Jeb Stuart, The Last Cavalier Read online

  He had visited his family in the Virginia hills of Patrick County and gone to Richmond for a convention of Episcopal laymen, and had then been called to Washington to negotiate with the War Department. For Lieutenant Stuart was something of an inventor as well as an Indian fighter. He had devised a new means of attaching a saber to a belt and was trying to sell his patent to the Government.

  Thus, on the morning of October 17, 1859, he was cooling his heels in an anteroom of the War Department when a flurry of excitement struck the inner offices. There seemed to be trouble in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Something about raiders. An officer came from the Secretary's suite. Would Lieutenant Stuart deliver a message to Colonel Robert E. Lee? The colonel was fortunately at his home at Arlington, also on leave from a Western post. Stuart could almost see the familiar white-columned mansion across the river. He lost no time.

  Before noon Stuart had crossed the long bridge with a message calling Lee to the War Department with all possible speed. Lee and Stuart left Arlington at once. The lieutenant told his old West Point commandant all he knew or could guess of the Harpers Ferry troubles, and asked permission to go with him as an aide.

  The War Department was in haste. No army troops were on hand, but the Navy Department had sent off Lieutenant Israel Green with 90 Marines. They left on the three-thirty train while Lee and Stuart were at the White House in conference with President Buchanan and Secretary of War John B. Floyd. The President signed a proclamation of martial law. Lee was given command of all forces in Harpers Ferry. Stuart would act as his aide.4

  There was no train, but the railroad sent a locomotive for them, and Stuart and Lee roared through the Maryland countryside in the jolting engine toward Harpers Ferry, where Lee had telegraphed Green to wait for them.

  Lieutenant Green met Lee and Stuart as they dismounted from the engine. He remembered few details of their appearance. Of Lee:

  "He was in civilian dress He wore no beard, except a dark mustache, and his hair was slightly gray."

  Of Stuart he noticed only the rakish rolled brim of a big brown hat. The young cavalryman was broad in the shoulders, standing about five feet ten inches. The two might have been a pair of merchants on a holiday, for all the concern Lieutenant Green could read in their manner.5

  Lee marched the Marines over a bridge into Harpers Ferry, led them into the yard of the enginehouse and relieved the militia at eleven P.M.

  One of the first to speak to him in the half-darkness was the district Congressman, A. R. Boteler, an acquaintance. Lee assured him there would be an attack at dawn.

  Lee explained his plan to Stuart: The Lieutenant would carry to the enginehouse a written demand for surrender. If the raiders refused, a party of picked men would rush the doors. To avoid killing captives they would use bayonets only.

  Apparently out of courtesy Lee asked a militia colonel from Frederick, one Shriver, if his men wanted to make the attack.

  "These men of mine have wives and children at home," Shriver said. "I will not expose them to such risks. You are paid for doing this kind of work."

  Lee made the same offer to Colonel Baylor, who also declined.

  Lee turned to Green: "Lieutenant, do you want the honor of taking these men out?"

  Green solemnly shook Lee's hand and expressed profuse thanks. He chose a dozen Marines to attack and as many more to be held in reserve.6

  It was almost six thirty A.M. when the storming party took position near the enginehouse. Stuart and Green agreed on a signal for attack; Jeb would simply wave his hat.

  When the troops were lined up against the building, Stuart went to a door and called. Someone inside shouted. Stuart read Lee's message in the gray light:

  Colonel Lee, United States Army, commanding the troops sent by the President of the United States to suppress the insurrection at this place, demands the surrender of the persons in the Armory buildings.

  If they will peaceably surrender themselves and restore the pillaged property, they shall be kept in safety to await the orders of the President. Colonel Lee represents to them, in all frankness, that it is impossible for them to escape; that the Armory is surrounded on all sides by troops, and that if he is compelled to take them by force he cannot answer for their safety.

