J. E. B. Stuart

STUART was a fighter by nature. His distinguishing characteristics as a West Pointer in the early fifties were remembered by Fitzhugh Lee as ‘ a strict attendance to his military duties, an erect, soldierly bearing, an immediate and almost thankful acceptance of a challenge from any cadet to fight, who might in any way feel himself aggrieved.’ The tendency, if not inherited, did not lack paternal encouragement; for the elder Stuart writes to his son, in regard to one of these combats: ‘ I did not consider you so much to blame. An insult should be resented under all circumstances.’ The young cadet also showed himself to be a fearless and an exceptionally skillful horseman.

These qualities served him well in the Indian warfare to which he was immediately transferred from West Point. His recklessness in taking chances was only equaled by his ingenuity in pulling through. One of his superiors writes, 1 Lieutenant Stuart was brave and gallant, always prompt in execution of orders and reckless of danger and exposure. I considered him at that time one of the most promising young officers in the United States Army.’

Later, Stuart took a prominent part in the capture of John Brown. He himself wrote an account of the matter at the time for the newspapers, simply to explain and justify Lee’s conduct. He also wrote a letter to his mother, with a characteristic description of his own doings: ’I approached the door in the presence of perhaps two thousand spectators, and told Mr. Smith that I had a communication for him from Colonel Lee. He opened the door about four inches, and placed his body against the crack, with a cocked carbine in his hand; hence his remark after his capture that he could have wiped me out like a mosquito .... When Smith first came to the door I recognized old Ossawatomie Brown, who had given us so much trouble in Kansas. No one present but myself could have performed that service. I got his bowieknife from his person, and have it yet.’

From the very beginning of the war Stuart maintained this fighting reputation. He would attack anything, anywhere, and the men who served under him had to do the same; what is more, and marks the born leader, he made them wish to do the same. ‘How can I eat, sleep, or rest in peace without you upon the outpost?’ wrote Joseph Johnston; and a noble enemy, who had been a personal friend, Sedgwick, is reported to have said that Stuart was ‘the greatest cavalry officer ever foaled in America.’

Danger he met with more than stolid indifference, a sort of furious bravado, thrusting himself into it with manifest pleasure, and holding back, when he did hold back, with a sigh. And some men’s luck! Johnston was wounded a dozen times, was always getting wounded. Yet Stuart, probably far more exposed, was wounded only once, in earlier life, among the Indians; in the war not at all until the end. His clothes were pierced again and again. According to that fable-mo ngering Prussian, Von Borcke, the general had half of his mustache cut off by a bullet ‘ as neatly as it could have been done by the hand of an experienced barber.’ Yet nothing ever drew blood till the shot which was mortal. Such an immunity naturally encouraged the sort of fatalism not unusual with great soldiers, and Stuart once said of the proximity of his enemies: ‘You might have shot a marble at them — but I am not afraid of any ball aimed at me.’

In this spirit he got into scores of difficult places — and got out again. Sometimes it was by quick action and a mad rush, as when he left his hat and a few officers behind him. Sometimes it was by stealth and secrecy, as when he hid his whole command all night within a few hundred yards of the marching enemy. ‘And nothing now remained but to watch and wait and keep quiet. Quiet? Yes, the men kept very quiet, for they realized that even Stuart never before had them in so tight a place. But many times did we fear that we were betrayed by the weary, hungry, headstrong mules of the ordnance train. Men were stationed at the head of every team; but, in spite of all precautions, a discordant bray would every now and then fill the air. Never was the voice of a mule so harsh!’

The men who had watched and tried and tested him on such occasions as these knew what he was and gave him their trust. He asked nothing of them that he would not do himself. Therefore they did what he asked of them. Scheibert says that ‘he won their confidence and inspired them by his whole bearing and personality, by his kindling speech, his flashing eye, and his cheerfulness, which no reverse could overcome.’ Stuart himself describes his followers’ enthusiastic loyalty with a naïveté as winning as it is characteristic. ‘There was something of the sublime in the implicit confidence and unquestioning trust of the rank and file in a leader guiding them straight, apparently, into the very jaws of the enemy, every step appearing to them to diminish the very faintest hope of extrication.’ Yet he asked this trust, and they gave it simply on the strength of his word. ‘You are about to engage in an enterprise which, to ensure success, imperatively demands at your hands coolness, decision, and bravery, implicit obedience to orders without question or cavil, and the strictest order and sobriety on the march and in the bivouac. The destination and extent of this expedition had better be kept to myself than known to you.’

