“’Tis sown in weakness. It is raised in power.”
Softly the promise floated on the air,
While the low breathings of the sunset hour
Came back, responsive to the mourners’ prayer.
Gently they laid him underneath the sod
And left him with his fame, his country and his God.
Stuart had left behind him, even when pressed by his enemies, but one artillery limber. From sunset until eleven o’clock at night these fierce raiders and their harried steeds slept. Awakened at midnight, by dawn they reached Richmond. General Stuart turned over the command of the brigade to Colonel Fitzhugh Lee, near Charles City, at sunset on the night of the 14th, and taking with him one courier and a guide, he hastily rode to report to General Lee the result of his expedition. Once during the night the wiry trooper stopped to refresh himself with a cup of coffee. For twenty miles of his journey he was liable at any turn in the road to meet Federal scouts. The hours of the night were long. Stuart both in body and mind had borne tremendous burdens on his great march, but he felt more than repaid for all he had suffered and endured when, as the sun rose over General Lee’s headquarters, with his two faithful companions he dismounted to tell the great chieftain what he and his men had accomplished. He had captured one hundred and sixty-five prisoners and brought them out with him. He had captured two hundred and sixty horses and mules, which he was enabled to turn over to the quartermaster’s department. He had destroyed not less than seventy-five wagons, two schooners and great quantities of forage, and to the Federals more trains were lost than were in the possession of the brigade quartermaster, at the front, with McClellan’s great army.
This exploit gave General Stuart a leading place among Confederate cavalry leaders, which he ably and fully sustained until the end so sadly came to him at Yellow Tavern, almost to an hour, two years later, in his desperate defense of Richmond from the approach of Sheridan and his raiders. He deserved all the world said and thought about him. His genius, his daring, his unfaltering courage, his cheerfulness and calmness in danger stamped him as a military prodigy and gave him a renown that would increase and brighten, as, month by month, fate was yet to open for him the paths of true greatness.
Chapter XV
BATTLE AND CAMPAIGN OF TREVILIAN
STATION, JUNE 11th AND 12th, 1864
General Meade, notwithstanding his splendid service to the Federal Army at Gettysburg, did not receive the promotion to which he and many of his associates and friends felt that he was entitled. In the fall of 1863 and in the early part of 1864 the failure of Meade to meet public expectation induced President Lincoln to bring General Grant from the West to direct the military movements around Washington and Richmond. There had been so many disappointments under the impetus of the cry, “On to Richmond,” that General Grant determined, as he said, “to make Lee’s army my only objective point. Wherever Lee goes we will go and we will hammer him continuously until by mere attrition, if nothing else, there shall be nothing left him but submission.” General Grant had many successes to his credit, but he had never faced General Lee, and he had not yet fully comprehended the character of the foe he was to encounter in the new field to which he had come. He had before him a gigantic task. It required several great battles to awake General Grant fully to the burdens he must carry in the mission he had, with some degree of both egotism and optimism, assumed.