry brigade assisted General Joseph E. Johnston's army as it withdrew up the Virginia Peninsula in the face of superior numbers. Stuart fought at the Battle of Williamsburg, but in general the terrain and weather on the Peninsula did not lend themselves to cavalry operations.