Operations of General J. E. B. Stuart before Chancellorsville.
By Adjutant R. T. Hubard, of the Third Virginia Cavalry.
The following extract was clipped from the Richmond (Virginia) Daily Whig, of July 31, 1879:
MAHONE AT CHANCELLORSVILLE.
[Colonel William E. Cameron, in Philadelphia Weekly Times.]
Meantime, what of the army thus beset and imperilled? We have said that General Slocum's column encountered no opposition in the tedious and circuitous march to Kelly's, or in effecting the passage of two difficult streams. The Southern historians have either omitted remark on this subject or have implied that General Lee received opportune intelligence of what was passing on his left. Neither the records nor events themselves justify this view of the case. General Stuart, usually so vigilant, seems on this occasion to have been surprised. General Hooker says that four hours after his three corps had crossed the Rappahannock the Southern cavalry were still picketing Richards' ford, and the writer knows that when, thirty-six hours after the passage, General Meade came within sight of Chancellorsville, General Stuart had not yet interposed any body of horse between his advance and Fredericksburg. Nor is it possible that General Lee received timely information of the Federal operations. It is incredible that he would, by choice, have allowed Hooker to concentrate at Chancellorsville with the option, when there, of taking his line in reverse, or of moving upon his line of communications and forcing a battle upon unequal terms. Two brigades (Mahone's and Posey's) of Lee's army were stationed at United States ford, and their commander only received notice of the approaching danger when General Meade was crossing at Ely's ford, only six miles distant, and then from a straggling cavalryman. General Mahone moved at once to Chancellorsville, and it was well he did, for at daybreak the following morning the Federals moved upon his outposts.
A gallant officer and gentleman, like Colonel Cameron, would not wittingly, I know, cast any unjust reproach upon the memory of that Christian patriot, the bravery of whose deeds—from his first charge at Manassas to that crowning act of heroism at Yellow tavern, where he interposed less than three thousand men between Sheridan's splendidly appointed corps of 12,000 cavalry and the capital of the Confederacy, and gave his own glorious life to the city's defence—will all, some day, adorn the brightest pages of Virginia's history, and, for generations, cause the name of Stuart to be cherished by those who love the noble and the true in human