The men loved him also because, when the strain was removed, he put on no airs, pretense, or remoteness of superiority, but treated them as man to man. ‘He was the most approachable of major-generals, and jested with the private soldiers of his command as jovially as though he had been one of themselves. The men were perfectly unconstrained in his presence, and treated him more as if he were the chief huntsman of a hunting party than as a major-general.' His officers also loved him, and not only trusted him for war, but enjoyed his company in peace. He was constantly on the watch to do them kindnesses, and would frolic with them — marbles, snowballs, quoits, what-not? — like a boy with boys.

And Stuart loved his men as they loved him, did not regard them as mere food for cannon, to be used and abused and forgotten. There is something almost pathetic in his neglect of self in praising them. ‘The horseman who, at his officer’s bidding, without question, leaps into unexplored darkness, knowing nothing except that there is danger ahead, possesses the highest attribute of the patriot soldier. It is a great source of pride to me to command a division of such men.’ Careless of his own danger always, he was far more thoughtful of those about him. In the last battle he was peculiarly reckless, and Major McClellan noticed that the general kept sending him with messages to General Anderson. ‘At last the thought occurred to me that he was endeavoring to shield me from danger. I said to him, “ General, my horse is weary. You are exposing yourself, and you are alone. Please let me remain with you.” He smiled at me kindly, but bade me go to General Anderson with another message.’

Any reflection on his command aroused him at once to its defense. ‘There seems to be a growing tendency to abuse and underrate the services of that arm of the service [cavalry] by a few officers of infantry, among whom I regret to find General Trimble. Troops should be taught to take pride in other branches of the service than their own.’

It is very rare that Stuart has any occasion to address himself directly to the authorities at Richmond. Fighting, not writing, was his business. But when he feels that his men and horses are being starved unnecessarily, he bestirs himself, and sends Seddon a letter which is as interesting for nervous and vigorous expression as for the character of the writer. ‘I beg to urge that in no case should persons not connected with the army, and who are amply compensated for all that is taken, be allowed more subsistence per day than the noble veterans who are periling their lives in the cause and, at every sacrifice, are enduring hardship and exposure in the ranks.’

And the general’s care and enthusiasm for his officers was as great as for the privates. It is charming to see how earnestly and how specifically he commends them in every report. Particularly, he is anxious to impress upon Lee that no family considerations should prevent the merited advancement of Lee’s own son and nephew. Even on his death-bed one of his last wishes was that his faithful followers should have his horses, and he allotted them thoughtfully according to each officer’s need.

The general did not allow his feelings to interfere with subordination, however. His discipline ‘was as firm as could be with such men as composed the cavalry of General Lee’s army,’ writes Judge Garnett. ‘He never tolerated nor overlooked disobedience of orders.’ Even his favorites, Mosby and Fitz Lee, come in for reproof when needed. Of the latter’s failure to arrive at Raccoon Ford when expected, he writes, ‘By this failure to comply with instructions, not only the movement of t he cavalry across the Rapidan was postponed a day, but a fine opportunity was lost to overhaul a body of the enemy’s cavalry on a predatory excursion far beyond their lines.’ His tendency to severity in regard to a certain subordinate calls forth one of Lee’s gently tactful cautions: ‘I am perfectly willing to transfer him to Paxton’s brigade, if he desires it; but if he does not, I know of no act of his to justify my doing so. Do not let your judgment be warped.’ There were officers with whom Stuart, could not get along, for instance, ‘Grumble Jones,’ who perhaps could get along with no one. Yet, after Stuart’s death, Jones said of him, ‘By G—, Martin! You know I had little love for Stuart, and he had just as little for me; but that is the greatest loss that army has ever sustained, except the deat h of Jackson.’

