James Ewell Brown Stuart, brilliant Confederate soldier with Ulster-Scots roots who was a military intelligence pioneer

​​James Ewell Brown Stuart was the Confederacy’s most brilliant cavalry officer.

‘Jeb’ Stuart had a dazzling, if brief, career with the Confederate army until he was shot and fatally wounded on the battlefield on May 11 1864

His hard-riding troopers formed a screen between Robert E Lee’s Army of North Virginia and Union armies. Behind that screen Lee was able to move his army at will. Stuart’s reports of enemy troop movements were of such value to the Southern command during the Civil War, that Lee described him as his ‘eyes and ears’.

A flamboyant character, he had a long brown beard and often wore a redlined cloak, a yellow sash at his waist, and a plumed hat. A teetotaller, he loved dancing and parties. If ‘Stonewall’ Jackson invites comparison with Cromwell or a seventeenth-century Scottish covenanter, Stuart was a cavalier. His nickname, Jeb, was derived from the initials of his Christian names.

Jeb was the great-great-grandson of Archibald Stuart of Londonderry, an Ulster-Scot who emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1726 and put down deep roots in the Shenandoah Valley.

Jeb was born on February 6 1833, on Laurel Hill plantation, Patrick County, Virginia. He was the seventh child and youngest son of Archibald Stuart and Elizabeth Letcher Pannill. His father had served as an officer in the war of 1812. His mother was the granddaughter of William Letcher, a local hero of the American War of Independence.

A Virginian and a West Pointer, in May 1861 he resigned his commission in the US Army to share in the defence of his state.

At First Manassas in July 1861, Stuart distinguished himself by his personal bravery. His cavalry protected the Southern left and he broke one Union infantry attack with a headlong charge. On September 24 1861 he was promoted to brigadier general and placed in command of the newly formed Virginia cavalry brigade.

Just before the Seven Days’ Battle – fought in June 1862 to defend the Confederate capital of Richmond – Stuart was sent out by Lee to locate the right flank of the Union army under General George B McClellan. Stuart not only accomplished his mission but he also rode completely around McClellan’s army, capturing 170 Union soldiers and nearly twice as many horses and mules and destroying wagon loads of Union supplies, to deliver his report to Lee.

In the next campaign Stuart raided the headquarters of General John Pope, the new Union commander, and made off with $35,000 in cash, Pope’s dress coat and a notebook – a document which was invaluable to Lee – detailing the strength and disposition of Union forces. Stuart, promoted to major general and commander of the cavalry corps, was present at Second Manassas in August 1862 and again circled McClellan’s army, returning with 1,200 enemy horses.

In May 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Stuart was appointed by Lee to take command of the 2nd Army Corps after Jackson had been fatally wounded. Stuart energised Jackson’s corps – although the men had eaten and rested little in over 30 hours – and renewed the attack on the Union army, driving it back and joining up with Lee. In doing so he contributed significantly to what was a notable victory.

Stuart’s conduct prior to the Battle of Gettysburg is the subject of longstanding controversy.

Acutely embarrassed and stung by press criticism for being caught off his guard by being surprised by Union cavalry at Brandy Station on June 9, to redeem his embarrassment Stuart took three of his best brigades for a raid around the rear of the Union infantry.

Stuart lost touch with the Army of North Virginia for a full week, depriving Lee of vital intelligence as to the whereabouts and movements of Union forces. Lee’s great strengths were his audacity, his capacity to surprise his opponents, and his ability to read his opponent’s minds but to exploit these strengths he required up-to-date and accurate intelligence.

With up-to-date and accurate intelligence, Lee would have fought a different battle and perhaps won.

On May 9 1864, during the 12-day engagement generally known as Spotsylvania Courthouse, Ulysses S Grant, the Union commander, gave General Philip Sheridan, who had boasted that he could ‘whip’ Stuart ‘out of his boots’, permission to break loose from the Union army and take his cavalry corps on a ride around the Confederate army towards Richmond. This obliged Stuart to give chase.

On May 11 Stuart, with 4,500 troopers, clashed with Sheridan’s 10,000-strong cavalry force at Yellow Tavern, only six miles from the Confederate capital. As Stuart was outnumbered more than two to one and the Union cavalry was equipped with rapid-fire carbines whereas the Confederate cavalry was armed with single-shot muzzle-loaders, Sheridan, whose ancestors hailed from Co Cavan, ought to have been able to destroy Stuart’s cavalry but he failed to do so.

Stuart’s men resolutely held their ground and it was the Union cavalry which withdrew. During their withdrawal, a dismounted Union cavalryman took a carefully aimed shot at a large, bearded Confederate officer in a plumed hat, sitting on his horse, 30 feet away. Without realising who his victim was, John A Huff of the 5th Michigan Cavalry had managed to wound Stuart in the abdomen. The great cavalry commander was carried from the field mortally wounded.

He died in Richmond the following day, aged only 31 and leaving a widow and three children.

Stuart was a deeply religious man. About noon on the day of his death, President Davis visited his bedside, and in reply to his question as to how he felt, the dying Stuart answered: ‘Easy, but willing to die if God and my country think I have fulfilled my destiny and done my duty.’

Stuart’s death, exactly a year and a day after the death of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, was a second severe blow to the Confederate cause. Lee confessed: ‘I can scarcely think of him without weeping’. Lee also said of him: ‘He was my ideal of a soldier’.

Edward G Longacre, the American military historian and biographer, contends that Stuart’s ‘greatest contribution to military science’ lay in ‘his unerring ability to send his commanders accurate, specific, up-to-date reports of enemy movements and intentions – real-time strategic intelligence, as it is called today’.