  There was a glimpse of the man called "Smith." Stuart wrote: "He opened the door about four inches and placed his body against the crack, with a cocked carbine in his hands: 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 Osawatomie Brown, who had given us so much trouble in Kansas."

  Old Brown was talkative. He wanted to leave the enginehouse undisturbed, and be allowed to cross the bridge into Maryland.

  The hostages inside began to clamor, and someone asked Colonel Lee to amend his terms.

  A voice rose above the rest: "Never mind us! Fire!"

  Lee recognized it as that of Colonel Washington, even at his distance: "The old revolutionary blood does tell," he said.

  As Brown and Stuart ended their long talk the old raider shouted, "Well, Lieutenant, I see we can't agree. You have the numbers on me, but you know we soldiers aren't afraid of death. I would as leave die by a bullet as on the gallows."

  "Is that your final answer, Captain?"

  "Yes," Brown said.

  Stuart stepped aside and waved his hat. Green and some of the Marines looked back to a slight elevation some forty feet away, where Colonel Lee stood behind a masonry pillar. Lee raised his hand. Green wrote: "He had no arms upon his person, and treated the affair as one of no great consequence, which could be speedily settled by the Marines."7

  Three Marines pounded on the thick doors with sledge hammers; the planks shivered but did not give. Green ordered a halt and looked about for a battering ram:

  "My eye caught sight of a ladder, lying a few feet from the engine house." He put his twelve storming Marines on the ladder, and had the reserve lined up beside them, ready for action. The troops walked backward for a few feet and then ran, smashing the ladder against the door; the wood caved in at the second blow. Green glanced at the opening: "This entrance was a ragged hole low down in the right hand door, the door being splintered and cracked some distance upward. I instantly stepped from my position in front of the stone abutment, and entered."

  Green ran to the rear of the building and came between the two fire engines. He saw Colonel Washington.

  "Hello, Green," Washington said. The men shook hands.

  A gray-haired man kneeling by Washington cocked a carbine. The Marine raised his light dress sword.

  Washington pointed to the man at his feet. "This is Osawatomie," he said.

  Green struck with the sword. Brown turned and took a deep cut in his neck. He rolled onto his back, unconscious. Green was not through: "Instinctively as Brown fell I gave him a saber thrust in the left breast." The sword bent double.

  Firing swept the enginehouse. A Marine fell at the entrance, clutching his abdomen.

  Three or four Marines came, "rushing in like tigers," as Green recalled it. They bayonetted a man under a fire engine and pinned another against a wall—the young rebels, Anderson and Thompson, who had so lately been aghast to find themselves traitors to their country. Thompson died instantly; Anderson was dragged out, groaning. Green called to his men to spill no more blood, and the others were made prisoners.

  The fight had lasted no more than three minutes. Green saw: "The engine house was thick with smoke, and it was with difficulty that a person could be seen across the room." Green noticed Washington, "as cool as he would have been on his own veranda entertaining guests." But the colonel would not leave the building until he had pulled on a pair of green kid gloves. The famous man then stepped into the daylight, the gesture of the gloves in strange contrast to his disheveled appearance. Congressman Boteler came to congratulate Washington.

  "Lewis, old fellow, how do you feel?"

  "Hungry as a hound and dry as a powder horn," Washingt
on said. "Come to think of it, I've had nothing to eat for forty-ofld hours, and nothing better to drink than water out of a horse bucket."

  He went toward The Wager House for a drink with his friends: "It seems months since I've had one."

  Men bore old Brown from the enginehouse and laid him on the ground outside, where he regained consciousness. Marines formed a line to keep back the curious crowds, and Colonel Lee ordered Brown carried into a nearby office.

  Stuart somehow got into the enginehouse before firing had ceased. He was among the first, for he snatched old Brown's bowie knife to keep as a souvenir.

  Brown was besieged in his haven. Congressman Boteler found the old man smeared with blood, "like some aboriginal savage with his war paint on."

