In an article which recently appeared in the [Philadelphia] Weekly Times from the pen of [Major General] Henry Heth [Heth’s article appears in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: Volume 5, edited by Peter Cozzens (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002) under the title “Why Lee Lost at Gettysburg”], and also in the work just published by Colonel [Walter H.] Taylor, Four Years with General Lee [New York: D. Appleton, 1877], the responsibility for the loss, by General [Robert E.] Lee, of the Gettysburg campaign is indirectly cast upon [Major General James Ewell Brown “Jeb”] Stuart, the chief of cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia. It is charged that Stuart, by passing with his cavalry around and right of [Major General Joseph] Hooker into Pennsylvania, and thus allowing the Federal army to be interposed between him and General Lee, had taken away “the eyes of the army” and left the Confederate general in an enemy’s country like a blind giant groping in the dark. I propose to show that the charge is unjust; that Stuart’s expedition was undertaken with the approval of the commanding general; that he left behind him a force of cavalry amply sufficient to observe and report the movements of the Union army to General Lee, as well as to check its reconnaissances and guard the Confederate column against any surprise. And I shall do more. I shall show that Stuart’s movement was a highly successful one, considered either as an independent raid of a detachment of cavalry on the communications of the Federal army, or in its relations to the movements of the Confederate army. I shall also show that the success which attended the Confederate arms on the first day’s fighting was largely due to the enterprise of Stuart. As to a portion of the events I shall narrate, I was a witness and an actor. As to others, my knowledge has been gained by a careful comparison of the records of both armies, to which I have been permitted access by the courtesy of the secretary of war. To appreciate properly the reasons that determined Stuart in making this movement, a knowledge of some events immediately preceding the time when it was begun is necessary.
On June 17, 1863, General Stuart, with a portion of his cavalry command, reached Middleburg, Loudon County, Virginia. General Lee’s infantry was then marching down the Shenandoah Valley, and the duty assigned to Stuart was to mask the movement with his cavalry. In the afternoon of the same day, [Major General Alfred] Pleasanton, who with his cavalry had been sent forward by Hooker to discover the whereabouts of Lee, attacked our outposts at Aldie, a village in a gap of the Bull Run Mountains. After a series of indecisive engagements extending through several days, Pleasanton finally, on June 21, supported by a force of infantry, drove Stuart back into Ashby’s Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Having effected the object of his reconnaissance, which was to ascertain the position of the Confederate army, Pleasanton retired the same night to Aldie, where the Fifth Corps was posted, and did not again assume an offensive attitude.
On the next day Stuart reestablished his lines about Middleburg, with his headquarters four miles above, at Rector’s Cross Roads, where he kept up communications with General Lee, whose headquarters were about Berryville, in the Shenandoah Valley.
I had been operating for several months previously in that region with a force of twenty-five or thirty men, and on account of the familiarity I had gained with the country had been employed by Stuart on scouting duty inside the lines of the Union army while he was fighting Pleasanton in front. (I wish it distinctly understood that I always went in the full uniform of a Confederate major, the rank I held.) Whenever I sent or carried him any important information he immediately dispatched a courier with it to General Lee. On my return from my last trip inside of Hooker’s lines, on June 23, after giving Stuart all the information I had gleaned about the location of each corps of the Union army, I suggested that a splendid opportunity was now offered him to strike Hooker a damaging blow by passing through an unguarded pass of the Bull Run Mountains with a portion of his cavalry and cutting right through the middle of the Federal army, destroying its transportation as he went, and crossing the Potomac at Seneca (where I had crossed some two weeks before with my own command), he could unite with General Lee in Pennsylvania.
