J. E. B. Stuart Page

"I would give anything to make a pilgrimage to the old place and when the war is over to quietly spend the rest of my days there." -- J. E. B. Stuart 1863

James Ewell Brown Stuart

Patrick County's Most Famous Son

“Call the shapes from the mist,

Call the dead men out of the mist and watch them ride.

Tall the first rider, tall with a laughing mouth,

His long black beard is combed like a beauty’s hair,

His slouch hat plumed with a curled black ostrich-feather,

He wears gold spurs and sits his horse with the seat

Of a horseman born.

It is Stuart of Laurel Hill,”

--Stephen Vincent Benet “John Brown’s Body”

Summing up J. E. B. Stuart is easy if you grew up in Patrick County, you could not escape him. He was on the bank signs, the kid who lived next door shared his name, the county seat carried his name and if you were from Ararat, you saw the historical marker that told you where he was born every time you drove to Mount Airy, North Carolina.

Born on February 6, 1833, this son of Virginia was brother to ten, father of three and husband of Flora Cooke. He liked to flirt with pretty girls and he loved the place he was born, Laurel Hill.

This son of Southwest Virginia went to school in Wythe, Pulaski, maybe Floyd. At Emory and Henry College, he found God. A Christian, who founded churches, bought his men scriptures, practiced temperance.

A graduate of West Point, he soldiered for the United States of America, where he fought Cheyenne and captured John Brown when not selling livestock, real estate, passing the bar or inventing patented devices that he sold to the War Department for $5,000 in 1859 money.

From his father he was Scots-Irish, a warrior-poet of Scotland, who knew glory as an officer, who knew loss as a father, who knew the joy of a song and the laughter of friends. From his mother he inherited a love of nature; a good head for business, a wish to return to her ancestral land in Patrick County. It was her Christian fortitude that allowed him to face death with his eyes wide open.

A son of the South, a slave owner, who soldiered for the Confederate States of America, where he was a friend of “Stonewall” Jackson, surrogate son to Robert E. Lee and mentor to John Mosby and John Pelham. He rode around armies three times, replaced Jackson at Chancellorsville, fought the biggest cavalry battle ever at Brandy Station and was late for Gettysburg. He was last at Yellow Tavern, where he lived up to what he told one his generals, "Everyman must be a hero."

Studied by historians, Stuart remains a popular figure from the history surrounding the “War.” William C. Davis of Virginia Tech said of him on the History Channel’s program Civil War Journal, “It is unfortunate that his lasting place in American history is as a romantic hero, the beau ideal, because there was more to him than that. Stuart was a brave man, but wars are full of brave men. Stuart was a dashing man, but the Civil War particularly was full of dashing men. Most of all, Stuart was an effective man and an innovator. He combined the gathering of intelligence and the masking of his army's movements with destruction and sabotage behind enemy lines. In some ways, Stuart did far more than cavalry had ever done before, and in some ways he presaged the mechanized and airborne warfare in the wars to come. He deserves to be remembered as an effective, imaginative soldier and not just as the man with a feather in his hat." Professor Gary W. Gallagher of the University of Virginia, who like many such as Ed Bearss began his interest in the war with Stuart said this on the same program, "Stuart remains and always will remain one of the great romantic figures of the Civil War. Beyond that, he was a compelling symbol and a gifted professional soldier."

Biographer Emory Thomas wrote that, “Stuart displayed the capacity to command both small and large numbers of horsemen, and he was able to integrate his cavalry with artillery and infantry, as well as to conduct independent operations. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Wade Hampton, John Hunt Morgan and Joseph Wheeler at one time or another, proved they could do one of these things. Stuart did them all and did them consistently well." Cavalry Historian Edward Longacre wrote of Stuart that, “His greatest contribution to military science was not in the realm of battlefield tactics but in his unerring ability to send his commanders accurate, specific, up to date reports of enemy movements and intentions real time strategic intelligence.

W. W. Blackford wrote, "I can close my eyes and bring him before me as vividly as though he were there in life. General Stuart had his weaknesses, who has not? But a braver, truer or purer man than he never lived."

In his first novel, Flags in the Dust, or as it is better known, Sartoris, William Faulkner had as one of his characters, none other than "Jeb" Stuart. This was the Stuart image not the human being. Faulkner said, “History isn’t. History is.” We today can still shape the perception of history. "Jeb" Stuart deserves better than being remembered as a laughing buffoon that cost his country's independence at Gettysburg. We might prefer to remember him with something a contemporary of "Jeb" Stuart Jr. said once "For it is better to dare mighty things than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." Surely, Theodore Roosevelt would have liked "Jeb" Stuart as he did his son.

Stuart cultivated an image as “The Last Cavalier,” but he was a man, a brave man, who made history good and bad depending on your point of view. When you think of him, cast light upon the shadow he left and beyond the romantic image. He was James Ewell Brown Stuart, a human being, and if you hail from Patrick County, he was one of us, Stuart of Laurel Hill.

Related Links

Stuart Mosby Historical Society www.stuart-mosby.org

http://www.civilwarhome.com/stuartyouth.htm

http://richmondthenandnow.com/Newspaper-Articles/JEB-Stuart-Boxwoods.html

Biography

http://www.civilwarhome.com/stuartbi.htm

http://www.civilwarhome.com/cmhstuartbio.htm

http://www.us-civilwar.com/jeb.htm

http://www.ehistory.com/uscw/features/people/bio.cfm?PID=70

http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/General_JEB_Stuart.htm

Speeches About Stuart

http://www.swcivilwar.com/Stuart_HBMcClellanTribute.html