  "Captain Brown, what brought you here?"

  "To free your slaves."

  "How did you expect to do it, with the small force you brought?"

  "I expected help."

  "From whites as well as blacks?"

  "I did."

  "Then you have been disappointed in not getting it." "Yes."

  "Will there be more attempts to cause the slaves to rise up?" "Time will show," Brown said.

  A Catholic priest came into the room. He had just administered last rites to a Marine. Brown shouted excitedly. "Get out of here!" he called to the priest. "Go out! I don't want you about me. Go out!"8

  A remarkable group entered Brown's room, as if summoned by some caprice of destiny:

  Colonel Robert E. Lee, Lieutenant Stuart, Senator J. M. Mason, Governor Henry Wise, Congressman C. L. Vallandigham of Ohio, Colonel Washington, Congressman Charles J. Faulkner of Virginia - all soon to be drawn into the whirlwind of violence sweeping the country.

  "If you are uncomfortable, I will bar all visitors," Lee began. "I am glad to make myself and my motives understood," Brown said.

  For hours the leading men of Virginia quizzed old Brown, and though he refused to incriminate others, he astonished his captors with his forthrightness. He wrung from Governor Wise the tribute: "The gamest man I ever saw."

  The questions were almost endless:

  Mason: "Who furnished the money for your expedition?"

  "I furnished most of it myself. It is by my own folly that I have been taken. I could easily have saved myself from it had I exercised my own better judgment, rather than yielded to my feelings. . . . 1 wanted to allay the fears of those who believed we came here to burn and kill."

  "But you killed some people passing along the streets quietly." "Well, sir, if anything of that kind was done, it was without my knowledge."

  Vallandigham: "Mr. Brown, who sent you here?"

  "No man sent me here; it was my own prompting, and that of my Maker, or that of the devil, whichever you please to ascribe it to. I acknowledge no man in human form."

  A young man in a volunteer's uniform: "How many men in all did you have?"

  "I came to Virginia with eighteen men only, besides myself."

  "What in the world did you suppose that you could do with that number?"

  "Young man, I don't wish to discuss that question here."

  Mason: "How do you justify your acts?"

  "I think, my friend, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity—I say it without wishing to be offensive—and it would be perfectly right in any one to interfere with you so far as to free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage. I do not say this insultingly."

  "I understand that," Mason said.

  "I think I did right, and that others will do right to interefere with you at any time and all times. I hold that the Golden Rule, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you', applies to all who would help others to gain their liberty."

  Lieutenant Stuart shouted, "But you don't believe in the Bible."

  "Certainly I do," Brown said.

  Mason held up a pamphlet, the "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States," taken from the raider's pocket. "Did you consider this as a military organization in this paper? I have not yet read it."

  "I did in some sense. I wish you would give that paper close attention."

  "You considered yourself the commander-in-chief of these military forces?"

  "I was chosen... commander-in-chief of that force." "What wages did you offer?" Mason asked. "None."

  Stuart interrupted once more: " 'The wages of sin is death.' " Brown turned to Stuart: "I would not have made such a remark to you, if you had been a prisoner and wounded in my hands."

  There was a brief silence, broken by a bystander: "Did you not promise a Negro in Gettysburg twenty dollars a month?" "I did not."9

  There was much more, all recorded by a New York Herald reporter, and most of it, perhaps, heard by the intent Lieutenant Stuart. But in the afternoon Lee sent Stuart with a few Marines and a wagon into Maryland to search the farm old Brown had made his headquarters. Stuart brought back a wagonload of handmade pikes.

  Harpers Ferry was recovering from excitement. Five survivors of the raid had lain outside the enginehouse for an hour or more. Several were led to prison at nearby Charlestown, a few had escaped, and others had died.

  Young Anderson writhed in the yard too long, a visiting farmer thought. The countryman looked at the boy in bitter silence, then walked away. He returned to find Anderson still breathing.

