Free Lee and His Men at Gettysburg: The Death of a Nation by Clifford Dowdey Page B

unmistakable to impose a conscious decision on Stuart. He must either turn back and take the safe way west of the mountains until he caught up with the army, or make a more circuitous swing around Hooker than he had originally planned. According to Stuart’s report, it never occurred to him to turn back. How?ever, doughty Mosby assumed that he would and returned to his lone operations, leaving Stuart without his most able scout.
    By now Stuart had not only his heart but also his inflexible determination set on the dangerous way. Indeed, every de?tail of the cavalry’s movement had been planned for the audacious ride. The two brigades Stuart had left to guard the mountain passes until Lee was safely across the Potomac were those Stuart liked the least. One was commanded by Beverly Robertson, whom he distrusted with reason, the other by Grumble Jones, whose antipathy for Stuart at least equaled Stuart’s for him.
    Although unpredictable Robertson was senior to dependable Jones, he commanded the smaller brigade. This disparity Stuart left them to work out between themselves. After all, they needed only to guard the passes and then fall in with the army. It certainly never occurred to Stuart that the two brigades would remain fixed, as if planted there, in an inanition of command which immobilized the men for whom Lee in Pennsylvania was anxiously watching.
    Stuart’s mind was not on those men. His mind was on the ride. To that end, he had reduced his artillery to six guns and sacrificed his wagons, forcing his already worn horses and tired men to live off the country. To accompany him he had selected his three favorite brigades, and their’leaders were always primed for a fight or a frolic.
    Wade Hampton, a militarily untrained South Carolina plantation grandee, commanded one brigade with a native ability that was steadily maturing with experience. As tireless as Stuart, the huge Hampton was so powerful and combative that in his youth he went into the woods seeking bears to fight with a knife.
    Stuart was going to miss his friend Rooney Lee, the general’s son, about whom it was said “he was too big to be a man but not big enough to be a horse.” The Harvard-educated younger Lee had to be left behind because of the leg wound he had suffered at the hands of Pleasonton’s people. He was later to be taken by Federals from his mother’s house, where his leg was healing, and carted off to prison while his beautiful wife died.
    Colonel John Chambliss would handle Rooney’s brigade, and he was becoming a good man. Chambliss was a West Pointer who, soon after graduation, had returned to work on his father’s large plantation in Virginia. Bringing his own stable of horses with him when he volunteered to defend his state, Chambliss, who had known his commanding officer at the Point, soon became adapted to the mold of a typical cavalry leader with Jeb Stuart.
    For the third brigade, Stuart was heartened by the return to command of his other Lee friend, twenty-eight-year-old Fitzhugh Lee, the commanding general’s nephew. Fitz Lee was the bon vivant and the gourmet of the cavalry command. Perhaps not so meticulous in detail as Wade Hampton, he had the background of West Point and the regular army, and his love of fighting was native and joyous. He had been laid up with rheumatism, and Stuart had missed his laughter, but Fitz made it to the concentration for the ride North. He wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
    These were not the lieutenants to counsel caution. All were of that breed which used to be called “tough gentlemen.” They were gentlemen in the tradition, tough by nature and habits of life, and they felt very personally about what the enemy had done to plantations and the horse country. When Stuart called: “Follow me!” they would be breathing on his neck and he would have to gallop hard to keep ahead of them.
    It was the elan of his officers which Stuart responded to—not that last worried admonition from