From these various considerations it will be surmised that Stuart was no mere reckless swordsman, no Rupert, good with sabre, furious in onset, beyond that signifying nothing. He knew the spirit of the antique maxim, ‘Be bold, and evermore be bold; be not too bold.’ He had learned the hardest lesson and the essential corrective for such a temperament, self-control. To me there is an immense pathos in his quiet, almost plaintive, explanation to Lee on one occasion: ‘The commanding general will, I am sure, appreciate how hard it was to desist from the undertaking, but to any one on the spot there could be but one opinion — its impossibility. I gave it up.’ On the other hand, no one knew better that in some cases perfect prudence and splendid boldness are one and the same thing. To use again his own words: ‘Although the expedition was prosecuted further than was contemplated in your instructions, I feel assured that the considerations which actuated me will convince you that I did not depart from their spirit, and that the bold development in the subsequent direction of the march was the quintessence of prudence.’ Lee always used the right words. In one of his reports he says of Stuart, ‘I take occasion to express to the Department my sense of the boldness, judgment, and prudence he displayed in its execution.’ (The italics are mine.)

But one may have self-control without commanding intelligence. Fremantle’s description of Stuart’s movements does not suggest much of the latter quality. ‘He seems to roam over the country at his own discretion, and always gives a good account of himself, turning up at the right moment; and hitherto he has not got himself into any serious trouble.’ Later, more studious observers do not take quite the same view. One should read the whole of the Prussian colonel, Scheibert’s, account of Stuart’s thorough planning, his careful calculation, his exact methods of procedure. ‘Before Stuart undertook any movement, he spared nothing in the way of preparation which might make it succeed. He informed himself as exactly as possible by scouts and spies, himself reconnoitred with his staff, often far beyond the outposts, had his engineer officers constantly fill out and improve the rather inadequate maps and ascertain the practicability of roads, fords, etc. In short, he omitted no precaution and spared no pains or effort to secure the best possible results for such undertakings as he planned; therefore he was in the saddle almost as long again as his men.’ Similar testimony can be gathered incidentally everywhere in Stuart’s letters and reports, proving that he was no chance roamer, but went where he planned to go, and came back when he intended. For instance, he writes of the Peninsular operations, ‘It is proper to remark here that the commanding general had, on the occasion of my late expedition to the Pamunkey, imparted to me his design of bringing Jackson down upon t he enemy’s right flank and rear, and directed that I should examine the country with reference to its practicability for such a movement. I therefore had studied the features of the country very thoroughly, and knew exactly how to conform my movements to Jackson’s route.’

On the strength of these larger military qualities it has sometimes been contended that Stuart should have had an even more responsible command than fell to him, and that Lee should have retained him at the head of Jackson’s corps after Jackson’s death. Certainly Lee can have expressed no higher opinion of any one. ‘A more zealous, ardent, brave, and devoted soldier than Stuart the Confederacy cannot have.’ Johnston called him ‘calm, firm, acute, active, and enterprising; I know no one more competent than he to estimate occurrences at their true value.’ Longstreet , hitting Jackson as well as praising Stuart, said, ‘His death was possibly a greater loss to the Confederate army than that of the swift-moving Stonewall Jackson.’ Among foreign authorities, Scheibert tells us that ‘General von Schmidt, the regenerator of our [Prussian] cavalry tactics, has told me that Stuart was the model cavalry leader of this century, and has questioned me very often about his mode of fighting.’ And Captain Battine thinks that he should have had Jackson’s place. Finally, Alexander, sanest of Confederate writers, expresses the same view strongly and definitely: ‘I always thought it an injustice to Stuart, and a loss to the army, that he was not from that moment continued in command of Jackson’s corps. He had won the right to it. I believe he had all of Jackson’s genius and dash and originality, without that eccentricity of character which sometimes led to disappointment. . . . Jackson’s spirit and inspiration were uneven. Stuart, however, possessed the rare quality of being always equal to himself at his very best.’

This is magnificent praise, coming from such a source. Nevertheless, I find it hard to question Lee’s judgment. There was nothing in the world to prevent his giving Stuart the position, if he thought him qualified. It is not absolutely certain how Stuart would have carried independent command. I can hardly imagine Davis writing of Jackson as he did of Stuart: ‘The letter of General Hill painfully impresses me with that which has before been indicated — a want of vigilance and intelligent observation on the part of General Stuart.’ Major Bigelow, who knows the battle of Chancellorsville as well as any one living, does not judge Stuart’s action so favorably as Alexander. And Cooke, who adored Stuart and served constantly under him, says, ‘At Chancellorsville, when he succeeded Jackson, the troops, although quite enthusiastic about him, complained that he led them too recklessly against artillery; and it is hard for those who knew the man to believe that, as an army commander, he would have consented to a strictly defensive campaign. Fighting was a necessity of his blood, and the slow movements of infantry did not suit his genius.’

