Jeb Stuart
W
ith his plumed hat and golden
spurs, his setters, and tame
raccoon, James Ewell Brown
Stuart seemed more the leader of a
hunting party than a cavalry chief. His
retinue included a banjo player, a band,
and a Prussian giant, Major Heros von
Borcke. The flamboyant Jeb—as he
was known from the initials of his
name—loved merriment and pranks,
and styled himself a Virginia cavalier.
In battle, though, Stuart pushed his
men hard and himself harder. And he
routinely gleaned such valuable
intelligence about enemy dispositions
that General Robert E. Lee dubbed him
the “eyes and ears” of his army.
Serving under Lee
Stuart was one of 11 children born
to the politician Archibald Stuart and
Elizabeth Pannill. He was initially
educated at home, then attended
college before enrolling at West Point.
There, as a cadet, he met Robert E. Lee,
the military academy’s superintendent,
who noticed that the young horseman
from Virginia had acquired many
demerits before he graduated in 1854.
In 1859, after five years fighting
Indians on the frontier, Stuart, by now
a lieutenant, was ordered to join Lee
in putting down John Brown’s raid on
Harpers Ferry. In June 1862, Lee, now
in command of the battered Confederate
army during the Peninsula Campaign,
turned to Stuart to gather intelligence.
As a cavalry officer, Stuart had
already distinguished himself during
First Bull Run: he screened General
Joseph E. Johnston’s movement from
the Shenandoah Valley to reinforce
P. G. T. Beauregard’s troops. But it was
Stuart’s “Ride around McClellan” that
not only gave Lee the vital intelligence
he needed to drive the Union army
away from Richmond, but also won
Stuart early fame. Stuart lost only one
man on that ride—Captain William
Latané, the depiction of whose burial
became a popular print in Confederate
parlors. But he quipped that he had
also left a “general” behind—”General
Consternation.”An exemplary cavalryman
Stuart flourished under Lee, eventually
becoming chief of the Army of
Northern Virginia’s cavalry corps.
At Second Bull Run, he toyed with
Union commander, John Pope, when
his men raided Pope’s headquarters,
ransacking his tent and escaping
with $350,000. A month later Stuart
made a second ride around McClellan’s
newly restored troops.
Stuart’s finest moment came at
Chancellorsville, when command of
the army’s Second Corps devolvedCONFEDERATE MAJOR GENERAL Born 1833 Died 1864
GRANT, SHERMAN, AND TOTAL WAR 1864“All I ask of fate is that
I may be killed leading
a cavalry charge.”
JEB STUART, ON BECOMING COLONEL OF 1 VIRGINIA CAVALRY, 1861Jeb Stuart
Photographed probably in the winter of
1863–64, Stuart had a cinnamon-colored
beard and blue-gray eyes that in battle
were said to “flash fire.”