Finishing our series of stories about James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart, we find him in January commanding a company at Fort Wise, Kansas Territory, which is now in eastern Colorado, on the banks of the Arkansas River near the Bent’s Fort National Park.
On January 11, 1861, he was back at Fort Riley, near present day Junction City, Kansas. He continued to write, seeking a spot in the Southern Army. Among those were Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis, future President of the Confederate States of America. He wrote to Lincoln’s Attorney General, Edwin Bates, about his promotion and received a response that “officers that flirted with treason would be held accountable.”
He wrote his brother, William Alexander, about a cavalry legion from Wythe County, Virginia. “For my part, I have no had no hesitancy from the first that, right or wrong, alone or otherwise, I go with Virginia…every true patriot deplores even the possibility of disunion yet let its 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.”
Today, some people view Stuart as a traitor, but he viewed Virginia as his country. His mother, Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart, personally delivered an offer to join Virginia at the State’s Adjutant General’s Office in Richmond, where she was now living, having sold Laurel Hill in 1859.
In February 1861, he was commanding a company at Fort Wise, where he gave a Washington’s Birthday Speech he gave at Fort Wise. “In times like these when the discordant elements of sectional passion and prejudice are spreading revolution broadcast through the land, it is gratifying to know that here we may stand on common ground and indivisible heritage in the memory of Washington…that a nation whose rapid prosperity has been like the eagle’s flight is now about to sink to miserable mediocrity, if not annihilation… for the miserable gratification of party pride….a union entered into by voluntary compact can only be perpetuated by voluntary concessions nor once broken can it be restored by bloodshed and violence, peaceful remedies alone can avail…but if such a catastrophe as a civil war must befall us when God in his infinite mercy forbid. Well may the future historian who records the downfall of the American Union drop a tear upon the page and blot it out forever.”
On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the sixteenth President of the United States. At that time, the November election did not result in an inauguration until March. By that time, seven states had seceded from the Union.
Stuart received 60 days’ leave on 2-Feb-1861 and spent three weeks in Saint Louis to see what Virginia would do. Before leaving Fort Riley, he wrote to John O. Steger of Richmond. “I am quietly awaiting Virginia’s action. I verily believe that Lincoln is only waiting for our (Virginia’s secession) convention to adjourn without action decided, before he begins coercion. Lincoln is only waiting to get firmly seated on his throne…I am afraid Virginia will lose the opportunity to separate in peace and thus be obliged to do it in war….General (Winfield) Scott has expatriated himself and rendered themselves unworthy of their state.”
He was thinking of taking revenge on his former commander, Edwin Sumner. ‘If we have war, I want to be vis a vis Sumner so as to teach him some cavalry evolutions and take him prisoner. It would be sweet revenge.”
On April 17, Virginia seceded and put it to a vote of the people. Samuel G. Staples represented Patrick County in the secession convention. On April 4, he voted against secession, but on April 17, he voted for it and signed the Ordinance of Secession. The people of Patrick County voted 2 to 1 to leave the Union.
On May 3, 1861, James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart was on his way to Virginia. In Cairo, Illinois, he wrote to Virginia Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, resigning his captain’s commission in the U. S. Army. “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.”
Cairo was at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and Stuart was at his Rubicon. “Crossing the Rubicon” is an idiom meaning “passing the point of no return”. Its meaning comes from Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon River in January 49 BC at the head of the 13th Legion. Caesar was not allowed to command an army within Italy proper, and by crossing the river with his forces, he was defying the law and risking his life. The crossing precipitated a civil war.
Others were trying to assist Stuart. Jeb’s mother, Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart, wrote to Robert E. Lee for a position for her son in the Army of the South. On 7-May-1861, Stuart arrived in Wytheville and then went to Richmond to visit his mother. On May 10, 1861, Stuart received a Virginia Infantry command and left for Harper’s Ferry to join Thomas Jonathon Jackson. He was not “Stonewall” yet. Stuart said that he would rather be a “private in the Virginia Army than a General in an army to coerce her.”
You can visit the website of the J. E. B. Stuart Trust at www.jebstuart.org. Tom Perry can be reached at [email protected].
