J. E. B. Stuart

James Ewell Brown "Jeb" Stuart (February 6, 1833 – May 12, 1864) served as a Confederate cavalry general in the American Civil War. Friends called him "Jeb," a nickname drawn from his first and middle initials. He was a cavalry commander recognized for his skill in reconnaissance and for using mounted troops to support offensive operations. Though he affected a dashing, cavalier look—wearing a red-lined gray cape, a yellow waist sash, a hat cocked to one side with an ostrich plume, a red flower in his lapel, and often cologne—his real work made him the trusted scout for Robert E. Lee’s army and boosted Southern morale. Stuart graduated from West Point in 1854 and served with the U.S. Army in Texas and Kansas. He had experience in frontier conflicts with Native Americans and the violence of Bleeding Kansas, and he took part in capturing John Brown at Harpers Ferry. When Virginia seceded, he resigned his commission to join the Confederate Army, first under Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, then in increasingly important cavalry commands for the Army of Northern Virginia, playing a role in all of that army’s campaigns until his death. He built a reputation as a bold cavalry commander, twice—during the Peninsula Campaign and the Maryland Campaign—riding completely around the Union Army of the Potomac, which brought him fame and embarrassed the North. At the Battle of Chancellorsville, he performed well as a temporary commander of the wounded Stonewall Jackson’s infantry corps. His most famous campaign, the Gettysburg campaign, had a serious flaw: his long separation from Lee’s army left Lee unaware of Union troop movements, so Lee was surprised and nearly trapped at the Battle of Gettysburg. After the war, Stuart faced criticism from the Southern press and from proponents of the Lost Cause movement. During the 1864 Overland Campaign, Union Major General 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 North Carolina border. He was the eighth of eleven children and the youngest of five sons to survive infancy. 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 served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. His mother, Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart, managed the family farm and was known as a strict, religious woman with a good head for business. He was of Scottish descent, including some Scots-Irish. His great-grandfather, Major Alexander Stuart, commanded a regiment at the Battle of Guilford Court House during the Revolutionary War. His father Archibald was a cousin of attorney Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart. Stuart was taught at home by his mother and tutors until age twelve, when he left Laurel Hill to study with various teachers in Wytheville, Virginia, and at the home of his aunt Anne and her husband, Judge James Ewell Brown (Stuart’s namesake), in Danville. He entered Emory and Henry College at fifteen and attended from 1848 to 1850. During the summer of 1848, Stuart tried to enlist in the U.S. Army but was rejected for being underage. In 1850, he obtained an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point from Representative Thomas Hamlet Averett, the man who had defeated his father in the 1848 election. Stuart was a popular student and enjoyed his time at the academy. Though not handsome as a teenager, his classmates nicknamed him “Beauty,” explaining it referred to his “personal comeliness in inverse ratio to the term employed.” He quickly grew a beard after graduation, and a fellow officer remarked he was “the only man he ever saw that [a] beard improved.”

Robert E. Lee became superintendent of the academy in 1852, and Stuart became a friend of the family, seeing them socially often. Lee’s nephew, Fitzhugh Lee, arrived at the academy in 1852. In his final year, Stuart achieved the cadet rank of second captain of the corps and was one of eight cadets named honorary “cavalry officers” for his horsemanship. He graduated 13th in a class of 46 in 1854, ranking 10th in cavalry tactics. Though he enjoyed the civil engineering curriculum and did well in mathematics, his poor drawing skills hurt his engineering studies, finishing 29th in that subject. **United States Army**

Stuart was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant and assigned to the U.S. Regiment of Mounted Riflemen in Texas. After a difficult journey, he reached Fort Davis on January 29, 1855, and led scouting missions along the San Antonio to El Paso Road for three months. He was soon transferred to the newly formed 1st Cavalry Regiment at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, where he served as regimental quartermaster and commissary officer under Colonel Edwin V. Sumner. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1855. **Marriage**

Also in 1855, Stuart met Flora Cooke, 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.” They became engaged in September, less than two months after meeting. Stuart humorously wrote of his quick courtship in Latin: “Veni, Vidi, Victus sum” (I came, I saw, I was conquered).