Mosby's War Reminiscences; Stuart's Cavalry Campaigns

by John Singleton Mosby

About ten o'clock in the morning we reached the point on James River where the commissioners had met. I knew that it would take several hours to complete the exchange and every minute then was precious. I whispered to the Confederate commissioner—Judge Culd—that I had important news for General Lee and he let me go immediately. I started off with a haversack full of lemons I had bought at Fort Monroe to walk twelve miles to headquarters on a hot day in August. I trudged on several hours weary and footsore, until completely exhausted I had fallen down on the roadside. While lying there a horseman of the Hampton Legion came riding by, and I stopped him and explained my condition and anxiety to see General Lee. He dismounted, put me on his horse, took me to his camp near by, and, getting a horse for himself, went with me to the general's headquarters. I wish that I knew his name that I might record it with the praise that is due to his generous deed. The first one I met at headquarters, with a good deal of the insolence of office, told me that I could not see the general. I tried to explain that I did not come to ask a favor, but to bring him important information. Another one of the staff standing by told me to wait a moment. He stepped into the adjoining room and soon called me in. I now found myself for the first time in the presence of the great commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. He was alone and poring over some maps on the table, and no doubt planning a new campaign. Although his manner was gentle and kind, I felt for him an awe and veneration which I have never felt for any other man. He was then the foremost man in all the world, and I almost imagined that I saw one of the Homeric heroes before me. With some embarrassment I told what I had learned about Burnside's troops. He listened attentively, and after I was through called to a staff officer to have a man ready to take a despatch to General Jackson. At that time communication was kept up between them by a line of relay couriers. They were afraid to trust the telegraph that had been tampered with by raiding parties from Fredericksburg. Jackson received the despatch that night informing him that Burnside was on his way to Pope, and hastened to strike him at Cedar Mountain before reinforcements could arrive. Pope says, "This battle was fought at a distance of more than one hundred miles from Richmond, only five days after General McClellan received his orders to withdraw and five days before he had commenced to do so, or had embarked a man." When the Army of the Potomac was being withdrawn from the front of Richmond, Gen. Lee began to transfer his own to the line of the Rapidan. Stuart, with his staff, came ahead by rail and left Fitz Lee to bring on the cavalry division. I joined him on the evening of August 17th, and that night we rode to a place called Vidiersville in Orange County, where we expected to find the cavalry. It had not, however, come up, and Stuart sent his adjutant to look for it, and the rest of us—five in number—unsaddled our horses and lay down to sleep on the porch of a house by the roadside. We were outside our picket lines and in a mile or so of the enemy on the river, but did not think there was much risk in spending the night there.

About sunrise the next morning a young man named Gibson, who had been a fellow-prisoner with me in the Old Capitol, woke me up and said that he heard the tramp of cavalry down the road. We saddled quickly, and started to see what it was, but first woke Stuart up. As Fitz Lee was due, we supposed it was our own cavalry, but there was a chance that it might be the enemy, and we did not want to be again caught napping. After going about two hundred yards, we saw through the morning mist a body of cavalry that had stopped at a house to search it. We halted, but could not tell who they were. Presently two officers rode forward and began firing on us. This convinced me that they were no friends of mine, and as neither one of us had a pistol or a sabre, I am not ashamed to say that we turned and ran away with the Yankee cavalry close after us. The firing saved Stuart. He had walked out into the yard bareheaded, and when he heard it, mounted his horse and leaped over the fence, and escaped through the back yard with one of his aides just as Gibson and I passed by at full speed. The cavalry stopped the pursuit to pick up Stuart's hat and cloak and the nice patent-leather haversack I had brought from Washington, which we had left on the porch. It was a scouting party General Pope had sent out. They had caught Stuart's adjutant during the night and found on him a letter from General Lee, disclosing the fact that he would cross the river to attack Pope on the 20th. So Pope, on the 18th, issued orders to withdraw beyond the line of the Rappahannock; he had already received information through a spy that our whole army was assembling in his front and was about retreating anyway. If the cavalry had not stopped at the house they would have caught us all asleep.

