By Tom Perry
At the end of 1856, James Buchanan was elected the 15th President of the United States and was known as a “Doughface,” a northerner with southern tendencies. A new political party, the Republicans, ran John C. Fremont as their first presidential candidate. Lt. J. E. B. Stuart wrote of supporting Millard Fillmore, former 13th President and candidate for the Know-Nothing Party, “I am glad of it, for if we must have a know-nothing, we will have in him a conservative patriot and constitutionalist.”
In December 1856, Stuart was the Assistant Adjutant General for the 1st United States Cavalry Regiment with an aggregate of 726 men. Stuart was in Company G and stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory. The Annual Post Return reported there had been 18 deaths, 283 desertions, and 29 apprehensions. On December 20, 1856, Stuart received a promotion to 1st Lieutenant.
Stuart’s Account Book, held by the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, Virginia, provides a glimpse of life on the plains. He received monthly pay as a Lt of $94.83, supplemented by $10 a month as Regimental Quarter Master. He had a $500 loan from his former brother-in-law, Peter Hairston, and $500 given to his sister, Mary Headen. He even reported taking $15 from his wife’s purse.
Stuart dealt in buying and selling cattle, buying condemned horses, and raffling ponies. He sold Charlie the horse to Major Sedgwick for $110. He did real estate deals for as much as $1,000 in places in Kansas, such as Lecompton, Leavenworth City, and Manhattan. He bought a family Bible, an almanac, stationery, a cookbook, a blank book, and a map for $11.50. He bought Flora a “Calico Dress” from St Louis, Missouri, for $1.37, a necklace for $26.00, and 45 yards of cotton for $5.68. He purchased a yearly subscription to Harper’s magazine for $3.00 and a guitar for Flora for $12.00. Known for his flair for clothing, Stuart bought himself a frock coat for $30.00, reinforced pants for $8.00, a Cavalry Shell Jacket for $18.00, a sash for $18.00, and boots for $7.00.
The year 1857 would see a national economic panic. In March, the Dred Scott Decision was handed down by a 7-2 vote. “The United States Supreme Court held that the United States Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent, and therefore, they could not enjoy the rights and privileges the Constitution conferred upon American citizens. The decision is widely considered the worst in the Supreme Court’s history and is broadly denounced for its overt racism, judicial activism, and poor legal reasoning. It nationalized slavery and thus played a crucial role in the events that led to the American Civil War four years later.”
Kansas erupted in violence between two state governments: proslavery at Lecompton and free state at Topeka. The idea of “Popular Sovereignty” began in the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, brought forward by Abraham Lincoln’s rival, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, where “the residents of each territory were to determine the status of enslavement in their territory. In Nebraska, there was little problem; Nebraska would be a free state. In the case of Kansas, which Southerners in Congress assumed would balance Nebraska as a new slave state, the result was “pure chaos.”
One almost sees Stuart’s life as being meant to land in the middle of the actions that led to the Civil War. He was born during the “Nullification Crisis” of 1833 and now found himself in Kansas Territory in the middle of the war before the Civil War.
Stuart almost did not live to see the results of the chaos he found himself surrounded by because in May 1857, Colonel Sumner led a column from Ft Leavenworth to chase Cheyenne war parties. Stuart took command of Co G, his first command, and was relieved of his quartermaster duties because he refused to serve as ordnance officer. As the regimental band played “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” Stuart left his pregnant wife at Fort Leavenworth.
The Battle of Solomon’s Fork came next. Stuart wrote that he rode his horse, Dan, for 5 miles until it failed, then got another horse and pursued it for 3 more miles, when he found that Lt. Lomax was in danger of attack by a Cheyenne warrior and was on foot. Stuart inflicted a head wound on the warrior, who at the same time shot Stuart at point blank range, striking him in the breastbone and bouncing so far inside his chest that it could not be felt. Stuart was moved 3 miles until meeting his brother-in-law, Charles Brewer, whose house Stuart would die in less than 7 years in Richmond. Ironic that future Hokie President Lunsford Lomax would be with him both times he is wounded.
Stuart showed great initiative in getting himself back to Fort Leavenworth. Split off from the main command, low on rations, with no compass, Stuart, wounded in the chest, stayed six days protected by a company, then ordered back to Ft Kearny, Nebraska Territory, which took three days through fog, storms, and flash floods.
On September 15, 1857, his wife, Flora Cooke Stuart, gave birth to their first child, a little girl named Flora after her mother. The Stuarts were then off to Fort Riley. The year 1857 ended with 1st Lt. J. E. B. Stuart commanding the 1st U.S. Cavalry’s Company G escorting the Santa Fe Trail Mail 250 miles to the Arkansas River. Such was one year of J. E. B. Stuart’s “Life On The Plains.”
