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By Root 7058 0

was an uncharacteristic description of a man who was generally considered to be haughty and cold, and too enamored of his military record during the Mexican-American War to listen to the advice of his generals. On the night of June 19 there was an explosion of thunder and lightning over Richmond. The clattering of rain followed by a rush of cool air made a pleasant end to Fremantle’s last hours in the city. He was packing in preparation for a dawn departure by train to Culpeper, where he hoped to obtain a horse and ride to Lee’s headquarters at Berryville.

The drought also broke at Middleburg, near the northern Virginia border, finally ridding the countryside of its pervasive smell of rotting horses.7 Water flowed through the camp of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, flooding the tents, many of which stood empty. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., was alone in his, struggling to make sense of the past forty-eight hours. Only four days ago he had been studying William Howard Russell’s published diary for accuracy and bias, wondering if the authorities had forgotten the regiment’s existence. After the Battle of Brandy Station, General Pleasonton had ordered the cavalry to pursue the Confederate army into the Blue Ridge Mountains and bring him definitive intelligence of its direction. Jeb Stuart had placed his troopers in front of the three mountain gaps to hold the Union cavalry off. Both he and his men were trying to blot out their recent near humiliation; Pleasonton’s cavalry were no less determined to prove that they were the Confederates’ equals or better. The 1st Massachusetts Cavalry had always previously ended up on the sidelines or been held in reserve, but this time they were assigned to Kilpatrick’s brigade and sent to break the Confederate hold at Aldie, the northernmost gap in the Blue Ridge. They roared into the village on the morning of the seventeenth, easily driving off the rebel pickets, but when they turned back for another sweep, they were hit by a countercharge of Confederate reinforcements. Charles Francis Jr.’s squadron became trapped at the foot of a hill. “My poor men were just slaughtered and all we could do was to stand still and be shot down,” he wrote in anguish to his brother Henry. “In twenty minutes and without fault on our part I lost thirty-two as good men and horses as can be found in the cavalry corps. They seemed to pick out my best and truest men, my pets and favourites. How and why I escaped I can’t say, for my men fell all around me.”8 He was racked by guilt and grief over his losses. The army’s leaders were butchers, he wrote bitterly to Henry; the “drunk-murdering-arson dynasty” of Hooker and the rest had to be expelled before they did Lee’s work for him.

Ill.41 General Longstreet’s corps crossing the Blue Ridge from the Shenandoah to the Rappahannock, by Frank Vizetelly.

Jeb Stuart succeeded in driving the Federals away from the passes, but he could not prevent General Pleasonton from obtaining the information sought by Hooker. By June 22 the Federals knew for certain that Pennsylvania and not Washington was Lee’s objective. Stuart was unsure what Lee wished him to do in the face of so many threats—should he guard the gaps, follow the Confederate army up the Shenandoah Valley, or create a diversion and try to maintain the deception that the capital was in danger? Lee sent him two notes, on June 22 and 23, which the cavalry commander interpreted to mean that he could use his own judgment, provided he rejoined the main body of the army in good time. Stuart decided to go riding and raiding in between the Federal army and Washington.9

Fremantle at last arrived at Lee’s headquarters at 9:00 A.M. on June 22. He recognized the general immediately but refrained from going up to him; the expression on Lee’s face discouraged frivolous interruption. Instead, Fremantle asked a member of the staff where he might find Francis Lawley. After introducing him to Lee’s aides, Lawley invited Fremantle to join them for breakfast. There was another guest at the table, a Prussian captain named Justus Scheibert,