Twenty years ago, I made a trip to eastern Colorado to visit the site of Fort Wise/Fort Lyon. Since then, the folks who promote the Santa Fe Trail have added interpretation and directional signage. I came to this place again because this was James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart’s last post in the First United States Cavalry. It was here that he made the decision to return to Virginia and offer his military services to his native state. He went from Captain in the U.S. Army to Major General in the Confederate States Army.
It is easy today to call him a traitor to his country, but he did not view it that way. He grew up on a farm in Ararat, Virginia, seeing every day the grave of his great-grandfather, William Letcher, who had fought against the British and lost his own life at the age of thirty. Members of Stuart’s family had been in Virginia since the 1600s, nearly three hundred years before there was a United States. Virginia was their country. This goes back to a recurring theme in my writing that when you apply modern views to people who lived hundreds of years ago you show a lack of empathy and knowledge of history. History should be looking at their lives in the context of their time, not looking back from our time to judge them with ideas that they never imagined.
Stuart came to Fort Wise in 1860 and helped build the post. “Fort Wise (1852-1867) – A trading post first established in 1852 as Bents New Fort by William Bent in Bent County, Colorado. The post was leased to the U.S. Army in 1859 and renamed Fort Fauntleroy after Colonel Thomas T. Fauntleroy, 1st U.S. Dragoons. Colonel Fauntleroy joined the Confederacy in 1861 and the post was renamed Fort Wise after Henry A. Wise, Governor of Virginia. Wise also joined the Confederacy and the post was renamed Fort Lyon after the deceased Union General Nathaniel Lyon, who was the first Union general killed in the U.S. Civil War. The post was abandoned in 1867 for a newly constructed Fort Lyon. Commonly known as Bents New Fort and Fort Wise.”
On January 11, 1861, Stuart wrote from Fort Wise in Kansas Territory, “For my part I have had no hesitancy from the first that, right or wrong, alone, or otherwise, I go with Virginia, and I know very well where to find you. Of course, every true patriot deplores even the possibility of disunion, yet let his blessings not be purchased at too great a price. Put equality and independence in one scale and Union in the other, and if the latter outweigh the former, I for one would, like Brennus, throw my sabre in the scale consecrated by the principles and blood of our forefathers—our constitutional rights without which the Union is a mere mockery… I am anxious to be nearer the scene of operations. I do not believe there is harmony enough of feeling to bind up the wounds already inflicted. When Virginia takes her step, though reluctant, it will be sudden and irrevocable.”
A week later, on January 18, he wrote his brother, William Alexander Stuart, “Events are transpiring so rapidly that furnish no little hope of perpetuating the Union, that I feel it incumbent upon me to tell you my course of conduct in such a contingency. Of course, I go with Virginia whether she be alone or otherwise… As I cannot be on the spot till after Virginia’s leaving the Union, I will have to get you to get up or assist in getting up such a corps.”
Stuart left Fort Wise and began his way east waiting to see what Virginia was going to do. He did not resign his commission until he was sure that Virginia would leave the Union. When he arrived at Cairo, Illinois where the Ohio River empties into the Mississippi River, J. E. B. Stuart had come to his Rubicon River, and he made his decision.
TO COLONEL L. THOMAS Cairo, Illinois, May 3rd, 1861
Colonel:
From a sense of duty to my native State Virginia, I hereby resign my position as an officer in the Army of the United States.
Most respectfully, Sir, Your obedient servant, J. E. B. Stuart
Twenty years ago, I remember standing at Fort Wise/Fort Lyon thinking about the momentous decision Stuart made here that changed his life and eventually cost him his life. That day, I looked over and there stood a road runner. I never saw such a strange looking animal in my life. I waited but no coyotes showed up.
