James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart served in the army of the United States of America for seven years from 1854 to 1861. If you count his time at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, he served eleven years. He graduated thirteenth of forty-six in the class of 1854, a class that lost more men, twelve, than any other class from West Point that served in the Civil War.
Stuart was first sent to Texas, serving in the Regiment of Mounted Rifles. His trip west took him from Patrick County to Wheeling, Virginia, now West Virginia and down the Ohio to the Mississippi River and up to Saint Louis, then down to New Orleans into the Gulf of Mexico disembarking at Galveston, Texas and from there to Laredo and across the “Lone Star” state to Fort Davis in far west Texas, near present day El Paso.
In 1855, Stuart was transferred to the elite First United States Cavalry, a regiment developed by U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. Stuart was not the only future Confederate to serve the United States. Jefferson Barracks near Saint Louis was Stuart’s destination, and then onto Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory. For the next six years, Stuart served in the cavalry, rising to the rank of Captain, commanding troops, and serving as regimental adjutant and quartermaster.
Stuart served in many forts such as Fort Larned, Kansas Territory, along the Santa Fe Trail, forts Kearney and Laramie along the Oregon Trail in Nebraska and Wyoming, Forts Davis, Clark, and McIntosh in Texas, he helped to build Fort Wise in eastern Colorado in 1860, but he spent most of his time at Forts Riley and Leavenworth in Kansas Territory.
Stuart married Flora Cooke and began a family. He would dabble in real estate, livestock, and inventions to supplement his army income. He wrote articles for newspapers, poetry, and many letters, kept up with politics, grew a beard, and passed the bar exam, allowing him to practice law.
He crossed paths with many people who would affect his future, such as John Brown in Kansas Territory in 1856 at the Battle of Black Jack and again at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Stuart was the only one to recognize the terrorist. Stuart crossed paths with many future Union and Confederate officers such as John Buford, Robert E. Lee, Alfred Pleasanton, and Joseph E. Johnston.
In July 1857, along the banks of the Solomon River, in Kansas, Stuart nearly lost his life when saving the life of future Confederate General and President of Virginia Tech, Lunsford Lomax, grappling with a Cheyenne Indian. Shot in the chest, Stuart survived only because the bullet hit him square in the breastbone and ricocheted just under his skin. Indeed, history would have been changed if the Dog Soldier had been more successful.
Near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers near Cairo, Illinois, on May 10, 1861, Stuart resigned from the U.S. Army. He offered his sword to Virginia, and the rest is history.