The plan was at that time perfectly practicable. Pleasanton was in a defensive attitude, and only a small portion of the cavalry was necessary to be held in his front to observe the movements of Hooker’s army and report them to the commanding general. While we were discussing the plan, [Brigadier] Generals [Wade] Hampton and [Fitzhugh] Lee came into the room. I cannot of my own knowledge say that Stuart submitted my proposition to General [Robert E.] Lee before ordering the movement. I do know that as soon as our conference ended he started a courier to him. Colonel [William W.] Blackford, of General Stuart’s staff, recently informed me that Stuart rode over to Lee’s headquarters that day to consult with him about it. The plan agreed upon was to leave two cavalry brigades (Jones and Robertson’s) under the command of Brigadier General Beverly Robertson, in front of Hooker, about Middleburg, to observe his movements and keep up communication with the commanding general, while Stuart with three brigades should pass through the Union army into Pennsylvania. As [Major General Winfield S.] Hancock’s corps was holding Hopewell and Thoroughfare gaps in the Bull Run Mountains, the route selected for Stuart to go was through Glancock’s Gap (a few miles south of Thoroughfare), via Haymarket, through Loudon and Fairfax, to Seneca Ford on the Potomac. The part assigned to me was to cross the Bull Run at night with my small force by a bridle path, and uniting with Stuart near Gum Spring in Loudon take command of his advance guard. Hooker’s headquarters were then at Fairfax Station, with his army spread out like a fan over Loudon, Prince William, and Fairfax counties; his left at Thoroughfare Gap, his right at Leesburg, and his center (Fifth Corps) at Aldie, with Pleasanton’s cavalry in front. All the roads were filled with his immense supply trains.
With his transportation destroyed and communications broken, Hooker would be seriously embarrassed in his pursuit of General Lee, or probably forced to fall back to defend the capital against this threatening demonstration, while the Confederate army was foraging in Pennsylvania. The original plan to Stuart was thwarted by an event which he could not control and which no sagacity could foresee. It was obvious that Hooker did not intend to initiate any movement, but would confine himself to covering the capital and observing his adversary. It was all important for the success of Stuart’s plan that the status quo should be preserved until at least he could get partly through Hooker’s army, when it would be too late for Hooker to do anything to defeat it. As I have said, when this expedition was resolved upon General Lee, with two army corps, [Lieutenant General James] Longstreet’s and [Lieutenant General A. P.] Hill’s, was near Berryville, in the Shenandoah Valley. Before daybreak on the morning of the twenty-fifth, Stuart debouched through Glancock’s Gap in the Bull Run Mountains and moved on the route before indicated toward Haymarket.
Now it so happened that on the very afternoon when Stuart withdrew his three brigades from Pleasanton’s front to start on his expedition to his rear, General Lee moved his two corps to the Potomac, Longstreet crossing at Williamsport and Hill below Shepherdstown. The route of march of Hill’s Corps was in plain view of the signal station on Maryland Heights, and [Brigadier General Robert O.] Tyler, the commanding officer, immediately telegraphed Hooker what was going on. It now became necessary for Hooker to move, and he issued an order for the crossing of his various corps at Edwards’s Ferry, near Leesburg, on June 26, the cavalry being ordered to cover the crossing. About the time, therefore, that the head of Stuart’s column debouched through the Bull Run Mountains on the morning of the twenty-fifth, Hancock broke up camp and moved northward.
When Stuart reached Haymarket he found the roads all occupied by Hancock’s troops, and as Hancock was not so polite as to give him the road, Stuart opened fire on him with artillery. Hancock kept the right of way and spent that night at Gum Springs, near where I had expected to join Stuart. As soon as Stuart discovered Hancock’s movement he sent a courier to inform General Lee of it.
With my own detachment, on the same morning I crossed the Bull Run near Aldie, having narrowly escaped capture by a regiment of infantry which [Major General George G.] Meade, whose corps was lying nearby, had placed in ambush right in my path; fortunately they fired upon and captured two men I had sent out a few hundred yards in advance, and thus giving us the alarm, I flanked them and went on. I heard the cannonading about Haymarket and hurried to meet Stuart. When I got to the Little River Turnpike about eight miles below Aldie, which was to be my point of junction with Stuart, I struck the head of Hancock’s column. His divisions were marching on every road. I spent the day and night riding about among Hancock’s troops, and with great difficulty extricated myself from the dilemma in which I was placed. I could not find out where Stuart was nor he where I was, so the next day I returned to Fauquier and went on to Pennsylvania, passing through Snicker’s Gap in the Blue Ridge, where I stopped to get ammunition for my command from [Brigadier General William E.] Jones’s cavalry brigade, which had fallen back to that place after Hooker had moved to the Potomac. Stuart had been compelled to make a wider circuit than he had originally intended and passed down through Brentsville and Fairfax Court House, crossing the Potomac at Seneca on the night of the twenty-seventh. But for the unexpected movement of Hancock’s corps, Stuart would have crossed the Potomac the night of the twenty-fifth in advance of Hooker. Thence he moved north, toward the Susquehanna (where he expected to meet Lee), through Westminster and Hanover.
