University of Virginia Library

IV.
A GLIMPSE OF COL. “JEB STUART.”

This sketch, may it please the reader, will not contain any
“historic events.” Not a single piece of artillery will roar in
it—not a single volley of musketry will sound—no life will be
lost from the very beginning to the end of it. It aims only to
draw a familiar outline of a famous personage as he worked his
work in the early months of the war, and the muse of
comedy, not tragedy, will hold the pen. For that brutal thing
called war contains much of comedy; the warp and woof of the
fabric is of strangely mingled threads—blood and merriment,
tears and laughter follow each other, and are mixed in a manner
quite bewildering! To-day it is the bright side of the tapestry
I look at—my aim is to sketch some little trifling scenes “upon
the outpost.”

To do so, it will be necessary to go back to the early years
of the late war, and to its first arena, the country between Manassas
and the Potomac. Let us, therefore, leave the present
year, 1866, of which many persons are weary, and return to
1861, of which many never grow tired talking—1861, with its
joy, its laughter, its inexperience, and its confiding simplicity,
when everybody thought that the big battle on the shores of
Bull's Run had terminated the war at one blow.

At that time the present writer was attached to Beauregard's
or Johnson's “Army of the Potomac,” and had gone with the

advance force of the army, after Manassas, to the little village
of Vienna—General Bonham commanding the detachment of a
brigade or so. Here we duly waited for an enemy who did not
come; watched his mysterious balloons hovering above the
trees, and regularly “turned out” whenever one picket (gray)
fired into another (gray).

This was tiresome, and one day in August I mounted my
horse and set forward toward Fairfax Court-House, intent on
visiting that gay cavalry man, Colonel “Jeb Stuart,” who had
been put in command of the front toward Annandale. A pleasant
ride through the summer woods brought me to the picturesque
little village; and at a small mansion about a mile east
of the town, I came upon the cavalry headquarters.

The last time I had seen the gay young Colonel he was
stretched upon his red blanket under a great oak by the roadside,
holding audience with a group of country people around
him—honest folks who came to ascertain by what unheard-of
cruelty they were prevented from passing through his pickets to
their homes. The laughing, bantering air of the young commandant
of the outpost that day had amused me much. I well
remembered now his keen eye, and curling moustache, and cavalry
humour—thus it was a good companion whom I was about
to visit, not a stiff and silent personage, weighed down with
“official business.” Whether this anticipation was realized or
not, the reader will discover.

The little house in which Colonel Jeb Stuart had taken up his
residence, was embowered in foliage. I approached it through
a whole squadron of horses, picketed to the boughs; and in
front of the portico a new blood-red battle flag, with its blue St.
Andrew's cross and white stars, rippled in the wind. Bugles
sounded, spurs clashed, sabres rattled, as couriers or officers,
scouts or escorts of prisoners came and went; huge-bearded
cavalrymen awaited orders, or the reply to dispatches—and from
within came song and laughter from the young commander.
Let me sketch him as he then appeared—the man who was to
become so famous as the chief of cavalry of General Lee's army;
who was to inaugurate with the hand of a master, a whole new

system of cavalry tactics—to invent the raid which his opponents
were to imitate with such good results—and to fall, after
a hundred hot fights in which no bullet ever touched him, near
the scene of his first great “ride” around the army of McClellan.

As he rose to meet me, I took in at a glance every detail of
his appearance. His low athletic figure was clad in an old blue
undress coat of the United States Army, brown velveteen pantaloons
worn white by rubbing against the saddle, high cavalry
boots with small brass spurs, a gray waistcoat, and carelessly
tied cravat. On the table at his side lay a Zouave cap, covered
with a white havelock—an article then very popular—and
beside this two huge yellow leathern gauntlets, reaching nearly
to the elbow, lay ready for use. Around his waist, Stuart wore
a black leather belt, from which depended on the right a holster
containing his revolver, and on the left a light, keen sabre, of
French pattern, with a basket hilt. The figure thus was that
of a man “every inch a soldier,” and the face was in keeping
with the rest. The broad and lofty forehead—on of the finest
I have ever seen—was bronzed by sun and wind; the eyes were
clear, piercing, and of an intense and dazzling blue; the nose
prominent, with large and mobile nostrils; and the mouth was
completely covered by a heavy brown moustache, which swept
down and mingled with a huge beard of the same tint, reaching
to his breast. Such was the figure of the young commandant,
as he appeared that day, in the midst of the ring of bugles and
the clatter of arms, there in the centre of his web upon the outpost.
It was the soldier ready for work at any instant; prepared
to mount at the sound of the trumpet, and lead his squadrons
in person, like the hardy, gallant man-at-arms he was.

