For more than 161 years, Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s ‘Ride to Gettysburg’ has proved fertile ground for debate and controversy, and for more than 30 years I have tried to avoid such discussions. Confusing orders, missing orders, problematic decisions, and Stuart’s motivations are just a few of the unknowable or unsolvable factors that fuel the debate.

When I led tours of the Aldie, Middleburg, and Upperville battlefields, I always included a stop in front of the Caleb Rector home (now the headquarters for the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area Association), at Atoka, a quiet corner formerly known as Rectors Cross Roads. Stuart had made the home his headquarters after the fighting, and he began his ride from the home in the early hours of June 25.

I have always viewed the quiet days between the end of the fighting on June 22 and Stuart’s departure from the Rector home as an end to one story and the beginning of another. Doing so allowed me to avoid Stuart’s Ride. Call me a chicken but tour schedules and roundtable time limits are quickly derailed by any discussion of Stuart’s Ride. With such concerns now largely behind me, I have recently pondered one specific question; can we identify a singular event that sparked the idea for the ride? As stated above, I have tried over the years to avoid the topic, but the truth is that I have been a part of or witness to many discussions of the ride, but I do not recall any attempt to identify the singular event from which the idea sprang forth. I am not seeking Stuart’s motives. Rather, I am seeking the one specific event that sparked the initial discussions between Stuart and his superiors.

I do not claim to have made an exhaustive search of the historical record or the historiography of the event, however, none of the sources I have examined answer or attempt to answer my question.

As I looked through sources in my collection, most writers begin their discussion on June 22, 1863, when the first specific orders passed between generals Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, and Stuart. But those orders did not appear out of a vacuum. Something led those three men to discuss what Stuart would do over the next several days, beyond his general mission of screening the army.

At least one author claims that Maj. John Mosby, during a meeting on June 17, “suggested to Stuart that he might be able to go east, through Hooker’s apparently static troops via Hopewell Gap and then go northwest from there to cross the Potomac River at Seneca Falls…into Maryland. Mimicking Mosby, the author concludes, “That would raise hell in Washington, all right!” Mosby later made a similar statement, but he places the meeting on June 22.

Stuart did meet with Mosby twice on June 17, once in the morning at the home of Miss. Kitty Shacklett near Delaplane (formerly Piedmont Station), and again in the afternoon at Middleburg. Mosby left several recollections of his actions beginning on June 16. In 1878, he recalled, “I had been on a scouting expedition along the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, and having learned that the bulk of Hooker’s army was in the neighborhood of Manassas, [I] had reported it to Stuart… on the morning of the 17^th…” He then stated, “I told Stuart [that] I proposed to … cross the Potomac at Seneca.” To this point, I have no quibble with Mosby’s memory. I believe he planned to clear the Union cavalry away from the ford at Seneca ahead of Stuart crossing shortly behind him. His plans came to naught that afternoon, however, when Union cavalry attacked one of Stuart’s brigades at Aldie and precipitated several days of fighting.

But Mosby then describes information about Union intentions that he learned after the war, when he read testimony before the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. “A cavalry division had been kept in Fairfax to guard…Washington. I knew that as soon as Hooker fell back to cover Washington from Lee’s movements that this force would be released…and sent to the front with Pleasonton, as Hooker had long been begging to be done.” Similar versions of his actions between June 16 and 18 appeared in 1887, and again in his long defense of Stuart published in 1908. All relate to the same events with slight differences in the details. However, Mosby’s mixing of what he knew in June 1863 and what he learned years later confuse the matter.

After the morning meeting at Miss. Shacklett’s home, the two men met again in Middleburg and with no indication of the Union attack yet to come, Stuart okayed Mosby’s plan to attack the enemy at Seneca. On a blistering hot day, where the heat index topped 118 degrees in the shade and as much as 133 degrees in the sun, (Yes you read that correctly – 118 to 133 degrees), Mosby allowed his men to rest and take some refreshment at a home north of Aldie. While there, the men heard gunfire at Aldie. Adapting immediately to the changing situation, Mosby ordered his men back in the saddle and moved toward the sound of the guns.

After dark, and with most of his men waiting in the woods near the Little River Turnpike, Mosby and three men approached the pike east of Aldie and soon captured two officers and several orderlies. The men had stopped to eat at the home of Almond Birch. A transplant from upstate New York, Birch had purchased the property in 1857. The officers almost certainly knew Birch to be a Yankee and would have been comfortable stopping there, especially as they would have been within Union lines if Alfred Pleasonton had held his cavalry east of Aldie as he had been instructed. An investigation the next day revealed the men had been captured about 10 p.m., 400 yards east of the Union picket lines.

When seized, Maj. William Sterling carried an order from General Hooker to Pleasonton. As Mosby later related, “We then went to a house a mile off and got a light. I read the dispatch [singular] and then wrote Stuart all I had learned. The prisoners, the dispatch [singular], and my letter were sent immediately to Stuart.” According to Mosby’s 1908 account, Stuart received them “before sunrise,” June 18.

In a letter written on June 20, Chiswell Dabney, Stuart’s aide, described carrying the “very important dispatches,” [plural], to Lee, nearly killing his horse, “as my orders were to take them regardless of horse flesh.”

