1. I.
Stuart, chief of the Confederate cavalry in Virginia, was one
of the Dii Majores of the recent conflict—his career rather a
page from romance than a chapter of history. Everything
stirring, brilliant, and picturesque, seemed to centre in him.
There was about the man a flavour of chivalry and adventure
which made him more like a knight of the middle age than a
soldier of the prosaic nineteenth century, and it was less the
science than the poetry of war which he summed up and illustrated
in his character and career.
With the majority of those who took part in it, the late revolution
was a hard and bitter struggle, which they entered upon
resolutely, but with unconcealed distaste. To this soldier, however,
it seemed to be a splendid and exciting game, in which his
blood coursed joyously, and his immensely strong physical organization
found an arena for the display of all its faculties.
The affluent life of the man craved those perils and hardships
which flush the pulses and make the heart beat fast. A single
look at him was enough to convince anybody that Stuart loved
danger and adventure, and that the clear blue eyes of the soldier,
“with a frolic welcome took the thunder and the sunshine.”
He swung himself into the saddle, at the sound of the bugle, as
the hunter springs on horseback; and at such moments his
cheeks glowed, and his huge moustache curled with enjoyment.
The romance and poetry of the hard trade of arms seemed first
to be inaugurated when this joyous cavalier, with his floating
plume and splendid laughter, appeared upon the great arena of
the war in Virginia.
This gay bearing of the man was plainly unaffected, and few
persons could resist its influence. There was about Stuart an
inspiration of joy and youth. The war was evidently like play
to him—and he accepted its most perilous scenes and cruellest
hardships with the careless abandon of a young knight-errant
seeking adventures. Nothing seemed strong enough to break
down his powerful organization of mind and body; and danger
only aroused and brought his full faculties into play. He greeted
it with ardour and defied it with his joyous laughter—leading his
column in desperate charges with a smile upon the lips. Others
might despond, but Stuart kept his good spirits; and while the
air around him was full of hissing balls and bursting shell, he
would hum his gay songs. In Culpeper the infantry were electrified
by the laughter and singing of Stuart as he led them in
the charge; and at Chancellorsville, where he commanded Jackson's
corps after that great man's fall, the infantry veterans as
they swept on, carrying line after line of breastworks at the point
of the bayonet, saw his plume floating in front—“like Henry of
Navarre's,” one of them said—and heard his sonorous voice
singing, “Old Joe Hooker, will you come out of the Wilderness!”
This curious spirit of boyish gaiety did not characterize him on
certain occasions only, but went with him always, surrounding
every movement of the man with a certain atmosphere of frolic
and abandon. Immense animal health and strength danced in
his eyes, gave elasticity to the motions of his person, and rang
in his contagious laughter. It was hard to realize that anything
could hurt this powerful machine, or that death could ever come
to him; and the perilous positions from which he had so often
escaped unharmed, appeared to justify the idea of his invulnerability.
Although he exposed his person recklessly in more
than a hundred hot engagements, he was never wounded in any.
The resobud in his button-hole, which some child or girl had
given him, or rather say his mother's Bible, which he always
carried, seemed to protect him. Death appeared to shrink before
him and avoid him; and he laughed in the grim face, and
dared it for three years of reckless fighting, in which he seemed
every day to be trying to get himself killed.
His personal appearance coincided with his character. Everything
about the man was youthful, picturesque, and brilliant.
Lee, Jackson, and other eminent soldiers of the South, seemed
desirous of avoiding, in their dress and accoutrements every
species of display, and to aim at making themselves resemble
as closely as possible their brave soldiers, whose uniforms were
sadly deficient in military gewgaws. Stuart's taste was exactly
the opposite. He was as fond of colours as a boy or a girl. His
fighting jacket shone with dazzling buttons and was covered
with gold braid; his hat was looped up with a golden star, and
decorated with a black ostrich plume; his fine buff gauntlets
reached to the elbow; around his waist was tied a splendid yellow
silk sash, and his spurs were of pure gold. The stern Ironsides
of Cromwell would have sneered at this “frivolous boy”
as they sneered at Prince Rupert, with his scarlet cloak, his waving
plume, his white dog, and his twenty-three years—all the
more as Stuart had a white dog for a pet, wore a cape lined with
scarlet, had a plume in his hat, and—to complete the comparison—is
said to have belonged to that royal family of Stuarts
from which Rupert sprang.[1] Many excellent people did not
hesitate to take the Ironside view. They regarded and spoke
of Stuart as a trifling military fop—a man who had in some
manner obtained a great command for which he was wholly
unfit. They sneered at his splendid costume, his careless laughter,
his “love of ladies;” at his banjo-player, his flower-wreathed
horses, and his gay verses. The enemy were wiser. Buford,
Bayard, Pleasanton, Stoneman, and their associates, did not commit
that blunder. They had felt the heavy arm too often; and
knew too well the weight of that flower-encircled weapon.
There were three other men who could never be persuaded
that Stuart was no cavalry officer, and who persisted in regarding
this boyish cavalier as their right-hand man—the “eye and
ear” of their armies. These men were Lee, Johnston, and Jackson.
[1]
Prince Rupert was the nephew of Charles I., and the son of Elizabeth Stuart
