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Posted on 08/07/2005 9:55:41 PM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Last Stand of the Last Knight Major General J.E.B. Stuart posted his horsemen at Yellow Tavern -- between Union attackers and Richmond -- and waited for the collision. It would come with a deadliness he could never have imagined.  The legendary plumed hat and longish hair and whiskers helped turn J.E.B. Stuart into the dashing cavalier of legend. But there was plenty of substance beneath the style. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant's overland campaign had ground to a halt. In two days of bitter but inconclusive fighting in the Virginia wilderness -- that forbidding expanse of second-growth pine and tangled thicket below the Rapidan River -- Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had fought the larger and better-equipped Army of the Potomac to a standstill. The daring and aggressive Lee had foiled his enemy's attempt to slice through the Wilderness and march on to Richmond, the Confederate capital. Aided by the great profusion of natural cover, Lee had parried the thrusts of Major General George Gordon Meade, the Union army's commander, and had blunted the broad strategy imparted to Meade by Grant, who was accompanying the Army of the Potomac in his role as general in chief of all U.S. armies. By the evening of May 7, 1864, the massive Union host sat stalled along the forest's southern rim. Lee gave much credit for his success to his cavalry, especially its leader, Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart. Throughout the fighting that had just ended, the 31-year-old native of Patrick County, Virginia, had made inspired use of his 9,000 horsemen. As on numerous fields the previous fall, this most celebrated mounted leader of the war took the measure of his 12,000 opponents in the Union cavalry, currently led by a newcomer to the Virginia theater, the diminutive and feisty Major General Philip H. Sheridan. On the first day of fighting in the Wilderness, Stuart's savvy veterans cut off and pummeled Sheridan's advance echelon. On the second day they put heavy pressure on other elements of Sheridan's command, not only slowing their advance and that of the infantrymen in their rear, but also denying Meade critical intelligence on Lee's dispositions. To cap their performance, on May 7 Stuart's riders frustrated Sheridan's attempt to penetrate south of Todd's Tavern and open a way for Grant and Meade to exit the Wilderness in the direction of Spotsylva-nia Court House.  While Lee and Stuart worked closely and cordially in tandem, the same could not be said of Meade and Sheridan. Grant had brought Sheridan from Tennessee to command the Army of the Potomac's cavalry without asking for Meade's consent. Both Meade and Sheridan were highly competent officers, but Meade had a temper as volatile as Sheridan's. The two cooperated well enough during their first 24 hours below the Rapidan, but a clash of wills and temperaments seemed inevitable. By the evening of May 7, it was on the horizon. The trouble began in earnest on the afternoon of the 6th, when Meade received an erroneous report that Confederate infantry had gotten between Sheridan and the army's infantry, threatening to encircle the cavalry. Against Sheridan's protests, Meade ordered the cavalry to withdraw from Todd's Tavern. The next morning, as Sheridan had foreseen, Grant ordered the cavalry back to spearhead the army's march south to Spotsylvania. By then, however, one of Stuart's divisions, under Major General Fitzhugh Lee, occupied the very works around the tavern that the Federals had just vacated. It took an all-day slugging match to evict the newcomers, saddling Sheridan with a casualty list he blamed on Meade's overreaction to bad news.  Robert E. Lee relied on J.E.B. Stuart for everything from crack reconnaissance to timely raids. He would do the same in early May 1864 in Virginia’s Wilderness, with Stuart matching wits and spirit with Philip Sheridan (top), who had recently taken over cavalry command in the Army of the Potomac, under commander George G. Meade (bottom).  Sheridan's anger and frustration were still simmering when the next provocation came. Late on the 7th, after the fighting had died down, Meade went forward with his staff to inspect his positions below Todd's Tavern. Visiting the bivouacs of two of Sheridan's three divisions, he learned that the commanders -- Brigadier Generals Wesley Merritt and David McMurtrie Gregg -- had received no marching orders for the next morning. Without immediately informing Sheridan, he issued orders of his own. He sent Merritt's men to secure the Brock Road, the most direct route to Spotsylvania from the north, and he directed Gregg to head southwest along the Catharpin Road to guard Corbin's Bridge over the Po River, a logical avenue of enemy pursuit. Meade did not communicate with Sheridan's third division, under Brigadier General James Harrison Wilson, which already had orders to seize Spotsylvania early the next morning and hold it until the infantry arrived. When Sheridan learned of Meade's intervention, he was incensed. He later claimed he intended for Merritt and Gregg to secure not only Corbin's Bridge, but also two other spans over the meandering Po -- Snell's Bridge and the so-called Block House Bridge, both of which offered the enemy alternate routes to Spotsylvania. Meade's orders placed Merritt's command a mile or more from Block House Bridge and left Snell's completely unguarded.  