MAJOR JOHN PELHAM
In the meantime, Stuart bade a final farewell to his pleasant camp quarters and his friends at the Dandridge mansion. His force fell slowly back toward Culpeper, contesting every inch of ground against the overwhelming numbers of the Federal cavalry. Sharp encounters took place at Union, Middleburg, and Upperville, in which the artillery under Pelham did wonderfully daring and effective work. In these encounters, the Federals lost nearly twice as many men as did the Confederates, but it was impossible for Stuart’s small forces to hold any permanent ground against the greatly superior numbers now marching against him.
At Ashby’s Gap, General Stuart came near being cut off from his own forces. He had commanded Colonel Rosser to hold this gap while he, accompanied by a few members of his staff, rode across the mountain for a conference with General Jackson. When Stuart returned the next day, after a hard ride over a little-used mountain trail, what was his surprise on reaching a point just above what had been his own camp, to find the place literally swarming with blue-coats.
Rosser had found it necessary to withdraw before the superior numbers of the Federals and his couriers who went to inform Stuart of this fact had missed the general who had returned by a short cut across the mountain. He and his men were indeed in a serious predicament, and had they not found a mountaineer, who knew the trails on the other side of the mountain, there is no telling when or where General Stuart would have joined his command. He was guided safely to Barber’s Cross Roads where his forces had retreated and he made the simple and faithful mountaineer happy with a fifty-dollar note.
On November 10, there was an engagement at Barber’s Cross Roads, and the Confederate cavalry was forced to retreat through Orleans and across the Rappahannock at Waterloo Bridge. That night Stuart received the news of the death of his dear little daughter, Flora. For some time he had known of her serious illness, and the doctor had written that he must come home if he wished to see her, but he knew that his country needed him to hold the Federal cavalry in check.
When the second urgent call reached him on the field of battle near Union, he wrote Mrs. Stuart: “I was at no loss to decide that it was my duty to you and to Flora to remain here. I am entrusted with the conduct of affairs, the issue of which will affect you, her, and the mothers and children of our whole country much more seriously than we can believe.
“If my darling’s case is hopeless, there are ten chances to one that I will get to Lynchburg too late; if she is convalescent, why should my presence be necessary? She was sick nine days before I knew it. Let us trust in the good God who has blessed us so much, that He will spare our child to us, but if it should please Him to take her from us, let us bear it with Christian fortitude and resignation.”
Major Von Borcke, who opened the telegram telling of the child’s death, says that when the general read it he was completely overcome, but that he bore his loss most bravely, especially when Mrs. Stuart came to visit him a few days later at Culpeper.
He never forgot his “little darling” and often talked of her to Von Borcke, who says very prettily: “Light blue flowers recalled her eyes to him; in the glancing sunbeams he caught the golden tinge of her hair, and whenever he saw a child with such eyes and hair he could not help tenderly embracing it. He thought of her on his deathbed, and drawing me to him he whispered, ‘My dear friend, I shall soon be with my little Flora again.’”
Yet such a father could put aside his own feelings when he felt that his country needed him. Duty to God and his country were his watchwords, and this high and unselfish sense of duty and patriotism was the foundation of his greatness both as a man and a soldier.