May it not be, also, that Lee thought Stuart indispensable where he was, and believed that it would be as difficult to replace him as Jackson? Most of Stuart’s correspondence has perished and we are obliged to gather its tenor from letters written to him, which is much like listening to a onesided conversation over the telephone. From one of Lee’s letters, however, it is fairly evident that neither he nor Stuart himself had seriously considered the latter’s taking Jackson’s place. Lee writes, ‘I am obliged to you for your views as to the successor of the great and good Jackson. Unless God in his mercy will raise us up one, I do not know what we shall do. I agree with you on the subject, and have so expressed myself.’

In any event, what his countrymen will always remember of Stuart is the fighting figure, the glory of battle, the sudden and tumultuous fury of charge and onset.

And what above all distinguishes him in this is his splendid joy in it. Others fought with clenched fist and set teeth, rejoicing perhaps, but with deadly determination of lip and brow. He laughed and sang. His blue eye sparkled and his white teeth gleamed. To others it was the valley of the shadow of death. To him it was a picnic and a pleasure party.

He views everything on its picturesque side, catches the theatrical detail which turns terror and death into a scenic surprise. ‘My arrival could not have been more fortunately timed, for, arriving after dark, the ponderous march, with the rolling artillery, must have impressed the enemy’s cavalry, watching their rear, with the idea of an immense army about to cut off their retreat.’ He rushes gayly into battle, singing, ‘Old Joe Hooker, won’t you come out of the Wilderness?’ or his favorite of favorites, ‘If you want to have a good time, jinc the cavalry.’ When he is riding off, as it were into the mouth of hell, his adjutant asks, how long, and he answers, as Touchstone might, with a bit of old ballad, ‘It may be for years and it may be for ever.’ His clear laughter, in the sternest crises, echoes through dusty war books like a silver bell. As he sped back from his raid, the Union troops were close upon him and the swollen Chickahominy in front, impassable, it seemed. Stuart thought a moment, pulling at his beard. Then he found the remains of an old bridge and set his men to rebuild it. ‘While the men were at work upon it, Stuart was lying down on the bank of the stream, in the gayest humor I ever saw, laughing at the prank he had played on McClellan.’

It is needless to enlarge on the effect of such a temper, such exuberant confidence and cheerfulness in danger, on subordinates. It lightened labor, banished fatigue, warmed chill limbs and fainting courage. ‘My men and horses are tired, hungry, jaded, but all right,’ was the last dispatch he ever wrote. So long as he was with them they were all right. His very voice was like music, says Fitz Lee, ‘like the silver trumpet of the Archangel.’ It sounded oblivion of everything but glory. His gayety, his laughter, were infectious, and turned a raid into a revel. ‘That summer night,’ writes Mosby of the McClellan expedition, ‘was a carnival of fun I can never forget. Nobody thought of danger or sleep, when champagne bottles were bursting, and wine was flowing in copious streams. All had perfect confidence in their leader .... The discipline of the soldiers for a while gave way to the wild revelry of Comus.’

And this spirit of adventure, of romance, of buoyant optimism and energy, was not reserved merely for occasions of excitement, was not the triumphant outcome of glory and success. It was constant and unfailing. To begin with, Stuart had a magnificent physique. ‘Nothing seemed strong enough to break down his powerful organization of mind and body,’ says his biographer; and Mosby: ‘Although he had been in the saddle two days and nights without sleep, he was as gay as a lark.’ When exhaustion finally overcame him, he would drop off his horse by the roadside, anywhere, sleep for an hour, and arise as active as ever. Universal testimony proves that he was overcome and disheartened by no disaster. He would be thoughtful for a moment, pulling at his beard, then seize upon the best decision that presented itself and push on. Dreariness sometimes crushes those who can well resist actual misfortune. Not Stuart. ‘In the midst of rainstorms, when everybody was riding along grum and cowering beneath the flood pouring down, he would trot on, head up, and singing gayly.’