After friendly greetings and dinner on the lid of a camp-chest,
where that gay and good companion, Captain Tiernan Brien, did
the honours, as second in command, Stuart proposed that we
should ride into Fairfax Court-House and see a lady prisoner of
his there. When this announcement of a “lady prisoner” drew
forth some expressions of astonishment, he explained with a
laugh that the lady in question had been captured a few

days before in suspicious proximity to the Confederate lines,
which she appeared to be reconnoitring; and that she was a
friend of the “other faction” was proved by the circumstance
that when captured she was riding a Federal Colonel's horse,
with army saddle, holsters, and equipments complete. While
on a little reconnoissance, all by herself, in this guise she had
fallen into Stuart's net; had been conducted to his headquarters;
assigned by him to the care of a lady resident at the Court-House,
until he received orders in relation to her from the army headquarters—and
this lady we were now about to visit.

We set out for the village, Stuart riding his favourite “Skylark,”—that
good sorrel which had carried him through all the
scouting of the Valley, and was captured afterwards near Sharpsburg.
This horse was of extraordinary toughness, and I remember
one day his master said to me, “Ride as hard as you choose,
you can't tire Skylark.” On this occasion the good steed was
in full feather; and as I am not composing a majestic historic
narrative, it will be permitted me to note that his equipments
were a plain “McClellan tree,” upon which a red blanket was
confined by a gaily coloured surcingle: a bridle with single
head-stall, light curb-bit, and single rein. Mounted upon his
sorrel, Stuart was thoroughly the cavalry-man, and he went on
at a rapid gallop, humming a song as he rode.

We found the lady-prisoner at a hospitable house of the village,
and there was little in her appearance or manner to indicate the
“poor captive,” nor did she exhibit any “freezing terrour,” as
the romance writers say, at sight of the young militaire. At
that time some amusing opinions of the Southerners were prevelent
at the North. The “rebels” were looked upon pretty much
as monsters of a weird and horrible character—a sort of “anthropophagi,”
Cyclops-eyed, and with heads that “did grow beneath
their shoulders.” Short rations, it was popularly supposed, compelled
them to devour the bodies of their enemies; and to fall
into their bloody clutch was worse than death. This view of
the subject, however, plainly did not possess the captive here.
Her fears, if she had ever had any of the terrible gray people,

were quite dissipated; and she received us with a nonchalant
smile, and great indifference.

I shall not give the fair dame's name, nor even venture to
describe her person, or conjecture her age—further than to say
that her face was handsome and laughing, her age about twenty-five
or thirty.

The scene which followed was a little comedy, whose gay particulars
it is easier to recall than to describe. It was a veritable
crossing of swords on the arena of Wit, and I am not sure that
the lady did not get the better of it. Her tone of badinage
was even more than a match for the gay young officer's—and
of badinage he was a master—but he was doubtless restrained
on the occasion by that perfect good-breeding and courtesy
which uniformly marked his demeanour to the sex, and his fair
adversary had him at a disadvantage. She certainly allowed
her wit and humour to flash like a Damascus blade; and, with
a gay laugh, denounced the rebels as perfect wretches for coercing
her movements. Why, she would like to know, was she
ever arrested? She had only ridden out on a short pleasure
excursion from Alexandria, and now demanded to be permitted
to return thither. “Why was she riding a Federal officer's
horse?” Why, simply because he was one of her friends. If
the Colonel would “please” let her return through his pickets
she would not tell anybody anything—upon her word!

“The Colonel” in question was smiling—probably at the
idea of allowing anything on two feet to pass “through his
pickets” to the enemy. But the impossibility of permitting this
was not the burden of his reply. With that odd “laughter of
the eye” always visible in him when thoroughly amused, he
opposed the lady's return on the ground that he would miss her
society. This he could not think of, and it was not friendly in
her to contemplate leaving him for ever so soon after making his
acquaintance! Then she was losing other pleasant things.
There was Richmond—she would see all the sights of the Confederate
capital; then an agreeable trip by way of Old Point
would restore her to her friends.