It is charged that this expedition of Stuart’s, by which for several days the Union army became interposed between him and the Confederate army, deprived General Lee of all information concerning the movements of the Union army, which, it was the duty of his chief of cavalry to supply. On account of this ignorance of the Confederate general of the movements of his adversary, General Heth states that General Lee “stumbled” into the fight at Gettysburg. Now if General Stuart, before starting, submitted his plan of operations to General Lee, and he approved it, then Stuart is exonerated from all responsibility for its influence on General Lee’s plans, unless it can be shown that Stuart somewhere failed in properly executing it.
I have read General Stuart’s report to General Lee of the operations of his cavalry during this campaign, now on file among the captured Confederated archives at Washington, and this is his language:
I submitted to the commanding general the plan of leaving a brigade or so in my front and passing through Hopewell, or some other gap in the Bull Run Mountains, attain the enemy’s rear, passing between his main body and Washington, [and] cross into Maryland, joining our army north of the Potomac. The commanding general wrote me authorizing this move if I deemed it practicable, and also what instructions should be given the officer left in command of the two brigades left in front of the enemy. He also notified me that one column would move via Gettysburg and the other via Carlisle toward the Susquehanna, and directed me after crossing to proceed north with all dispatch to join the right of the army in Pennsylvania. Robertson’s and Jones’s brigades, under command of the former, were left in observation of the enemy on the usual front (about Middleburg), with full instructions as to following up the enemy in case of withdrawal and joining our main army.
This report was forwarded by General Lee to the Confederate War Department without one word of dissent endorsed on it. It bears upon its face evidence of having been carefully read by him, for there is a memorandum in pencil in General Lee’s handwriting, signed “R.E.L.,” requesting that a certain portion of it, in reference to aid received from some citizens in Maryland, be suppressed in the event of its publication. This then shows conclusively that there was not a particle of truth in the report whispered through the army by Stuart’s enemies “that he had run off with his cavalry after Hooker’s wagon trains and General Lee did not know where he had gone.” In this report of the battle General Lee says, in reference to the cavalry,
No report had been received that the Federal army had crossed the Potomac, and the absence of the cavalry rendered it impossible to obtain information. On the night of the twenty-ninth information was received from a scout that the Federal army, having crossed the Potomac, was advancing northward and that the head of the column had reached South Mountain. As our communications with the Potomac were thus menaced, it was resolved to prevent his further progress in that direction by concentrating our army on the east side of the mountain. The march toward Gettysburg was conducted more slowly than it would have been had the movements of the Federal army been known.
It was thus “more in sorrow than in anger” that the great commander of the Army of Northern Virginia complained of the absence of his cavalry. I have no doubt that he felt that the want of it was the cause of the loss of the campaign.
Many have supposed that he intended, in as mild a manner as possible, to cast the blame upon Stuart. In my opinion a wrong interpretation has been put upon his language. In the first place he was incapable of doing Stuart the injustice of censuring him for doing what had been submitted to his own judgment and he had approved of his doing. Secondly, if a sufficient body of cavalry had been left behind by Stuart with instructions to do the very thing that General Lee wanted done and which he complains was not done, then the reproach must be borne by the person charged with the performance of that duty.
We have seen that, when on the evening of June 24 Stuart withdrew with three brigades from Hooker’s front to go around his rear, he left two cavalry brigades behind him (Jones’s and Robertson’s) to do the very duty that Stuart had been doing, that is, observing the movements of the enemy and reporting them to General Lee. Stuart says that before he started General Lee wrote to him, “What instructions should be given the officer left in command of the two brigades left in front of the enemy?” Now, when Stuart had gone off on detached service, and out of communication with General Lee, the officer whom he had left in command of the cavalry in Hooker’s front became, in his relations to General Lee’s army, temporarily his chief of cavalry. These two cavalry brigades must have been left there for some purpose, and it is inconceivable that it was for any other purpose than to keep the commanding general promptly advised of Hooker’s movements. This cavalry force, as we have seen, was under the command of Brigadier General Beverly Robertson; if it did not properly discharge the duty devolved upon it, surely the dead hero who sleeps in Hollywood [Cemetery, Richmond, Virginia] must bear the blame of it. That General Lee relied on this cavalry force which Stuart had left him and Hooker (numbering, as I have been recently informed by an officer of that command, about three thousand sabers) to communicate all of Hooker’s movements to him, there can be no doubt, for he was too great a soldier to have knowingly marched blindfolded into an enemy country. Any other theory makes Lee consent to putting out his eyes, for he knew that Stuart had gone where he could not communicate with him.
