Continuing the series of stories about the antebellum army of the United States, J. E. B. Stuart, in January 1860, was commanding Company G of the 1st U. S. Cavalry, under Major John Sedgewick. In March 1860, Stuart relinquished command of Company G to Captain William L. Walker, who had returned to Fort Riley on March 22, 1859.
Back home in Virginia on March 10, 1860, 42 members of the Virginia Legislature signed a petition for Stuart’s promotion to captain. On June 26, 1860, Flora gave birth to their only son, Phillip St George Cooke Stuart. When his namesake grandfather, a Virginian, did not join the Confederate States of America, the Stuarts changed his name to J. E. B. Stuart, Jr. Today, we are up to J. E. B. Stuart VII.
In May 1860, Companies F, G, and H under Sedgewick left Fort Riley on May 15, 1860, on the Kiowa Expedition. They left on 18-May-1860, and by 24-May, they were camped near Fort Learned, having traveled 144 miles. By June, the command was at Aubry’s Crossing of the Arkansas River, having traveled 475 miles from Fort Riley.
On July 11, the command was 7 miles above Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River in present day Colorado. The cavalry was chasing the Kiowa. Stuart would fight at Blackwater Springs with 20 soldiers. He wrote to Fitz Lee five days later about his opportunity for glory.
Stuart developed a relationship with Percival G. Lowe, the author of “Five Years a Dragoon.” Lowe had been in the 1st Dragoons but, in 1854, became a civilian employee of the Quarter Master Department.
By August 1860, he was back at Fort Riley. Stuart was concerned about his future: “I hope that during my exile in this wilderness, my civilized friends will not entirely forget me.” He left on 1-Aug-1860 for Bent’s Fort, arriving on 29-Aug, traveling 355 miles. The next month, he rejoined his regiment, commanding Company H at nearby Fort Wise in present day Colorado, along the banks of the Arkansas, cradled in the snow of the nearby Rocky Mountains.
In December 1860, Stuart began corresponding with prominent Southerners about his feelings on secession. “I believe that the North will yield what the South demands, thereby avert disunion.” He wrote his cousin, Virginia Governor John Letcher, offering his services to his native state if war came.
The temperance movement originated in Kansas, leading to prohibition in the twentieth century. Stuart gave a temperance speech at Christmas to men at Fort Wise, as alcohol abuse was prevalent in the U. S. Army.
“I am proud to meet you beneath the auspicious sky of this glorious jubilee of Christendom…I will not trouble you with a recital of the melancholy details of the woes incident to drunkenness,” then proceeds to do so, police reports, guard books, hospital statements…They present poor human nature in its most revolting aspect, brothers estranged, wedded divorce, pocket and character bankruptcy.”
At the age of 12, he reportedly promised his mother, Elizabeth Letcher Pannil Stuart, not to drink alcohol. He took that pledge seriously, and until the wound that took his life, there is no data to suggest he violated his pledge to his mother until he was mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern on May 11, 1864.
