James Ewell Brown Stuart was born in Patrick County, "Laurel Hill Plantation" in Virginia, on February 6th, 1833. The son of  Archibald Stuart, a former army officer in the war of 1812, and Elizabeth Letcher Pannill, granddaughter of William Letcher, a local hero during the Revolutionary war. Archibald Stuart had four sons and 6 daughters, Jeb. being the seventh child, and youngest son. 
   From 1848 to 1850 he attended Emory and Henry College and entered the United States Military Academy on July 1, 1850  He graduated thirteenth in his class of forty-six in 1854. After graduation, Second Lieutenant Stuart was assigned to the regiment of Mounted Rifleman in Texas. Throughout his assignment to the Mounted Rifleman, Stuart proved his worth as an Army officer. Later, Stuart was transferred to and promoted in the newly formed 1st Regiment, US Cavalry. During this tour,  Stuart met and married his wife, Miss Flora Cooke, daughter of Colonel Cooke, Commander 2d Dragoons. He continued to lead his men from the front and accomplish even the most difficult missions. In one instance, he brought his unit back over 200 miles, without the help of map, compass, or scouts, while suffering from a major wound himself. This ability to lead men in the face of danger and adversity struck his commanders. They wrote many letters of praise about his abilities for his records.
   Known as Jeb by friends and acquaintances, he was already a veteran of Indian fighting on the great plains of the mid-western United States. He accompanied R. E. Lee in 1859 on his mission to end John Brown’s seizure of the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal. There he went forward and read the note calling on Brown and his followers to surrender, and signaled for the assault which recaptured the building when those terms of surrender were refused.
   On January 15, 1861, Stuart made the move which would determine his role in the Civil War. On this date he wrote to Jefferson Davis requesting a position in "The Army of the South". On May 3, 1861 Stuart sent his letter of resignation to the United States Army, and on May 24 he was named captain of the Confederate Calvary.
   Dramatic in his appearance, Stuart at twenty-eight was the right man in the right place to create the perfect image of romantic cavalier. He was handsome, he was daring, and he dressed the part, wide-brimmed hat worn at an angle and decorated with an ostrich feather and a gold star, a flowing cape, scarlet-lined jacket, yellow or red  sash around his waist, long gauntlets, golden spurs, and a rose always in his buttonhole. He was daring and fearless and he looked the part.


   In the first major battle, at Bull Run on July 21,1861, the pattern for Southern cavalry leaders was set by Jeb Stuart. During the early afternoon of that day, as General Irvin McDowell's advancing Union Army was being brought to a halt by General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, Stuart led his 1st Virginia Cavalry into the fight. When a column of New York Zouaves tried to stop the Virginians, Stuart sent his Black Horse troop charging in with flashing sabers and rattling carbines. Stuart's horsemen may not have changed the outcome that day, but they certainly added to the terror of the fleeing soldiers in blue.
    Two months after Bull Run, Stuart was a brigadier general with five more regiments under his command, and he soon added a battery of horse artillery commanded by John Pelham. After a winter of relative inactivity by both armies, Stuart's cavalry brigade left Manassas junction to join in the defense of Richmond, which was threatened by McClellan's growing forces on the Virginia peninsula. Events moved rapidly for the Confederates that spring, with former cavalryman Robert E. Lee replacing the wounded Joe Johnston as commander of the armies in northern Virginia.
     Early in June 1862, Lee sent Stuart on a reconnaissance mission that turned into a spectacular ride around the entire invading army of McClellan. With 1,200 of his finest horsemen, Stuart reached the South Anna River on the first day, then turned to the southeast along the Federal flank. After two small skirmishes Stuart made a daring decision to circle the rear of McClellan's army. To cross the Chickahominy, his men had to rebuild a bridge before they could start their return along McClellan's left flank. All the while they were, busily capturing and burning supply trains, wrecking railroads, and destroying communications. Ironically, Stuart's opposite cavalry commander in McClellan's army was his father-in-law, Philip St. George Cooke, and at one point the two men were in firing distance of each other.
    On June 14 Stuart transferred command to Fitzhugh Lee and dashed on ahead to Richmond to inform his commander that McClellan’s right flank was poorly guarded. Stuart’s report, which was subsequently published in the Richmond newspapers, made him a hero to the southern cause. Using this information, General Lee ordered Stonewall Jackson to attack the Union Army's rear and flank, as part of the Seven Days Battles, after which McClellan abandoned his long-planned assault on Richmond and withdrew to Harrison's Landing on the James River.
    Nearly captured in subsequent operations in July of 1862, in near the Rapidan, he went on to cause great mischief in Pope’s rear which opened the successful 2nd Manassas campaign. Stuart managed to overrun Union army commander Pope's headquarters and capture his full uniform and orders that provided Lee with much valuable intelligence. At the end of 1862, Stuart led a raid north of the Rappahannock River, inflicting some 230 casualties while losing only 27 of his own men.
   At Chancellorsville he was called upon to temporarily command Jackson’s corps when the latter was grievously wounded during the fighting and had to be carried from the field. He acquitted himself very well on this occasion.
   Returning to command of the cavalry soon after Chancellorsville, he participated in the largest cavalry battle ever to take place in North America, at Brandy Station in June of 1863. The battle was a draw. The quality of Federal cavalry had improved to the point that the Confederates could not always automatically be assured of victory when facing it in battle.
   During the Gettysburg Campaign, Stuart led another raid around the rear of the Federal army. Much controversy surrounds this ride, and the interpretation that he made of Lee’s orders to him regarding his proposed role in the campaign. Regardless of whether he felt himself justified in cutting himself loose from the Army of Northern Virginia, his presence with the army, directing and interpreting the scouting effort was greatly missed. Lee’s army moved blindly into Pennsylvania, and was drawn into an unplanned general engagement, against the initial wishes of its commander, at Gettysburg. Stuart arrived with his command at the end of the second day and was unable to effect the outcome of the battle, which ended as a major Confederate defeat.
   Continuing in command of the Confederate cavalry with the Army of Northern Virginia following the Gettysburg debacle, he was present for much of the fighting which comprised the early stages of Grant’s overland campaign the following year.
   He was mortally wounded while trying to fend off a thrust toward Richmond by Union cavalry under Phil Sheridan on May 11, 1864 at Yellow Tavern, Virginia. He died the next day in Richmond, at age thirty-seven. Robert E. Lee himself probably paid Stuart the finest compliment a cavalryman can receive when he said of him, “He never brought me a piece of false information.” Upon hearing of his death he was moved to say, “I can scarcely think of him without weeping.”It was his willingness to fight too often against impossible odds that lead to his death. His forces were about to be overrun by a mounted Union cavalry charge, and Major General Stuart did nothing less than fill the void in his lines with himself.
General James Ewell Brown Stuart
                       "J.E.B"
The Battle Of Bull Run
J.E.B.
The Civil War
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