Early on the morning of the twenty-sixth, Hooker’s whole army was in motion for the Potomac, which it crossed by night at Edwards’s Ferry, near Leesburg. After this the two cavalry brigades, which Stuart had left about Middleburg in Hooker’s front, as he says, with orders “to observe his movements and to follow the enemy in case of withdrawal,” withdrew into Ashby’s and Snicker’s gaps of the Blue Ridge. Both the letter and spirit of Stuart’s instructions required them to move on the enemy’s flank toward the Potomac. In what other way could they “observe” and “follow” the enemy? General Lee says that he did not hear until the night of June 29 that the Federal army had crossed the Potomac. [Lieutenant General James] Longstreet says the news was brought by a scout whom he had sent into Hooker’s lines when he was about leaving Culpepper.
On the evening of the twenty-ninth the column under Stuart reached Westminster, Maryland. The two cavalry brigades which he had left behind were then behind Ashby’s and Snicker’s gaps in the Blue Ridge Mountains. General Lee then had no cavalry between his army and Hooker’s, and according to his report had heard nothing from the cavalry he [Stuart] had left to follow and watch it. To have carried out Stuart’s instructions (which I suppose were the instructions given to Stuart by General Lee), it would have been necessary for this cavalry under General Robertson to have crossed the Potomac somewhere near Harper’s Ferry and marched along the base of South Mountain (an extension of the Blue Ridge), keeping always between Generals Lee and Meade. This cavalry force was sufficiently strong to have done so, as Stuart’s movement had drawn all of Meade’s cavalry, except two brigades under [Brigadier General John] Buford, to his right wing.
A Cavalry Encounter at Close Quarters (Deeds of Valor)
On the afternoon of the thirtieth Buford reached Gettysburg; that evening General Robertson, with his two brigades, camped near Martinsburg, Virginia. On the same day Stuart fought [Brigadier General Judson] Kilpatrick at Hanover, in Pennsylvania, while [Brigadier General David McM.] Gregg, with his division, had gone off in search of him [Stuart] to Winchester. A compliance then with Stuart’s instructions to the cavalry force he had left behind him in Virginia would have carried it to Gettysburg ahead of Buford; it marched, however, by way of Martinsburg, and crossing the Potomac at Williamsport, followed on the rear and in the track of Lee’s infantry until reaching Cashtown (about ten miles in Lee’s rear) on July 3, the last day of the battle, when it received orders from General Lee to go down in the direction of Fairfield to meet a cavalry demonstration on his rear.
Stuart had reached the battlefield on the day before, July 2. This statement of facts must convince any candid mind that if the Confederate general was ignorant of the presence of the enemy that the fault was not with Stuart. But some will say that if Stuart had been with Lee the campaign would have been successful; this may be so without detracting from the fame of Stuart. Probably if Stonewall Jackson had been there the issue would have been different, and it may be that the dead Cid would have never halted his unresting legions until his banners floated over the rocky heights which were the last refuge of the wreck of the Union army. But when men say this they only mean that we had but one Jackson and one Stuart, and that they left no one to fill their places. Very probably if Stuart could have been in front and rear of Hooker at the same time or if we had had two Stuarts the battle would have gone differently. In his expedition Stuart had accomplished all that was expected of him. I shall not speak of the immense amount of public property and stores he captured and destroyed and the consternation his presence created both in the Federal capital and Northern cities, for they are in a military point of view but of secondary importance. I shall only speak of his movement in its relation to its influence on the movements of the Union army and the battle it fought.
No one can read the dispatches between Meade and [Major Generals Henry] Halleck and [Darius N.] Couch at Harrisburg without being surprised at Meade’s ignorance of the movements and whereabouts of the Confederate army. I attribute this to the fact that being impressed with the idea that he would have to fight Lee on the Susquehanna, he was confirmed in this opinion by Stuart’s column passing on his right in that direction. Hence he sent two of his divisions of cavalry after Stuart, keeping only two brigades under Buford between him and Lee on his left. Those two brigades contented themselves with occupying Gettysburg, without pushing their reconnaissance farther to the front. Here they were discovered by General Heth on July 1, when he went into Gettysburg. Here Buford fought two hours before any infantry support came to him. General Meade was evidently much embarrassed by his telegraphic and railroad communications being broken up by Stuart. As late as June 30, 4:30 P.M., he sends a dispatch to Halleck, saying, “I shall push tomorrow in the direction of Hanover Junction and Hanover, when I hope by July 2 to open communication with Baltimore by telegraph and rail to renew supplies.” He also says, “Our reports seem to place [Lieutenant General Richard S.] Ewell in the vicinity of York and Harrisburg.”
