Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (20 page)

All of this throws a curious light on what was now to become the single most controversial decision of the invasion. Still smarting from the criticism
that had fallen upon him after Brandy Station, J.E.B. Stuart began casting about “for some other point at which to deliver at effective blow.” According to his official report in August 1863, he proposed that, instead of routinely screening the army’s movement northward across the Potomac, he should loop eastward, gallop around the tail of the
Army of the Potomac as it moved after the Confederates, and give a presumably underdefended Washington the scare of its life. Stuart had what he counted upon as “accurate and reliable” information from “the fearless and indefatigable” ranger, John Mosby, about Union movements, and once he had sown confusion between Washington and the Army of the Potomac, he could circle north and rejoin “our army north of the Potomac.” Stuart would leave two brigades behind to guard the Blue Ridge gaps; but otherwise he would let the mountains do the screening, and launch his third great cavalry raid of the war.
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Since Stuart’s first outline of this plan has not survived, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the idea was first conceived and when it was first brought to Lee’s notice. John Mosby recalled that Stuart first raised the possibility of a raid on June 19th, and Lee’s military secretary,
Charles Marshall, referred vaguely to a “conversation” Lee had with Stuart and Longstreet at Paris, Virginia (near
Ashby’s Gap), which could only have occurred on June 20th. Lee’s first recorded comment, on June 22nd, was an answer to a written plan Stuart had submitted first to Longstreet. It is important to notice, even at this stage of the invasion, that Lee was already annoyed at having to deal with a certain intelligence deficit, since he began his letter by asking Stuart if he knew where Hooker was “and what he is doing? I fear he will steal a march on us and get across the Potomac before we are aware.” Nevertheless, Lee authorized Stuart to carry out his plan, provided he left enough cavalry to guard the gaps, and move “into Maryland, and take position on General Ewell’s right … guard his flank, keep him informed of the enemy’s movements, and collect all the supplies you can for the use of the army.”
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This is an oddly worded letter, since it does not appear to be answering the question Stuart claims in his August report to have put before Lee—whether he could launch a raid around the Army of the Potomac toward Washington. If anything, it reads like a response to a far simpler suggestion that Stuart’s cavalry quit guarding the Blue Ridge gaps and move north across the Potomac with Dick Ewell’s corps, at the head of the invasion. If we remember that the Army of the Potomac’s infantry was still dribbled out on the roads between Fairfax,
Manassas Junction, and Leesburg, then giving up the gaps was actually a serious proposition, since Hooker might then turn abruptly westward, overrun the gaps, and move into the Shenandoah Valley behind Lee. Certainly, Lee still nursed some anxiety that the cavalry collisions at Aldie, Upperville, and Middleburg might signal “a real advance
toward the valley” by Hooker. But Ewell’s corps was already at Greencastle on the 22nd; that same day Lee authorized him to strike north and east through the Cumberland Valley to Harrisburg, and by that point Lee may have regarded the gaps as superfluous. Stuart, then, could go and join Ewell on the Susquehanna—where, presumably, the action would be—and Lee advised Ewell that he should expect Stuart “to march with three brigades across the Potomac” and screen Ewell’s right, while
John Imboden’s independent cavalry brigade would “perform the same offices on your left.”
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Lee routed this authorization through Longstreet, so that Longstreet would be aware that his right flank would have only a two-brigade screen in the gaps. Stuart’s headquarters was at that moment at
Rector’s Crossroads, just ten miles east of
Ashby’s Gap and the road northwest to Winchester, and it would have cost Stuart little in the way of time or trouble to have pivoted north, keeping the Blue Ridge on his left, and cross the Potomac just below Harpers Ferry. But Longstreet forwarded the authorization to Stuart on the evening of the 22nd with a “suggestion” that Stuart “pass by the enemy’s rear if he thinks that he may get through.” That was an entirely different proposition, since getting anywhere near “the enemy’s rear” would have forced Stuart to turn east rather than north, swinging below
Manassas Junction and coming up to cross the Potomac somewhere between Washington and the Union Army at Edwards’ Ferry. Longstreet had evidently had some conversation with Lee about this, since he added for Stuart’s benefit that Lee spoke “of your leaving via
Hopewell Gap”—just north of
Thoroughfare Gap, in the diminutive
Bull Run mountain range, and southeast of Rector’s Crossroads—“and passing by the rear of the enemy.” Almost as an afterthought, Longstreet explained that if Stuart followed strictly in the path of the Army of Northern Virginia, it would surely send to Hooker the message that Lee had completely abandoned the Shenandoah, whereas a movement eastward would be “less likely to indicate what our plans are.” After all, Longstreet was still operating under the assumption that Lee was not looking for anything more than a defensive battle north of the Potomac, and there was no point in poking Hooker into motion by a gesture as dramatic as the disappearance of the last sizable Confederate forces south of the Potomac.
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If Lee had indeed been worried that Stuart might give his game away, by the next day he had changed his mind. On June 23rd, Lee sent a supplementary order to Stuart, directing him that, “if General Hooker’s army remains inactive,” he could make his move eastward. But if Hooker should “now appear to be moving northward,” then the game was afoot and Stuart need not worry about tipping the Army of Northern Virginia’s hand. In that case, Stuart should pull his cavalry back into the Shenandoah Valley, and cross the Potomac at Shepherdstown after Longstreet and Hill. Only then should he
turn east, to Frederick, and then make a straight beeline north to catch up to Ewell so that he could begin screening “the right of Ewell’s troops.” But Lee then added this fatal liberty: if “you can pass around their army without hinderance,” Stuart should consider himself the best judge and instead “cross the river east of the mountains.” A good deal of what happened afterward hung on the exact meaning of the words
east of the mountains
. (
Charles Marshall believed that Lee meant that Stuart was to cross the Potomac “immediately east of the mountains, so as to be close to the right flank of the army.”) Stuart could, if he thought best, use the
east of the mountains
option for crossing the Potomac. But it was Lee’s opinion that “you had better withdraw this side of the mountain to-morrow night” and “cross at Shepherdstown next day.”
