What is overlooked is the fact that when Stuart took off on his ride Lee retained half his cavalry with him. If it did a poor job of screening the ANV then it's because Lee didn't deploy it effectively.
“What is overlooked is the fact that when Stuart took off on his ride Lee retained half his cavalry with him.”
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of that. I’ll look into that further.
At the risk of defending Lee, he wasn’t cavalry-oriented. It would obviously have helped him if he were. That would explain his lack of effective deployment. He may also have felt unsure what to do with them given Stuart’s absence.
But I always thought his orders to Stuart were to actively scout out where the Union Army was located. In that respect, Stuart failed.