The list of his personal adventures and achievements is endless. He braved capture and death with entire indifference, trusting in his admirable horsemanship, which often saved him, trusting in Providence, trusting in nothi ng at all but his quick wit and strong arm, curious mainly, perhaps, to see what would happen. On one occasion he is said to have captured forty-four Union soldiers. He was riding absolutely alone and ran into them taking their ease in a field. Instantly he chose his course. ‘Throw down your arms or you are all dead men.’ They were green troops and threw them down, and Stuart marched the whole squad into camp. When duty forbids a choice adventure, he sighs, as might Don Quixote. ‘A scouting party of one hundred and fifty lancers had just passed toward Gettysburg. I regretted exceedingly that my march did not admit of the delay necessary to catch them.’

I have sometimes asked myself how much of this spirit of romantic adventure, of knight-errantry, as it were, in Stuart, was conscious. Did he, like Claverhouse, read Homer and Froissart, and try to realize in modern Virginia the heroic deeds, still more, the heroic spirit, of antique chivalry? In common with all Southerners, he probably knew the prose and poetry of Scott, and dreamed of the plume of Marmion and the lance of Ivanhoe. He must have felt the weight of his name also, and believed that James Stuart might be aptly fitted with valorous adventure and knightly deeds and sudden glory. It is extremely interesting to find him writing to Jackson, ‘Did you receive the volume of Napoleon and his maxims I sent you?’ I should like to own that volume. And in his newspaper account of Brown’s raid he quotes Horace, horribly, but still Horace, ‘ Erant fortes ante Agamemnona.’

Yet I do not gather that he was much of a student; he preferred to live poems rather than to read them. The spirit of romance, the instinct of the picturesque, was born in him, and would out anywhere and everywhere. Life was a perpetual play, with evershifting scenes, and gay limelight, and hurrying incident, and passionate climax. Again and again he reminds me of a boy playing soldiers. His ambition, his love of glory, was of this order; not a bit the ardent, devouring, frowning, far-sighted passion of Jackson, but a jovial sense of pleasant things that can be touched and heard and tasted here, to-day.

He had a childlike, simple vanity which all his biographers smile at, liked parade, display, pomp, and gorgeousness, utterly differing in this from Jackson, who was too proud, or Lee, who was too lofty. Stuart rode fine horses, never was seen on an inferior animal. He wore fine clothes, — all that his position justified, perhaps a little more. Here is Fitz Lee’s picture of him: ‘His strong figure, his big brown beard, his piercing, laughing blue eye, the drooping hat and black feather, the “fighting jacket” as he termed it, the tall cavalry boots, forming one of the most jubilant and striking figures in the war.’ And Cooke is even more particular: ‘His fighting jacket shone with dazzling buttons and was covered with gold braid; his hat was looped up with a golden star, and decorated with a black ostrich plume; his fine buff gauntlets reached to the elbow; around his waist was tied a splendid yellow sash, and his spurs were of pure gold.’

After this, we appreciate the biographer’s assertion that he was as fond of colors as a boy or girl; and elsewhere we read that he never moved without his gorgeous red battle-flag, which often drew the fire of the enemy.

As to the spurs, they were presented to the general by the ladies of Baltimore, and he took great pride in them, signing himself sometimes in private letters, K. G. S., Knight of the Golden Spurs.

This last touch is perfectly characteristic, and the Stuart of the pen is precisely the same as the Stuart of the sword. He could express himself as simply as Napoleon: ‘Tell General Lee that all is right. Jackson has not advanced, but I have; and I am going to crowd them with artillery.’ But usually he did not. Indeed, the severe taste of Lee recoiled from his subordinate’s fashions of speech. ‘The general deals in the flowery style, as you will perceive, if you ever see his reports in detail.’ But I love them, they ring and resound so with the temper of the man; gorgeous scraps of tawdry rhetoric, made charming by their riotous sincerity, as with Scott and Dumas. His ‘brave men behaved with coolness and intrepidity in danger, unswerving resolution before difficulties, and stood unappalled before the rushing torrent of the Chickahominy, with the probability of an enemy at their heels armed with the fury of a tigress robbed of her whelps.’ Could anything be worse from Lee’s point of view? But it does put some ginger into an official report. Or take this Homeric picture of a charge, which rushes like a half dozen stanzas of Chevy Chase: ‘Lieutenant Robbins handling it in the most skillful manner, managed to clear the way for the march with little delay, and infused by a sudden dash at a picket such a wholesome terror that it never paused to take a second look. . . . On, on dashed Robbins, here skirting a field, there leaping a fence or ditch, and clearing the woods beyond.’

