GENERAL J. E. B. STUART’S CHAMBERSBURG RAID, OCTOBER 9, 1862
On the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th of October, 1862, General J. E. B.
Stuart performed his most brilliant military feat in the raid on
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
Fording the Potomac on the morning of the 10th, at early dawn, he
proceeded to Mercersburg and thence to Chambersburg. The crossing
of the river had been skilfully and bravely done, and the march of
forty miles to Chambersburg was no mean task in the fifteen hours
which had elapsed since morn. Fair weather marked the day’s ride, and
at 9 o’clock at night the brilliant cavalry soldier of the Army of
Northern Virginia housed himself and men in the quiet and quaint old
town, well up in the boundaries of the Quaker State.
It was a new experience for the loyal men of the North to find the
hungry Confederate raiders in their very midst and feeding themselves
in their pantries and their horses at their granaries.
But the romance of the raid was to end here.
The Potomac, never very sure in its movements, might rise, and
Stuart must then return some other way than the one he came. The
splashing of the rain, relentless and constant, during the night,
and the pattering of great drops as they drove against the window
panes, awakened in his bosom the most harassing uncertainty; and
throughout the long and (to him) almost endless hours of darkness,
came the harrowing thought that the streams fed by the torrents now
falling would swell the Potomac and thus cut off all possibility of
escape for his command.
[Illustration: GENERAL J. E. B. STUART]
His aides and guides, less troubled with responsibility, assured him
that his fleet troopers would outride the currents that flowed toward
the ocean; but the danger and the trials of the coming day and night
rose up in the heart of the dashing commander and disturbed the quiet
of his gay and chivalrous soul.
On the morning of the 11th he began his homeward march. Eighty miles
from the boundary, where he might pass it, far into an unfriendly
country, every resource of which was now placed under contribution
to effect his capture or the destruction of his force, and with
thousands of troops, both mounted and unmounted, converging to the
points where he must pass, rendered his situation acutely desperate
and such as to cause keenest apprehension and profoundest fear.
But with Stuart rode officers and men who never quailed. Hampton,
Lee, Butler, Robertson, Jones and Pelham, and 1,800 men, the pick of
Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas, were in the saddle with him,
and there was no foe they feared and none who could whip them except
by brute force and superior numbers.
Forth from Chambersburg this splendid division began the march
homeward. Twelve hundred horses, the fruits of impressment, made up a
part of the train—for already the Confederacy felt the need of stable
recruiting—no stragglers nor laggards. A great work was ahead of a
great command, and no heart felt solicitude at any fate which awaited.
All day long the steady trot of the troopers was kept up, and when
the sun began to hide its face behind the Alleghanies the cavalcade
had been less than half the distance required of it for safety and
rest. A few minutes’ halt was all that could be allowed. The troopers
dismount and shake themselves; the wearied horses munch a little
feed, and the bugle-call again commands to saddle.
Thirty-one and a half miles since morn, and yet thirty-three and a
half more before dawn.
The knightly Pelham, later to shed his blood, rode all through the
night with the advance, and close behind the watchful commander and
his escort.
A full day’s work already done, but a fuller night’s work yet to be
done.
Peremptory orders are transmitted to ride over everything that
opposes the march; and so, trot, trot, trot, through the long hours
of darkness, and the wearied horsemen peer through the gloom, and in
silent and anxious wonder gaze at the spectres—the creation of their
fancy and imagination—which on parallel lines ride by their side;
and they scan the horizon with anxious longing to catch the first
appearance of the much-desired dawn, which might relieve the dismal
and oppressive foreboding of the lengthened night.
Sixty-five miles in twenty-four hours. No halt. Still sixteen miles
more.
Thousands of busy and eager enemies and uncalculated dangers beset
them. The bodies of these hard riders begin to feel the trying
effects of the rapid march, and nature raises a solemn protest
against war’s demands upon her children. But the order for the
swinging trot abates not, and man and beast, brightened by the rising
sun, are put under sterner tribute for stronger effort.
Wearied marchers: the crisis is now at hand.
Stuart and his riders had vanquished nature: Could they now vanquish
man? If Stuart crossed the Potomac to reach Chambersburg, he must
recross it to reach Virginia; and to prevent the latter, all the
skill, energy and genius of the Federal commanders were called forth.
Pleasanton, who with Federal cavalry was hard behind the Confederate
raiders, had marched seventy-eight miles in twenty-eight hours, but
this wonderful gait still left him in Stuart’s rear, and now that
the point at which Stuart was to cross was revealed, every Federal
soldier that could be reached was pressed forward to dispute the
passage. Whit’s Ford was guarded, but not sufficiently well to impede
the rush of the Confederates, and the Federals at the crucial moment
retired, and the way was opened for the escape and safety of the
valiant Confederate corps.
Twenty-seven hours and eighty-one miles. No sleep. No rest.
Galloping, fighting, scouting and ready to assail any enemy, with
human endurance tested to the greatest possible limit—what think you,
reader, of the conduct of these riders, when, out of those three
brigades, only two men, either by sleep, illness, hunger, weariness
or straggling, were missing when, at noon, on the 12th of October,
on Virginia’s soil, Stuart called his roll to calculate losses?
Measured by any human formula for patience or endurance, courage,
loyalty and chivalry, this service of Stuart and his command stands
with but few parallels in military history. They did all men could
do, and the Divine Judge himself requires nothing more than this at
man’s hands.