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This is far cry from a grant of full discretion; there is nothing which implies that Lee intended
pass around their army
to mean a joyride around the entire
Army of the Potomac or even just the three Federal corps which formed the westernmost wing of Hooker’s pell-mell rush to the Potomac. Both Stuart and, years later, Stuart’s aide Major Henry B. McClellan argued that Lee followed this June 23rd order with a third order that night, explaining “at considerable length … that, as the roads leading northward from Shepherdstown and Williamsport were already encumbered by the infantry, the artillery, and the transportation of the army,” Stuart should not only ride eastward, but far enough eastward that when he turned north, he would rendezvous with
Jubal Early on the Susquehanna, rather than with “Ewell at Harrisburg.” But even if the “third order” was actually a confusion introduced by Stuart’s report, as Charles Marshall claimed, or an invention of Henry McClellan’s postwar imagination, Lee had still given Stuart an opening; and given how badly Stuart wanted what Longstreet half-apologetically called “something better than the drudgery of a march along our flank,” even a tea-cup crack would have sufficed.
East of the mountains
thus became any point on the Potomac between Harpers Ferry and Washington.
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After spending June 24th organizing and preparing, Stuart and three brigades of Confederate cavalry, 4,900 men in all, set out in the predawn darkness of June 25th. And from that moment, nearly every part of Stuart’s grand design began to go awry. Moving through Glasscock’s (rather than Hopewell) Gap to Haymarket, the head of Stuart’s column bumped unexpectedly into “an immense
wagon train,” which turned out to be the tail end of Winfield Hancock’s
2nd Corps, blocking the roads north in exactly the fashion Lee had described as a “hinderance.” Stuart had been assured by Mosby’s scouts that there were no Federals nearer than
Manassas Junction, but here was a dauntingly large number of them, and he dared do nothing more than unlimber a battery of light horse artillery and lob a few annoying shells their way.
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Stuart might have read the signs for what they were, and doubled back to the Shenandoah toward Shepherdstown. Instead, he took this as the encouraging omen he wanted, and rode eastward, barging into Fairfax Court House on June 27th just as the Federals had left it behind, and heading for Rowser’s Ford, only ten miles above Washington, to cross the Potomac. A few miles more, and Stuart’s horsemen struck the National Road west of Washington, where to their delight they bagged an eight-mile-long Federal wagon train with 140 wagons and mule teams. The train’s cavalry escort tried to turn the head of the train around, but as soon as “the rebels … saw the turning wagons,” they descended “with lightning speed.” Wagons trying to turn out of the road collided with wagons already in flight, “taking off wheels, breaking the tongues, and … becoming a total wreck.” Only “about fifteen or twenty” of the wagons managed to escape; the rest, along with 600 mules, “swapped hands in an hour.” The last wagon in the train was so close to Washington
that “the dome of the capitol was distinctly visible” and Stuart sat down to wonder whether it might be worth “our entering Washington City.” But the heavy
artillery in the Washington fortifications would offer more resistance than unarmed teamsters, and since “most of the drivers were negroes,” who could be converted into high-value slave property in Richmond, there was more to be accomplished in sorting out these new prizes. (One trooper even “recognized and claimed” several of his relatives’ runaways.) Besides that, it was finally beginning to dawn on Stuart that he had “lost much time from my march to join General Lee,” and it was time to rendezvous with his commander. The problem was that, although Stuart had made a few perfunctory attempts to communicate with Lee, by June 28th he had no idea of Lee’s location, much less Early’s or Ewell’s.
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In the years after the Civil War, Stuart’s dilemma would become the shackles around his reputation. Embittered Confederates would blame Stuart’s “wild ride” (as Longstreet called it) for blinding Lee’s eyes, failing to obtain intelligence on the numbers, direction, and leadership of the Federals, and forcing him to fight a battle at Gettysburg which Lee had never planned and did not want. “The failure to crush the Federal army in 1863,” solemnly pronounced Harry Heth, “can be expressed in five words—
the absence of our cavalry
.” Lee himself started to grow restive in Stuart’s absence on June 27th, and began sending out scouts “inquiring of the whereabouts of General Stuart.” By June 28th he was complaining “that he was much disturbed” by Stuart’s absence. “I cannot think what has become of Stuart. I ought to have heard from him long before now.”
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Stuart’s raid was, indeed, an act of folly—ill-planned, badly conducted, and (until the very end) executed with an almost total disregard for any interest other than the self-promotion of J.E.B. Stuart. And yet, one crime which Lee should not have hung on Stuart’s shoulders was that of depriving the Army of Northern Virginia of the intelligence the cavalry owed it. John Mosby insisted, in Stuart’s defense, that “nobody can show that General Lee did, or omitted to do, anything on account of his ignorance of the situation of the Northern army.” Nor was Lee as ignorant of Stuart’s position as was later portrayed. Lee told Campbell Brown that he knew “Gen’l Stuart had not complied with his instructions” but instead had “gone off clear around” the Federal army, because “I see by a (Balt
o
or N.Y.?) paper that he is near Washington.” It was not the absence of information that Stuart ought to have supplied, “as that of Stuart himself, that so disturbed General Lee.”
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The proof of that arrived at Lee’s headquarters tent near Chambersburg on the evening of June 28th, just as Stuart’s whooping cavalrymen were corralling the great wagon train outside Washington. It came in the form of a scout, and his name was Harrison.

  CHAPTER SEVEN