Von Borcke, a Prussian officer on Stuart's staff, who published a mass of fables, under the title of "Memoirs of the Confederate War," gives an account of this affair, in which he represents himself as playing a most heroic part. As Gibson and I were between him and the enemy, and running with all our might, it is hard to discover any heroism in anybody. Von Borcke's horse ran faster than ours, and that was the only distinction he won. The chase was soon over, and we returned immediately to look over the ground. Just as Stuart got in sight of the house, he saw the enemy going off in triumph with his hat and cloak. In two days the armies were again confronting each other on the Rappahannock; on the morning of the 22d the Confederate column began a movement up the river to turn Pope's right. Jackson's corps was just in rear of the cavalry. When we got to Waterloo bridge, where we crossed, Stuart galloped by, and said to me, laughing, as he passed, "I am going after my hat." I had no idea then that what he said would come true. He had heard that Pope had his wagon trains parked at Catlett's, on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, and was going after them. Pope's headquarters were ten or twelve miles distant, at Rappahannock Station. Stuart had with him about 1500 cavalry and two pieces of artillery. We passed around to Pope's rear unobserved, and got to Catlett's just after dark. A picket post on the road was captured without any alarm, and the guards with the trains had no suspicion of our presence until we rode into their camp. General Pope unjustly censures them. Considering the surprise, I think they did remarkably well. It was no fault of theirs that Stuart had got to the rear of their army without being discovered. It was the duty of their cavalry on the front to watch him, and tell them he was coming. Fortunately for Pope, the most terrific storm I ever saw came up before we reached Catlett's. But for that, nearly the whole of the transportation of his army would have been destroyed. The night was pitch dark and the rain fell in torrents. Flashes of lightning would often illuminate the scene, and peals of thunder seemed to roll from pole to pole. Stuart halted about half a mile from the station, and sent the First and Fifth Virginia cavalry to destroy a large park of wagons whose camp-fires could be seen. I went along with my old regiment. We had to cross a railroad embankment and a ditch, of which the men knew nothing until they tumbled into it. Most of them scrambled out, and got into the camp on the other side. It was defended by the Bucktails, who, under cover of the wagons and the darkness, poured a hot fire into us. All that we could see was the flashes from their guns. The animals became frightened, and increased the noise and confusion of the fight. The shooting and shouting of the men, the braying of the mules, the glare of the lightning and roll of the thunder, made it seem like all Pandemonium had broken loose.

But cavalry, in a fight against invisible infantry, is defenceless. We left the camp with little or no damage to ourselves or the enemy. Other detachments were more successful in burning wagons and making captures. A party was sent to burn the railroad bridge over Cedar Run; but in such a storm they might just as well have tried to burn the creek. It happened that not far from Catlett's we met a negro in the road, who recognized Stuart as an old acquaintance, and offered to conduct him to Pope's headquarter wagons. The Ninth Virginia cavalry was sent with the guide after them. A festive party of quartermasters and commissaries was captured there, together with Pope's money-chest, despatch book, and correspondence, and also his wardrobe, including his hat and ostrich plume. Stuart was now revenged—he had swapped hats with Pope.

The material results of the expedition were not what had been expected. The storm of that night—which caused a rise of six feet in the river—was the salvation of Pope. The raid had, however, a demoralizing effect on the army whose communication had been so audaciously assailed. Von Borcke, as usual, relates prodigies he performed that were never surpassed by Amadis of Gaul. He says that he was detailed by Stuart to capture Pope, and tells how he entered his tent shortly after he had left. Now Pope had never been on the spot; his headquarters were then fifteen miles from there; and Stuart knew that a general commanding an army does not sleep with his wagon trains. We returned the next morning by the same route we came, but never saw an enemy. It would be a natural question to ask—what was Pope doing with his cavalry? In the storm and darkness we had failed to cut the telegraph wire, so Pope kept up communication with Washington. At five o'clock P.M. that day—when Stuart's cavalry was in the rear and within a few miles of Catlett's, he told Halleck, "The enemy has made no attempt to-day to cross the river." At nine o'clock that night, when we were plundering his headquarter trains, he tells Halleck a heavy force had crossed the river that day, and asked him to send up a brigade to guard the bridge over Cedar Run. But for the providential rain the bridge would have then been burning, and Halleck would have been saved the trouble of sending infantry to protect it. Pope had no idea where we were. Fifteen minutes later, he tells Halleck, that he must either fall back behind Cedar Run, or cross the Rappahannock at daybreak the next morning and assail the rear of the Confederate army. Halleck advised the latter movement. Pope said the rise of the river that night that swept away his bridges prevented his crossing. Here Providence stepped in again and saved him. If the "stars in their courses fought against Sisera," so did the floods against Robert E. Lee in this campaign.

