J.E.B. Stuart’s Revenge

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But there was more than merriment to Stuart’s mission. As the Confederates moved through the first camp, each column broke off for its assigned mission. Rooney Lee’s 9th Virginia received a ‘withering’ volley from a handful of Yankees on the platform at the depot, but it stayed the gray horsemen only briefly. The band of Federals quickly disappeared into the darkness.

Rounding the corner of the depot, Blackford heard ‘the labored puffing’ of a Yankee locomotive trying to escape. ‘I rode up alongside of the locomotive and ordered the engineer to shut off the steam,’ Blackford recorded, ‘but he would not.’ Blackford fired into the engine and threw his leg over the pommel of his saddle to jump aboard. But before he could leap, his horse plunged into a ditch, throwing him hat over boots. The train escaped to spread word of the Rebel raid.

Not far from Blackford, the Prussian aide von Borcke endeavored to cut the telegraph. Unable to climb the pole himself (von Borcke was widely noted for his size), he asked for a volunteer. A slim teenager stepped forward. Despite a steady patter of enemy bullets, von Borcke hoisted the boy onto his shoulders and watched as ‘he scooted up the pole with the agility of a squirrel and cut the wire amid the jubilant cheers of my men.’

Elsewhere, Colonel Thomas Rosser led a column toward the Union camp south of the tracks, but the commotion north of the station had alerted the Yankees south of it, and they had extinguished their lights. Pelted by rain, surrounded by pitchy blackness, and obstructed by the rail sidings and invisible ditches, Rosser’s men lost order. Confused, wet, and attracted by the sure booty they had just left behind in the main Union camp, they gave up the effort.

A quarter-mile west of the Union camps, Colonel Wickham and his 4th Virginia Cavalry attempted what Stuart called ‘the great object of the expedition.’ By now the rain had returned to its former condition; it fell, remembered Blackford, ‘not in drops but in streams, as if poured from buckets.’ Still, Wickham’s Virginians swarmed over the bridge in a futile effort to ignite the wooden supports. That failing, they tried to cut the bridge down, but the Yankees intervened. A ragged line of Pennsylvania troops formed on high ground west of the stream and distracted the bridge-breakers with a steady supply of bullets. With the waters of the creek rising fast and the demolition of the bridge both unlikely and dangerous, Stuart reluctantly called off the mission.

For a few more precious minutes the Confederates plundered the station, while frightened Yankee teamsters and staff officers watched from the surrounding woods. ‘I was so frightened,’ admitted one Federal, ‘I could not have spoken if I tried.’ Another wrote, ‘We laid in the woods and could hear all that was going on, the cursing and swearing, the breaking open of trunks, boxes, desks & safes.’

Confederate privates filled their haversacks with booty of all sorts, including canned lobster and whiskey. The presence of spirits worried many officers, but, as Blackford wryly recalled, ‘the importance of restraint was appreciated, and none took more than they could carry.’

By 3:00 a.m. the Union camp had been thoroughly rifled, and Stuart ordered his command to reform and start back toward the Rappahannock. It did so with an impressive haul of booty: 300 prisoners, 500 horses and mules (most of which escaped before the Confederates reached the Rappahannock), and more clothes than horsemen could reasonably expect to carry. Stuart’s captures went beyond supplies and prisoners, though. His troopers had also found the Yankee army’s payroll safe, which contained a half-million dollars in greenbacks and $20,000 in gold to fund the Confederate war effort. Most important of all, however, were the papers from Pope’s headquarters wagons. They would tell Robert E. Lee much about the condition of the Union army and Pope’s intentions, and would confirm Lee’s suspicion that McClellan’s army would soon arrive at Pope’s side. The information helped spur Lee to action and influenced his planning of what would become the Second Manassas Campaign.

Despite the valuable prizes it netted, when the Catlett’s Station raid is measured against what Stuart hoped to achieve at the outset, it must be judged at least a partial failure. The bridge over Cedar Run stood intact, and Pope’s supplies continued to flow unhindered. Indeed, though embarrassing to the Yankees, the raid did not affect their operations at all. It would take efforts far grander than Stuart’s to force Pope off the Rappahannock.

If Stuart felt disappointment over the raid, his spirits were lifted by one final discovery that emerged from the take at Catlett’s Station. Amid the Union headquarters baggage was a fancy hat and dress uniform coat. Inside the coat was the owner’s tag: ‘John Pope, Major General.’ During the raid, the coat had rapidly made the rounds of the Confederate cavalrymen, who derived great amusement from their find. On the ride back to camp, Fitzhugh Lee came across some friends and bade them to wait a moment–he had something to show them. He disappeared behind a tree and soon emerged wearing both the hat and coat, ‘which reached nearly to his feet…. This masquerade was accompanied by a burst of jolly laughter that might have been heard for a hundred yards.’

Soon the coat made it to Stuart’s hands. Here, at last, was payback for the humiliating loss of his hat and cloak to Pope’s marauders at Verdiersville. Stuart promptly sent it off to Governor John Letcher in Richmond as a prize of war. For the next several weeks it would be one of the Confederate capital’s great attractions, for Letcher hung it in the state library for all to see.

Before sending the coat away, Stuart could not resist one last bit of merriment. To John Pope he wrote a message and sent it through the lines:

General.
You have my hat and plume. I have your best coat. I have the honor to propose a cartel for the fair exchange of the prisoners.
Very Respectfully
J.E.B. Stuart
Maj. Genl. C.S.A.

John Pope never responded, but J.E.B. Stuart had his revenge.

This article was written by John Hennessy and originally published in the June 1995 issue of Civil War Times Magazine.

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Tags: 19th Century, American Civil War, Civil War Times, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures

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