Plenty of Blame To Go Around: Jeb Stuart's Controversial Ride to Gettysburg

By Eric J. Wittenberg, Columbus, Ohio

Presentation to CCWRT on 18 November 2010, Summarized by Mike Rhein

Photography by Mike Rogers

©Cincinnati CWRT, 2010

“It should have happened, but it didn’t.”

This quote by our speaker last month, Eric Wittenberg, in his program, entitled, “Plenty of Blame to Go Around,” summarized the “what if’s” arising out of Confederate cavalry General James Ewell Brown Stuart’s disastrous cavalry expedition during the 1863 Gettysburg campaign.

The aforementioned quote reflected the old “Murphy’s Law” syndrome: Anything that could possibly go wrong, will do so. For General Robert Lee, the Gettysburg campaign was replete with examples of Murphy’s Law, beginning with Stuart. Mr. Wittenberg, a Columbus, Ohio attorney and author of 18 published books (specializing in cavalry operations), making his fourth presentation to the Cincinnati Civil War Round Table, detailed Stuart’s star-crossed ride from its inception to the final destination at Gettysburg on July 2, the second day of the battle.

Mr. Wittenberg set the stage for Stuart’s ride around the Union Army of the Potomac by describing the near defeat of Stuart by Union cavalry general Alfred Pleasanton at Brandy Station, Culpeper Co., Virginia, June 9, 1863, in 14 hours of the largest cavalry battle in the war. “The Richmond papers excoriated Stuart,” he emphasized, adding that Stuart, barely held off Union cavalry thrusts at Aldie, Va. (June 17) and Middleburg (June 19) and sustained his first defeat by the Union horsemen at Upperville (June 21), Was Stuart’s pride stung by these events? Was his suggestion to Gen. Lee about riding around the Army of the Potomac (providing that it was inactive, usually moving slowly) motivated in part by his wounded pride?

(Photograph from Library of Congress, American Memory Collection LC-B813-6772C)

Our speaker stressed that Stuart, in his view, was “an extraordinarily capable, very professional soldier” and enjoyed full confidence by Gen. Lee who considered him the eyes and ears of the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee approved Stuart’s plan, providing that Stuart protected the right flank of Gen. Richard Ewell’s Second Corps as it marched into Pennsylvania, collected supplies and did damage to the enemy wherever he could. Lee’s operational orders to Stuart, written by his military secretary, Colonel Charles Marshall, were done twice, June 22-23, with the final admonition, “be watchful and circumspect in all your movements.”

The ride, which according to Mr. Wittenberg, took eight days, much longer than anticipated, started off on a wrong note, when Stuart headed through Glasscock’s Gap (Bull Run Mountains) instead of Hopewell Gap upon the suggestion by his favorite scout, John S. Mosby, and ran into the Union Gen. Winfield S. Hancock’s II Corps, marching toward Maryland. Riding back to Buckland Mills, he waits to hear from Mosby for ten hours, never hearing from him. Subsequently, Stuart lost more time in fending off a cavalry attack, raiding the Army of the Potomac’s supply depot at Fairfax Court House, laboriously crossing a difficult ford into Maryland, the only one available to Stuart.

Capturing 150 wagons and escorting them from Rockville ate more precious hours. Mr. Wittenberg said Stuart had sent two couriers to inform Lee of his whereabouts and developments, but they were captured. In the meantime, Lee is in the dark regarding the Union Army’s movements, with his anxiety increasing by the day. Another skirmish with Union cavalry at West Minister, Maryland on June 29 consumed more hours, increasing the exhaustion of Stuart’s men and horses. Another battle at Hanover, PA, June 30 against Union cavalry, led by Gen. Judson Kilpatrick, taxed Stuart’s cavalry. At the time of this battle, the speaker added, Confederate Gen. Jubal Early is marching to Gettysburg from York. He heard gunfire to the east but apparently dismissed it as firing by local militia, never investigating it. This is one of those “what if’s” to which Mr. Wittenberg alluded: What if Early had stopped and checked out the firing at Hanover? Stuart could have conceivably hooked up with him and protected Early’s flank along the way to Gettysburg, possibly assisting his division in its assault on the Union army’s 11th Corps on July 1 and maybe even help capture Culp’s Hill that day, thereby making the Army of the Potomac’s Cemetery Hill position untenable. Instead, Stuart continued to grope his way in trying to find Ewell at York and Carlisle, not arriving at Gettysburg until July 2.

Mr. Wittenberg, assessing Stuart’s ride, said that Gen. R.E. Lee shares “bulk of the blame; he issued the orders,” adding that Marshall “wrote wretched orders.” Stuart “deserves part of the blame” in that “he should have unloaded that wagon train.” He said that Early gets a “great deal of blame” since “he didn’t respond to the gunfire” and that Mosby “didn’t keep Stuart informed of developments of the Union Army.”

Mr. Wittenberg’s finely-researched presentation illustrated the age-old dilemma that has plagued all commanders throughout history: the “fog of war.”