When I read these things I cannot but remember Madame de Sévigné’s fascinating comment on the historical novels of her day. ‘The style of La Calprenède is detestable in a thousand ways: long-winded, romantic phrases, ill-chosen words, I admit it all. I agree that it is detestable; yet it holds me like glue. The beauty of the sentiments, the violence of the passions, the grandeur of the events, and the miraculous success of the hero’s redoubtable sword — it sweeps me away as if I were a child.’

And Stuart’s was a real sword!

Then, too, — as in Shakespearean tragedy or modern melodrama, — the tension, in Stuart’s case, is constantly relieved by hearty, wholesome laughter, which shook his broad shoulders and sparkled in his blue eyes. See what a strange comedy his report makes of this lurid night-scene, in which another might have found only shadow and death. ‘It so far succeeded as to get possession of his [General Bartlett’s] headquarters at one o’clock at night, the general having saved himself by precipitate flight in his nether garments. The headquarters flag was brought away. No prisoners were attempted to be taken, the party shooting down every one within reach. Some horses breaking loose near headquarters ran through an adjacent regimental camp, causing the greatest commotion, ’mid firing and yelling and cries of “Halt!” “Rally!” mingling in wild disorder, and ludicrous stampede which beggars description.’ Can’t you hear him laugh?

It must not be concluded from this that Stuart was cruel in his jesting. Where gentleness and sympathy were really called for, all the evidence shows that no man could give more. But he believed that the rough places are made smooth, and the hard places soft, and the barren places green and smiling, by genial laughter. Who shall say that he was wrong? Therefore he would have his jest, with inferior and superior, with friend and enemy. Even the sombre Jackson was not spared. When he had floundered into winterquarters oddly decorated, Stuart suggested ‘that a drawing of the apartment should be made, with the race-horses, gamecocks, and terrier in bold relief, the pict ure to be labeled: “ View of the winter-quarters of General Stonewall Jackson, affording an insight into the tastes and character of the individual.” ’ And Jackson enjoyed it.

When it came to his adversaries, Stuart’s fun was unlimited. Everybody knows his telegraphed complaint to the United States Commissary Department that the mules he had been capturing lately were most unsatisfactory, and he wished they would provide a better quality. Even more amusing is the correspondence that occurred at Lewinsville. One of Stuart’s old comrades wrote, addressing him by his West Point nickname, ‘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 five o’clock on Saturday next. Keep your Black Horse off me, if you please. Yours, etc., Orlando M. Poe.’ On the back of this was penciled in Stuart’s writing: ‘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.’

I had an old friend who adored the most violent melodrama. When the curtain and his tears had fallen together, he would sigh and murmur, ‘Now let’s have a little of that snaredrum music.’ Such was Stuart. ‘It might almost be said that music was his passion,’ writes Cooke. I doubt, however, whether he dealt largely in the fugues of Bach. His favorites, in the serious order, are said to have been, ‘The dew is on the blossom,’ and ‘Sweet Evelina.’ But his joy was the uproarious, ‘If you get there before I do,’ or his precious, ‘If you want to have a good time, jine the cavalry.’ He liked to live in the blare of trumpets and the crash of cymbals, liked to have his nerves tingle and his blood leap to a merry ‘ hunt’s-up’ or a riotous chorus, liked to have the high strain of war’s melodrama broken by the sudden crackle of the snare-drum. His banjo-player, Sweeney, was as near to him as an aide-de-camp, followed him everywhere. ‘Stuart wrote his most important correspondence with the rattle of the gay instrument stunning everybody, and would turn round from his work, burst into a laugh, and join uproariously in Sweeney’s chorus.’

