Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/109

 the "messenger and prophet," as some at the North delighted to call him.

J. E. B. Stuart's duties began in the late war in the Valley of Virginia, as a Lieutenant-Colonel of cavalry under General Johnston, when he was confronting Patterson, and after that his person, his prowess, his daring, his dash, his gay humor, his great services, are as familiar as "household words" to all of us. Many within the sound of my voice recall him then. His strong figure, his big brown beard, his piercing, laughing blue eye, the drooping hat and black feather, the "fighting jacket," as he termed it, the tall cavalry boots, the high health and exuberant vitality, forming one of the most jubilant and striking figures in the war, which cannot easily be forgotten. It was after the first battle of Manassas that my personal intercourse with him began. I in turn, as he was promoted, commanded his old regiment, his old brigade, and his old division—being one step behind him—and feel that, perhaps, I have a right to speak of him. Can I or any one else do justice to his many exploits as commander of the cavalry of the historic "Army of Northern Virginia?" Is it necessary to tell you that his ride around McClellan's army, on the Richmond lines, was not undertaken to gain eclat by the popular applause it might bring him, but it was made to locate the flanks of the Federal army—to blaze the way for the great Stonewall Jackson, whose memory has been so vividly recalled to us, and whom General Lee was planning to bring down upon the right and rear of McClellan, and wanted to know where it was located. I commanded a regiment upon that expedition, and know that after Stuart found himself in rear of the Federal right, his own grand genius taught him to make the circuit—the entire circuit of the Federal army—as the easiest way to avoid the dispositions that were being made to cut him off, should he return the way he marched.

Must I tell you of his trip to Catlett's, in Pope's rear, or of his second ride around the same McClellan, and of his ride from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to Leesburg, Virginia, a distance of ninety miles, in thirty-six hours—a march that has no equal in point of rapidity in the records of the war? Of his behavior upon the right of Jackson at Fredericksburg? Of Chancellorsville, where an eye-witness asserts that he could not get rid of the idea that "Harry of Navarre" was present, except that Stuart's plume was