Life of J. E. B. Stuart - Mary L. Williamson

The enthusiasm of the Maryland people at Poolesville, where Stuart first stopped, was boundless. Two young merchants of the village suddenly resolved to enlist in the cavalry and they put up all their goods at auction. The soldiers with the eagerness and carelessness of children cleared out both establishments in less than an hour. Many other recruits were made in this village, all the young men seeming to feel the inspiration of General Stuart’s favorite song,

“If you want to have a good time

Jine the cavalry.”

At Urbana, a pretty little village on the road to Frederick, where General Stuart with one division of his forces camped for several days, a most exciting ball was held on the evening of September 8. There were many charming families living in the neighborhood, and General Stuart and his staff decided to give a dance at an old, unused academy located on a hill just outside of the town. The young ladies of the neighborhood willingly lent their help, and evening found the halls of the academy lighted by tallow candles and draped with garlands of roses and with battle flags borrowed from the regiments of the brigades. Music was furnished by the band of a Mississippi regiment. The ball, which had opened to the rousing strains of “Dixie,” was at its height, when a young orderly rushed in and to the accompaniment of distant shots reported that the Federals had driven in the pickets and were attacking the camp.

Wild confusion prevailed. The officers got rapidly to horse and anxious mammas collected their daughters. Upon reaching the scene of action, General Stuart found that the danger had been overestimated and the Federals were already beginning to retreat. In a short while, they had been driven back; and by one o’clock, the staff officers had brought the young ladies back to the academy and the ball had a second and more auspicious opening. Dancing continued until dawn, when some soldiers wounded in the skirmish were brought in, and the ball room was soon converted into a hospital and the fair dancers into willing if inexperienced nurses.

The next day, General Fitz Lee’s brigade was engaged in a skirmish, and the day following Colonel Munford, who was commanding Robertson’s Brigade, had a sharp encounter with Federals at Sugar Loaf Mountain. By Sept. 11, the Federal cavalry was attacking in such force that General Stuart saw that it was necessary to order a retreat toward Frederick. General Fitz Lee commanded the advance; Colonel Munford protected the rear, which as it approached Urbana had a sharp skirmish with the closely-following Federal cavalry. General Stuart and his staff, however, did not tear themselves away from their friends in this hospitable little village until the Union troops were within half a mile of the place and several shells had exploded in the street. From Urbana the cavalry went to Frederick. Many years after the war was over, Mrs. Stuart received a letter from a New York physician, who at the time of the Maryland campaign had just won his title and a position on the staff of one of the Union hospitals in Frederick.

He told about meeting General Stuart and then said, “I wish to bear testimony to the fact that not only myself, but all the friends of the Union cause in Frederick, so far as I could learn, were kindly treated by both officers and private soldiers. I do not remember of a single instance where private property was molested, nor was any taunt, indignity, or insult offered to any person. Whittier’s ‘Barbara Frietchie,’ which has attracted so much attention,—even that is fiction.”

At Frederick, Stuart found that General Lee had already retreated across South Mountain and taken a position at Sharpsburg on Antietam Creek, while Jackson was investing Harper’s Ferry. Look at the map on [page 95] and you will see that southwest of Frederick rises a small spur of the Blue Ridge, called Catoctin Mountain on the other side of which is a broad, fertile valley extending for about six miles to the base of South Mountain. On the opposite side of South Mountain is Sharpsburg, and across the same mountain to the south is Harper’s Ferry which Jackson had been ordered to capture before he marched north to join Lee and Longstreet at Sharpsburg.