At that time Jackson and Longstreet were in front of Pope, and Stuart was behind him. A week after this he was defeated, when we were no stronger and he had received at least 25,000 reinforcements from McClellan. But General Pope had left out an important factor in his calculation,—and that was Stonewall Jackson. He had already thrown one of his brigades over the river at Sulphur Springs, but the storm arrested the passage of the others. If General Pope had attempted such a movement as he indicated to Halleck, General Lee would not have interfered with it but let him go on. Jackson and Stuart would then have swept down the north bank of the river in his rear, and General Pope would have found himself in the condition of a fly in an exhausted receiver. This would have saved Jackson the long flank march he afterwards made to Manassas without involving his separation from Longstreet. Speaking of the raid on Catlett's, General Pope says: "At the time this cavalry force attacked Catlett's—and it certainly was not more than three hundred strong—our whole army trains were parked at that place, and were guarded by not less than 1500 infantry and five companies of cavalry. The success of this small party of the enemy, although very trifling and attended with but very little damage, was most disgraceful to the force that had been left in charge of the trains." It was certainly not the fault of the troops guarding the trains that they had no notice that we were coming; and I think he has greatly exaggerated their number.

On the 25th, Jackson, having gone higher up the river, crossed the Rappahannock four miles above Waterloo Bridge, which was held by Sigel's Corps and Buford's Cavalry. The Black Horse Company[30] acted as his escort, and the Second Virginia Cavalry led the advance. The signal stations near the rivers reported this movement immediately to Gen. Pope. An officer in the army under Pope, who had been a classmate of Jackson's at West Point, thus speaks of the great hero and his wonderful march: "In that devotion which men yield to monarchs of the battle-field; in that glow of pride which men share with the great chieftain whose powers have created chances and directed results,—the soldier subjects under Napoleon Bonaparte were closely allied in enthusiasm, in worship, and in admiration with the soldier citizens under Stonewall Jackson."…

"The sun sank down; the stars appeared; the night sped on till nearly twelve, when Jackson's advance had approached within one mile of Salem, where, as his weary column sank down to rest, McDowell received the message that Pope believed the enemy was marching for the Shenandoah Valley by way of Front Royal and Luray."

On the mathematical principle that parallel lines meet in infinity, Jackson might have reached the valley by the route he had travelled. His camp that night was in Pope's rear, and in twelve miles of McDowell, who was occupying Warrenton. But Gen. Pope was bewildered, and appeared to have no suspicion of where he was going. At daylight no reveille sounded in the Confederate camps; but Jackson moved silently on, and turned to the east. After his column had passed out of sight of the signal stations, Gen. Pope seemed to lose entirely the touch of it; but the "lost Pleiad" kept on its way. A competent general would have struck Jackson's flank with a cavalry reconnoissance on his first day's march. I do not know whether the failure to do so was the fault of the chief of cavalry or the commander-in-chief.

On the 26th, before daylight, Stuart's cavalry corps crossed the Rappahannock and followed the route Jackson had taken the day before, until it got to Salem, and then turned to the right. About four o'clock P.M., we overtook Gen. Jackson at Gainesville; having marched all day around the flank and rear of the Federal army without seeing an enemy. We were now within about seven miles of Manassas Junction. On the same day, Longstreet followed on Jackson's track. While all this was going on in his rear, Gen. Pope's attention had been attracted by some Confederate batteries that kept up a fire in his front. His army remained motionless. Its very tranquillity at last became oppressive; some feared that it was the awful stillness that precedes the storm; that he was imitating Napoleon at Austerlitz, and allowing one wing of our army to be extended in order to pierce its centre and destroy it. About six o'clock on the afternoon of the 26th, the advance of Jackson's column, under Col. Munford, struck the Orange & Alexandria Railroad at Bristoe Station, nine miles from Pope's headquarters, which were at Warrenton Junction. The small guard was surprised and captured; they had no more expectation of seeing Stonewall Jackson than Hamlet's ghost. Just then a train came up, and ran the gauntlet under fire, that carried the astounding news to Manassas, five miles off. From there it was telegraphed to Washington. Two more trains came along in a few minutes, that had just left headquarters, and were caught. Stuart was then sent on with a force of infantry and cavalry to capture Manassas, which, with all its immense stores, fell into his hands. Twenty thousand Confederate troops were now behind Gen. Pope; and Longstreet was marching around his flank; but his army still faced the other way. As Gen. Jackson says, "My command was now in the rear of Gen. Pope's army, separating it from the Federal capital and base of supplies."