And dance was as keen a spice to peril as song and laughter. To fight all day and dance all night was a good day’s work to this creature of perfect physique and inexhaustible energy. If his staff-officers could not keep pace with him and preferred a little sleep, the general did not like it at all. What? Here is — or was — a gay town, and pretty girls. Just because we are here to-day, and gone to-morrow, shall we not fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world? And t he girls are all got together, and a ball is organized, and the fun grows swifter and swifter. Perhaps a fortunate officer picks the prettiest and is about to stand up with her. Stuart whispers in his ear that a pressing message must be carried, laughs his gay laugh, and slips into the vacant place. Then an orderly hurries in, covered with dust. The enemy are upon us. ‘The officers rushed to their weapons and called for their horses, panicstricken fathers and mothers endeavored to collect around them their bewildered children, while the young ladies ran to and fro in most admired despair. General Stuart maintained his accustomed coolness and composure. Our horses were immediately saddled, and in less than five minutes we were in rapid gallop to the front.’ Oh, what a life!

You divine that with such a temperament Stuart would love women. So he did. Not that he let them interfere with duty. He would have heartily accepted the profound doctrine of Enobarbus in regard to the fair: ‘It were pity to cast them away for nothing; yet between them and a great cause they should be esteemed as nothing.’ Stuart arrested hundreds of ladies, says his biographer, and remained inexorable to their petitions. Cooke’s charming account of one of these arrests should be read in full: how the fair captives first raved, and then listened, and then laughed, and then were charmed by the mellifluous Sweeney and the persuasive general, and at last departed with kissed hands and kindly hearts, leaving Stuart to explain to his puzzled aide, who inquired why he put himself out so much: ‘Don’t you understand? When those ladies arrived they were mad enough with me to bite my head off, and I determined to put them in good-humor before they left, me.’

But Cooke dresses his viands. I prefer the following glimpse of Stuart and girls and duty, as it comes unspiced from the rough-spoken common soldier. ‘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 Stuart had 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.’

And the women liked Stuart. It was a grand thing to be the first officer in the Confederate cavalry, with a blue eye and a fair beard, and all gold, like Horace’s Pyrrha, from hat to spurs. When he rode singing and laughing into a little town, by river or seashore, they flocked to meet him, young and old, and touched his garments, and begged his buttons, and kissed his gloved hands, until he suggested that his cheeks were available, and then they kissed those, young and old alike. They showered him with flowers also, buried him under nosegays and garlands, till he rode like old god Bacchus or t he Queen of May. What an odd fashion of making war! And the best I have met with is, that one day Stuart described one of these occurrences to his great chieftain. ‘I had to wear her garland, till I was out of sight,’ apologized the young cavalier. ‘Why are n’t you wearing it now?’ retorted Lee. Is n’t that admirable? I verily believe that if any young woman had had the unimaginable audacity to throw a garland over Lee, he would have worn it through the streets of Richmond itself.

You say, then, this Stuart was dissipated, perhaps, a scapegrace, a rioter, imitating Rupert and Murat in other things than great cavalry charges. That is the curious point. The man was nothing of the sort. With all his instinct for revelry, he had no vices; a very Puritan of laughter. He liked pretty girls everywhere; but when he was charged with libertinism, he answered, in the boldness of innocence, ‘That person does not live who can say that I ever did anything improper of that description’; and he liked his wife better than any other pretty girl. He married her when he was twentytwo years old, and his last wish was that she might reach him before he died. His few letters to her that have been printed are charming in their playful affection. He adored his children also; in short, was a pattern of domesticity. He did, indeed, love his country more, and telegraphed to his wife, when she called him to his dying daughter’s bedside, ‘My duty to the country must be performed before I can give way to the feelings of a father’; but the child’s death was a cruel blow to him. With his intimates he constantly referred to her, and when he himself was dying, he whispered, ‘I shall soon be with my little Flora again.’

‘ I never saw him touch a card,’ writes one who was very near him, ‘and he never dreamed of uttering an oath under any provocation, nor would he permit it at his headquarters.’ We are assured by many that he never drank, and an explicit statement of his own on the subject is reported: ‘I promised my mother in my childhood never to touch ardent spirits, and a drop has never passed my lips, except the wine of the communion.’