Reply of the lady extremely vivacious: She did not wish to

see the Confederate capital!—she wished to go back to Alexandria!—straight!
She was not auxious to get away from him,
for he had treated her with the very greatest courtesy, and she
should always regard him as her friend. But she wanted to go
back to Alexandria, through the pickets—straight!

That the statement of her friendly regard for the young Colonel
was unaffected, the fair captive afterwards proved. When in
due course of time she was sent by orders from army headquarters
to Richmond, and thence via Old Point to Washington, she
wrote and published an account of her adventures, in which
she denounced the Confederate officials everywhere, including
those at the centre of Rebeldom, as ruffians, monsters, and
tyrants of the deepest dye, but excepted from this sweeping
characterization the youthful Colonel of cavalry, who was the
author of all her woes. So far from complaining of him, she
extolled his kindness, courtesy, and uniform care of her comfort,
declaring that he was “the noblest gentleman she had ever
known.” There was indeed about Colonel Jeb Stuart, as about
Major-General Stuart, a smiling air of courtesy and gallantry,
which made friends for him among the fair sex, even when they
were enemies; and Bayard himself could not have exhibited
toward them more respect and consideration than he did uniformly.
He must have had serious doubts in regard to the
errand of his fair prisoner, so near the Confederate lines, but he
treated her with the greatest consideration; and when he left
her, the bow he made was as low as to the finest “lady in the
land.”

It is possible that the worthy reader may not find as much
entertainment in perusing the foregoing sketch as I do in recalling
the scene to memory. That faculty of memory is a curious
one, and very prone to gather up, like Autolycus, the “unconsidered
trifles” of life. Every trivial incident of the times I
write of comes back now—how Stuart's gay laugh came as he
closed the door, and how he caught up a drum which the enemy
had left behind them in the yard of the mansion, sprang to the
saddle, and set off at a run through the streets of the village,
causing the eyes of the inhabitants to open with astonishment at

the spectacle of Colonel Stuart running a race, with a drum before
him, singing lustily a camp song as he rode. In a number
of octavo volumes the reader will find an account of the great
career of Major-General Stuart—this was Colonel Jeb Stuart on
the outpost.

And now if the worthy reader is in that idle, unexacting
mood so dear to chroniclers, I beg he will listen while I speak
of another “trifling incident” occurring on the same day, which
had a rather amusing result. In return for the introduction
accorded me to the captive, I offered to make the young Colonel
acquainted with a charming friend of my own, whom I had
known before his arrival at the place; and as he acquiesced with
ready pleasure, we proceeded to a house in the village, where
Colonel Stuart was duly presented to Miss—. The officer
and the young lady very soon thereafter became close friends,
for she was passionately Southern—and a few words will present
succinctly the result.

In the winter of 1862, Colonel Mosby made a raid into Fairfax,
entered the Court-House at night, and captured General
Stoughton and his staff—bringing out the prisoners and a number
of fine horses safely. This exploit of the partisan greatly
enraged the Federal authorities; and Miss—, having been
denounced by Union residents as Mosby's “private friend” and
pilot on the occasion—which Colonel Mosby assured me was an
entire error—she was arrested, her trunks searched, and the
prisoner and her papers conveyed to Washington. Here she
was examined on the charge of complicity in Mosby's raid; but
nothing appeared against her, and she was in a fair way to be
released, when all at once a terrible proof of her guilt was discovered.
Among the papers taken from the young lady's trunk
was found the following document. This was the “damning
record” which left no further doubt of her guilt.

I print the paper verbatim et literatim, suppressing only the full
name of the lady:

Such was the fatal document discovered in Miss—'s trunk,
the terrible proof of her treason! The poor girl was committed
to the Old Capitol Prison as a secret commissioned emissary of
the Confederate States Government, was kept for several
months, and when she was released and sent South to Richmond,
where I saw her, she was as thin and white as a ghost—
the mere shadow of her former self.

All that cruelty had resulted from a jest—from the harmless
pleasantry of a brave soldier in those bright October days of
1861!