  "Well, it takes a hell of a long time for you to die," the farmer said.

  But Anderson's time was near. Some bystanders spit tobacco juice into his eyes, and his face grimaced in pain as he breathed his last.

  Bodies were collected from the river and the streets and buried in a pit beside the Shenandoah. One body was missing, however, for doctors from Winchester took Anderson's corpse from the yard and stuffed it into a barrel, for use in their dissections. One witness, John Barry, wrote: "Head foremost, they rammed him in, but they could not bend his legs so as to get them into the barrel with the rest of the body . . . they strained so hard that the man's bones or sinews fairly cracked."

  Old Brown's son, Watson, was now in his last hours, and he, too, was put through a catechism, by C. W. Tayleure, a Baltimore reporter:

  "What brought you here?"

  "Duty, sir."

  "Is it then your idea of duty to shoot down men upon their own hearth-stones for defending their rights?"

  "I am dying, I cannot discuss the question. I did my duty as I saw it."

  One of the raiders listened calmly, another "with uncontrollable terror," as the questioning went on.10

  The roles of Stuart and Lee in the incident were near an end. They remained in the buzzing town for another day as the militia companies drifted away and the citizens went back to their daily routine. Panic subsided. There was brief excitement the night following Brown's capture—a report of a slave rebellion in Pleasant Valley, six miles out. But when Stuart and Lee rode there with Green and thirty Marines they found it a false alarm. They were greeted by yawning planters in torchlight, and Negroes who gaped at the troops, obviously more frightened by the name of Brown than by the soldiers themselves.

  Governor Wise had brought other troops into Harpers Ferry, including the neatly uniformed Richmond Howitzers, in whose ranks marched the eminent young novelist, John Esten Cooke. The writer was a cousin of Stuart's wife, Flora; Jeb would soon meet him again.

  Lee and Stuart took a train to Washington the next morning as casually as if Harpers Ferry had dropped from their lives, and as if there could be no aftermath to the raid by the pale-eyed old man and his band of fumbling revolutionaries.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Young Warrior

  JAMES E. B. STUART was born February 6, 1833, in a comfortable, unpretentious farmhouse in Southwestern Virginia, Laurel Hill, the seventh of eleven children, and the youngest son.

  His father was Archibald Stuart, a soldier in the War of 1812, who returned to a country law practice and a career in politics. He long represented Patrick County in the Virginia Assembly, and held a seat in Congress
during the Nullification crisis; he sided with John C Calhoun.

  Archibald has come down in family memoirs as "a powerful orator and advocate," a great singer and social companion, a charmer and wit, a bon vivant whose nature was to be reflected in his most famous son.

  He reared his family in a home provided by his wife, an inheritance from the well-to-do Letcher family.

  The clan was five generations old in Virginia with the arrival of the brood of eleven at Laurel Hill. The first of the American line was Archibald Stuart the elder, an Irish refugee of 1726, who was obliged to hide out in Western Pennsylvania for seven years and then drifted into the Shenandoah Valley and took up lands which made him rich.

  One of his sons was Major Alexander Stuart, commander of a Virginia regiment at the battle of Guilford Courthouse in the Revolution. The major had two horses shot beneath him, and was badly wounded, captured by the British and exchanged. In his later years-he lived to the age of ninety—he became a man of wealth and influence in Virginia, a patron of education and the arts, and a founder of the college to become Washington and Lee University.

  The major's younger son, Alexander, won distinction as a member of the Virginia Executive Council, a Federal judge in Missouri, and Speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives. Alexander was the grandfather of J. E. B. Stuart.

  James's mother was Elizabeth Letcher Pannill, of a family which furnished governors for Kentucky and Virginia. John Letcher, the Civil War Governor of Virginia, was a close kinsman. She was related by marriage to Governor Sam Houston of Texas, and to the distinguished Hairston family of Virginia and North Carolina.