As the last words show, he had religion as well as morals. He joined the Methodist Church when he was fifteen, later the Episcopal. When he was twenty-four he sent money home to his mother to aid in the building of a church. He carried her Bible with him always. In his reports religion is not obtrusive. When it does occur, it is evidently sincere. ‘The Lord of Hosts was plainly fighting on our side, and the solid walls of Federal infantry melted away before the straggling, but nevertheless determined, onsets of our infantry columns.’ ‘Believing that the hand of God was clearly manifested in the signal deliverance of my command from danger, and the crowning success attending it, I ascribe to Him the praise, the honor, and the glory.’ He inclined to strictness in the observance of Sunday. Captain Colston writes me that when twelve struck of a Saturday night, Stuart held up his hand relentlessly and stopped song and dance in their full tide, though youth and beauty begged for just one more. He was equally scrupulous in the field, though, in his feeling of injury because the enemy were not so, I seem to detect his habitual touch of humor. ‘The next morning being the Sabbath, I recognized my obligation to do no active duty other than what was absolutely necessary, and determined, so far as possible, to devote it to rest. Not so the enemy, whose guns about 8 A. M. showed that he would not observe it.’

I have no doubt that Stuart’s religion was inward as well as outward, and remoulded his heart. But, after all, he was but little over thirty when he died, and I love to trace in him the occasional working of the old Adam which had such lively play in the bosom of many an officer who was unjustly blamed or missed some well-deserved promotion. Stuart’s own letters are too few to afford much insight of this kind. But here again we get that onesided correspondence with Lee which is so teasingly suggestive. On one occasion Lee writes, ’The expression, “appropriated by the Stuart Horse Artillery,” was not taken from a report of Colonel Baldwin, nor intended in any objectionable sense, but used for want of a better phrase, without any intention on my part of wounding.’ And again, after Chancellorsville: ‘As regards the closing remarks of your note, I am at a loss to understand their reference or to know what has given rise to them. In the management of the difficult operations at Chancellorsville, which you so promptly undertook, and creditably performed, I saw no errors to correct, nor has there been a fit opportunity to commend your conduct. I prefer your acts to speak for themselves, nor does your character or reputation require bolstering up by out-of-place expressions of my opinion.’

But by far the most interesting human revelation of this kind is one letter of Stuart’s own, written to justify himself against some aspersions of General Trimble. With the right or wrong of the case we are not concerned. Simply with the fascinating study of Stuart’s state of mind. He begins evidently with firm restraint and a Christian moderation, ‘Human memory is frail, I know.’ But the exposure of his wrongs heats his blood, as he goes on, and spurs him, though he still endeavors to check himself. ‘It is true I am not in the habit of giving orders, particularly to my seniors in years, in a dictatorial and authoritative manner, and my manner very likely on this occasion was more suggestive than imperative; indeed, I may have been content to satisfy myself that the dispositions which he himself proposed accorded with my own ideas, without any blustering show of orders to do this or that . . . General Trimble says I did not reach the place until seven or eight o’clock. I was in plain view all the time, and rode through, around, and all about the place, soon after its capture. General Trimble is mistaken.’ Nay, in his stammering eagerness to right himself, his phrases, usually so crisp and clear, stumble and fall over each other: ‘In the face of General Trimble’s positive denial of sending such a message, “ that he would prefer waiting until daylight,” or anything like it, while my recollection is clear that I did receive such a message, and received it as coming from General Trimble, yet, as he is so positive to not having sent such a message, or anything like it, I feel bound to believe that either the message was misrepresented, or made up, by the messenger, or that it was a message received from General Robertson, whose sharpshooters had been previously deployed.'

A real man, you see, like the rest of us; but a noble one, and lovable. Fortunate also, in his death as in his life. For he was not shot down in the early days, like Jackson and Sidney Johnston, when it seemed as if his great aid might have changed destiny. He had done all a man in his position could do. When he went, all hope too was going. He was spared the long, weary days of Petersburg, spared the bitter cup of Appomattox, spared the domination of the conqueror, spared what was perhaps, worst of all, the harsh words and reproaches and recrimination, which flew too hotly where there should have been nothing but love and silence. He slept untroubled in his glory, while his countrymen mourned and Lee ‘yearned for him.’ His best epitaph has been written by a magnanimous opponent: ‘Deep in the hearts of all true cavalrymen, North and South, will ever burn a sentiment of admiration, mingled with regret, for this knightly soldier and generous man.’