Because Sheridan never issued orders of his own, it is difficult to validate his claim that he was more farsighted than Meade. As he had proved on previous occasions, he was not averse to bending the truth to win an argument. Hindsight, however, placed Meade's decisions in a bad light. Early on the morning of the 8th, Lieutenant General Richard H. Anderson, temporarily commanding Lee's First Corps, led 12,000 Confederate infantry and artillery along the Shady Grove Church Road, across the Po at Block House Bridge, and into Spotsylvania. Supported by elements of Stuart's cavalry, Anderson drove out Wilson's troopers, who had arrived not much earlier. Although it would take two weeks of fighting to establish the fact beyond doubt, Lee had thwarted Grant's first attempt to pass around his south flank on the road to Richmond. The events of May 7 were enough to cause a rift between Meade and his cavalry leader, but the breach widened after 3:00 the next morning, when the army's infantry vanguard, the V Corps of Major General G. K. Warren, began its march toward Spotsylvania. At about the same time, Merritt's troopers set out to clear the Brock Road, as Meade had ordered. But, as Lieutenant George B. Sanford of the 1st U.S. Cavalry observed, "We had certainly not advanced a mile and daylight had scarcely broken, when we were again as heavily engaged as on the previous evening. For perhaps an hour or more we managed to make some slight progress, but then by the increasing weight of the fire it became evident that Stuart had been reinforced by the Confederate infantry, and our advance came practically to a standstill." Soon, Warren's infantrymen found their path blocked by Union troopers, horses, and wagons, and it became clear they would not reach Spotsylvania in time to evict Anderson.  Warren, whose temper rivaled Meade's and Sheridan's, complained loudly about the foul-up, which he blamed on the cavalry in his front. Upon hearing the criticism, Sheridan reacted just as angrily. Arriving on the site of the traffic jam about 5:00 a.m., he pulled Merritt's men off the road, cursing Meade's interference. When the V Corps at last went forward around 6:00, some of Warren's subordinates unleashed invective of their own. Brigadier General John C. Robinson, the bushy-whiskered commander of Warren's advance division, was heard to shout, "Oh, get your double damned cavalry out of the way, there is nothing ahead but a little cavalry, we will soon clear them out!" One cavalryman who overheard this outburst thought to himself, "Old man, you will find something more than a little cavalry on ahead; but on he went and in less than fifteen minutes afterwards I saw them carry my General Robinson back on a stretcher with a leg shot off."  Sheridan at Yellow Tavern Shortly before noon, as the V Corps continued to make glacial progress against Fitz Lee and Anderson, Sheridan caught up with Meade. Then erupted one of the loudest, bitterest shouting matches ever overheard by the Army of the Potomac headquarters staff. Meade echoed Warren's criticism that the cavalry should have cleared the Brock Road long before the infantry reached it. Sheridan retorted that Meade's unwarranted meddling in the cavalry's operations had caused the foul-up. As Sheridan admitted, "One word brought on another, until, finally, I told him that I could whip Stuart if he [Meade] would only let me, but since he insisted on giving the cavalry directions without consulting or even notifying me, he could henceforth command the Cavalry Corps himself -- that I would not give it another order." Sheridan stalked off in a huff. Such flagrant insubordination could not go unpunished. Meade went directly to Grant's headquarters, where he recounted the episode, epithet for epithet. No doubt he expected Grant to take his side in the quarrel, so he must have been shocked when Grant appeared to act otherwise. But when he related Sheridan's boast that he could defeat Stuart if given a free hand, Grant is said to have replied, "Did he say so? Then let him go out and do it."  Major General Fitzhugh Lee Meade must have been shocked. Instead of disciplining Sheridan, he was forced to send him on the mission of his dreams. By 1:00 p.m. that day, he had written an order directing Sheridan to concentrate his command, stockpile three days' rations and an appropriate amount of forage, cut loose from the army, detour eastward around Spotsylvania, and head for Haxall's Landing. At that supply base, 50-some miles to the south, Sheridan was to link with Major General Benjamin F. Butler's Army of the James, which was operating directly against Richmond. There, the cavalry would refit prior to rejoining its own command. The operation, which the enemy undoubtedly would interpret as a raid on Richmond, was principally an effort to draw Stuart's men into the open for a finish fight.