In his campaign report, written in August 1863, Stuart mentioned the incident, referring to dispatches, plural. “These dispatches disclosed the fact that Hooker was looking to Aldie with solicitude; that Pleasonton, with infantry and cavalry, occupied the place, and that a reconnaissance in force, of cavalry, was meditated toward Warrenton and Culpeper.”

In his 1878 account, Mosby spoke of dispatches, plural, boasting, “These dispatches contained the ‘open sesame’ to all of Hooker’s plans and secrets. They told Pleasonton all that Hooker knew about Lee, and what he wanted him to find out; also, the strength of each division of the army.”

I stress the question of one dispatch or several dispatches, because until about 25 years ago, few historians, if any, had seen any of the documents until the late Horace Mewborn found one of them at the University of North Carolina. That one document proved vital to my re-analysis of Hooker’s intentions and his orders to Pleasonton on June 17. But Horace only found one document rather than multiple documents. He first published the order in a 2000 article in Blue & Gray Magazine and I suspect he may have been the first person to have seen the document in many decades. I include my transcription here.

“Hd Qrs Army Potomac

June 17^th, 1863

Brig. Gen’l Pleasonton, Commanding Cavalry Corps

General,

Under no circumstances advance the main body of your cavalry beyond Aldie until further information is received of the movements of the enemy. If the position you should occupy tonight should offer advantage for grazing your horses, it will be well to hold on there until your scouts can furnish us with further information. We have reason to believe that Ewell’s and Longstreet’s corps passed up the valley with a heavy cavalry force and if so the presumption is that they are still near the Upper Potomac. They must have come for an object and until we know where they are, we cannot divine it. It will be advised for the infantry to remain where they will be tonight until further orders. Send a small detachment in the direction of Leesburg and should it fall in with no considerable force of the enemy, direct them to connect with Capt. [McKee’s] cavalry to night at the mouth of the Monocacy and have them ordered to join you.

Direct the force sent to Snicker’s Gap to penetrate, if possible, into the valley and ascertain what force the enemy have or had there, and also the direction of their departure, if they have left. The General feels the worth of reliable information in that direction and desires that you spare no labor to obtain it. Also send a detachment into Thoroughfare Gap and beyond if practicable for the same object. If you shall be in want of supplies before the completion of this, send me timely notice in order that the proper Department may have you provided. We shall endeavor to have a couple of regiments from [Stahel’s] command go to Warrenton and Sulphur Springs and penetrate in that direction.

A Signal Officer will join you and it is reported that from a point of observation on the Blue Ridge near Snicker’s Gap, the whole country beyond can be observed without difficulty. Give timely notice of any want of supplies to the proper Staff Departments, that they may be furnished you.

Very Rspy your Ob Servt

Daniel Butterfield

Mil. Chf of Staff”]

I do not publish the document here to engage in any discussion of Hooker’s intentions or the subsequent fighting, but rather to let you see what the document does and does not say regarding Hooker’s plans. Stuart claimed, “The captured dispatches also gave the entire number of divisions, from which we could estimate the approximate strength of the enemy’s army.” Yet no such information is in the captured order, and, to my knowledge, Horace found no other documents in the collection. Now, Mosby and Stuart could have misremembered or misrepresented but I believe more than one document fell into their hands.]

By itself, the located document certainly proved beneficial to Stuart, but it is not the “open sesame” described by Mosby, at least in my opinion. The weight of evidence appears to support multiple documents being captured rather than just one. But Mosby also claimed to have written an account of what he had learned about Union troop dispositions and sent the account to Stuart along with the captured order. Did Stuart, Dabney, and later Mosby, consider the two documents as the multiple documents they each referred to?

After viewing the document[s], Mosby set out to verify the information. “I remained…all the next day in the midst of Hooker’s army making captures and gathering information, which I reported in person to Stuart.” Or, as Mosby stated in his book-long defense of Stuart, “We… found Stuart at his headquarters. I gave him all the information I had gained…My men were dispersed for rest, but I stayed at headquarters.” One can only imagine the course of the discussion between the two men.

I believe the information in the captured document[s], combined with the intelligence Mosby gathered during his several scouting trips, sparked the idea for the controversial ride in Stuart’s mind and led him to broach the idea with Longstreet and Lee, after they had evaluated the documents. Put another way, I believe discussions of Stuart’s Ride should begin on June 17, 1863, at 10 o’clock in the evening.

Sources:

Documents from Horace Mewborn

Chiswell Dabney Letters, Saunders Family Collection, Virginia Museum of History and Culture.

Charles S. Venable Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina

Boston Herald

Philadelphia Weekly Times

The Official Records

Paul R Gorman, “J.E.B. Stuart and Gettysburg,” Gettysburg: Historical Articles of Lasting Interest, 1987

Keen and Mewborn, 43^rd Battalion Virginia Cavalry, Mosby’s Command

John Mosby, Stuart’s Cavalry in the Gettysburg Campaign, 1908

Dr. Jon M. Nese, PhD. and Jeffrey J. Harding, “The “Weather Gods” Damn the Gettysburg Campaign, Searing Heat and Torrents of Rain Haunt Both Armies, to be published in 2025

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