Now at this very moment Lee’s columns were converging on Gettysburg, where there was nothing but Buford’s two brigades of cavalry. They were marching away from the Susquehanna. On July 1, 7:00 A.M., Meade sends a dispatch to Halleck, saying, “The point of Lee’s concentration, and the nature of the country when ascertained, will determine whether I attack him or not. Shall advise you further today when satisfied that the enemy have fully withdrawn from the Susquehanna.”
Thirty-six hours, then, after Lee had ordered the concentration of his army at Gettysburg, General Meade was still expecting to fight him on the Susquehanna. I maintain that all this confusion and uncertainty in General Meade’s mind had been produced by Stuart’s marching toward the Susquehanna, and the further fact that he kept nearly all his cavalry on his right and did not have an adequate force to push a reconnaissance on his left toward Lee. Now this uncertainty of General Meade where to find his enemy was the reason that on July 1, the day the battle began, his army was so widely scattered over the country. He seemed to be just as blind as Lee was with his eyes put out. But for this want of knowledge on the part of General Meade of the whereabouts of the Confederate army, he never would have been caught in delicto, as he was by Lee on his first day’s fight, when Lee crushed two of his army corps before any support could come up. Now as the dispersion of Meade’s various army corps was mostly caused by Stuart’s appearance on his right flank breaking up his communications, while Lee’s army was on his left, I claim for Stuart a full share of the glory won on that day by the Confederate arms. What I have written has been dictated by no desire to deprecate the merits of any man, but to vindicate the fame of the great leader of the Southern cavalry. I have only awarded him the credit that is due to his heroic deeds of arms.
Since the above was written, my attention has been called to a statement in Colonel Taylor’s book, page 113, that “the brigades under Generals Jones and Robertson, which had been left to guard the passes of the Blue Ridge, did not rejoin the army until July 3.” Colonel Taylor was probably misled by General Lee’s report, in which he says that, “General Stuart was left to guard the passes of the mountains and observe the movements of the enemy, whom he was instructed to harass and impede as much as possible, should he attempt to cross the Potomac.”
Now any man who has the least acquaintance with the uses and operations of the cavalry ought to know that General Lee did not mean by this that the cavalry was to sit down in the gaps of the mountains and wait for the enemy to come. The fact is that Stuart never was near the mountains during the week he was guarding the gaps in Virginia, except the night of the twenty-first, when he was driven there by Pleasanton. At this time General Lee, with two corps of infantry, was in the Shenandoah Valley, and there was a reason to hold these passes. The reason for it ceased when Generals Lee and Hooker both had crossed the Potomac. The way then that Stuart was expected to guard the gaps was simply to keep between them and the enemy. It will be observed that Colonel Taylor speaks of the cavalry being left “to guard the passes of the Blue Ridge,” while General Lee says it was but “to guard the passes of the mountains.” This range of mountains called the Blue Ridge, which, crossing the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry, [then] runs northward, is known north of the river as South Mountain. As General Lee had advanced into Pennsylvania on a line about parallel to this range of mountains and some twenty-five miles to the west of it, he obviously meant the cavalry he had left behind was to check the reconnaissance of the enemy through the South Mountain passes. This could only be done by our cavalry crossing the river as soon as Hooker was over and moving along the base of South Mountain, all the time keeping in communication with General Lee, and between him and Hooker. This was the only way in which it could fulfill the other duty which General Lee says was imposed upon it, “to observe the movements of the enemy, and harass and impede” his march. After Hooker’s whole army had crossed the Potomac east of the mountains and gone into Pennsylvania, there was no enemy left against which it was necessary to guard the gaps of the Blue ridge in Virginia. The cavalry column which General Lee says had been left behind “to observe the enemy and impede his march,” had retired to the gaps of the Blue Ridge after Hooker crossed the Potomac on June 25–26, where it remained until the evening of the twenty-ninth, when it moved to Berryville, Virginia. It was then maneuvered in such a way that instead of keeping between Hooker and Lee, on the morning of July 3 it found itself in the rear of General Lee’s army, which had then got between it and the enemy. General Stuart had passed around Hooker’s army, while General Robertson had passed around General Lee’s.