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A GRAVE IN HOLLYWOOD CEMETERY, RICHMOND
(J.R.T.)
By Margaret Junkin Preston
(1820-1897)
I read the marble-lettered name,
And half in bitterness I said,
"As Dante from Ravenna came,
Our poet came from exile-dead."
And yet, had it been asked of him
Where he would rather lay his head,
This spot he would have chosen. Dim
The city's hum drifts o'er his grave,
And green above the hollies wave
Their jagged leaves, as when a boy,
On blissful summer afternoons,
He came to sing the birds his runes,
And tell the river of his joy.
Who dreams that in his wanderings wide
By stern misfortunes tossed and driven,
His soul's electric strands were riven
From home and country? Let betide
What might, what would, his boast, his pride,
Was in his stricken mother-land,
That could but bless and bid him go,
Because no crust was in her hand
To stay her children's need. We know
The mystic cable sank too deep
For surface storm or stress to strain,
Or from his answering heart to keep
The spark from flashing back again.
Think of the thousand mellow rhymes,
The pure idyllic passion-flowers,
Wherewith, in far-gone, happier times,
He garlanded this South of ours.
Provencal-like, he wandered long,
And sang at many a stranger's board,
The tenderest pathos through his song.
We owe the poet praise and tears,
Whose ringing ballad sends the brave,
Bold Stuart riding down the years.
What have we given him? Just a grave!
Oh my! . . . a tug at the heart strings. Thank you . . . again.
I'm so glad you found them. I should have posted to your post but I was in a hurry and hoped you'd know. :-)
Good afternoon everyone! Due to server problems this morning, I wasnt able to access the internet until now.
Thanks for this great thread on Jeb Stuart. I recall reading about him from a book I checked out in elementary school. It was a fascinating read & I think of him as a heroic figure comparable to Gen. R.E. Lee.
Sheridan breaks away from the Marx Brothers farce with Meade to enact a bold plan of his own.
Custer succeeds in a daring attack overshadowed by his final defeat.
Private John A. Huff causes history to ricochet with the chance of war putting a trained marksman within range of a crucial leader, but Shelby Foote writes the distance was 25-30 feet, not 400 yards.
Wounded at the battle of Haw's Shop, Virginia on May 28, 1864, Huff died of those wounds sometime later.
About 25 feet is the story I heard also. Plus it was a chance shot.
We, however, recognize the 400-yard figure as a "clerical error", the term used by J. Edgar Hoover to explain Life magazine and the Warren Commission printing Zapruder frames 312 and 313 in reverse order in order to maintain the plausible denial.
No doubt the scene of the Huff shot was chaotic, and the odds against the man trained as a sharpshooter redeployed with a revolver making that shot were great.
But not great enough to prevent it.
Good evening tex, glad your server problem was fixed.
Thanks Phil.
Maybe the witness was drunk.
I'm just now seeing this, perfect picture for today.
Huth was present and Custer was convinced he was the shooter and said as much in his report.
How good was Custer at counting Indians?
Ah. Yes, indeed. "Give me Liberty, or give me death."
Now THERE was a Southern man.
BTTT!!!!!!
We consider ourselves privileged to have you here.
Thank you for this post carton. I can see Stuart singing as he rides off. ;-)
Just wanted to say a big thank you for your work in presenting thread on JEBS!
It was great!
Taking your remark seriously, I have read that "intelligence" reported the braves would be largely absent and those present would not stand when attacked.
The CIA assured us rogue states were fifteen years from ballistic missile threat when Kim Jong Il threw a Taepodong over Japan.
Custer was given orders and was executing them, and in turn gave orders to his subordinates including one Benteen whom Custer had denied leave for a sick child hence adding to the personal animosity which contributed to Benteen being slow to follow the order given.
Another interesting question was how Bill Clinton travelled back in time to sell the indians better firepower than that issued to the U.S. cavalry.
The error in range has been attributed to a misreporting of a newspaper article published the week after Yellow Tavern.
If Foote agrees with Custer on identifying the shooter we may be assured of it as fact.
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