On September 1, 1862, two Federal divisions duked it out with a Confederate corps in a cornfield fifteen miles west of Washington, D.C. The Battle of Ox Hill, or Chantilly as the Southerners called it, is a true piece of Civil War esoterica.
Strobes of lightning and gusts of wind from a powerful late summer storm set the stage for brief, fierce fighting that claimed 2,100 casualties. A grizzly butcher’s bill by 21st century standards, the blood spilled at Ox Hill barely registered against the cumulative gore of the American Civil War.
The Battle of Ox Hill’s relative unimportance is a product of its timing. The fight occurred two days after Second Manassas and two weeks before Antietam. A capstone to one campaign and the inauguration of another, Ox Hill has become a footnote.
Its insignificance came to the forefront in the late-20th century when a development-minded Board of Supervisors in Fairfax County, Virginia determined that the battlefield’s highest and best use was as a suburban development. A shopping center and a housing development subsumed the field.
Today you can catch a movie or grab a kebab on hallowed ground.
Southern defeat in the War of the Rebellion was a group effort born of complex circumstances.
Traditionally, the events of July 1863—the so-called “High Water Mark of the Confederacy” along the Emmitsburg Road at Gettysburg and the capitulation at Vicksburg one day later—are regarded as the moment when the Yankees seized momentum that carried into eventual victory.
This conclusion is not definitive. More novel interpretations abound. Confederate partisan John Singleton Mosby even went so far as to suggest that the Southern cause was lost as early as July of 1861 when the Rebel army failed to capitalize on the Yankee route at First Manassas.1
A less extreme and more seductive position beyond the Gettysburg/Vicksburg narrative holds that the Battle of Antietam in September of 1862 was the moment when the reality of a potential Southern victory evaporated.
Savage fighting in early 1862 brought the Yankee Army of the Potomac to the gates of Richmond where a fortuitous change of command found an ascendant Robert E. Lee at the helm of a potent Confederate army. Lee routed a numerically superior Union army, forcing it out of southeastern Virginia before pivoting to central Virginia where elements of his command savaged another Yankee host under John Pope.
Not content to rest on his laurels, Lee unleashed Stonewall Jackson, whose corps quickly flanked and destabilized the Yankee army setting up a colossal brawl on the plains of Manassas.
Confederates seized the initiative at a shining moment when European powers were deliberating formal recognition of the Rebel government.2 Southern authorities reasoned that an all-out victory over the premiere Union army in the east would occasion acknowledgement of the Confederacy, legitimization of secession, and the establishment of a southern nation.
Closer to home, hard combat over fourteen months was beginning to reveal the limitations of men and material on the Southern side of the conflict. Never again would the Confederate Army possess the caliber of resources it did in late-1862.3 More importantly, the proverbial gloves were poised to come off the conflict. A limited, quasi-romantic war was soon to slip into a total war of attrition the South could not win.4
If the South was ever to win its independence, the decisive window of early September 1862 would have been the likely time frame.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia barely managed to stave off destruction on the banks of Antietam Creek. The “flower of the ANV” won a tactical draw, but Lee’s retreat across the Potomac conceded a strategic defeat. This reverse gave Abraham Lincoln enough political capital to issue an Emancipation Proclamation that forever changed the spiritual calculus of the war and doomed prospects of European recognition for the Confederacy.
In retrospect, Lee was lucky to have coaxed this meager bounty out of his Maryland expedition. Shortly after crossing over the Potomac from Virginia, Yankee enlisted men discovered the famous “lost order,” a document from Lee’s own headquarters detailing troop movements. Once in Federal hands, this intelligence drew momentum away from Lee.
So too, the tricky geography of western Maryland forced Lee to divide his army and reduce two potent eyes – Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry, West Virginia – in his rear. As if these disadvantages weren’t enough, Lee’s vaunted army melted away in the interval between 2nd Manassas and Antietam. Whether by exhaustion or a moral compunction resulting from the invasion of the North, 45% of Lee’s effectives disappeared before the Army made its stand at Antietam.
Had the deciding battle of the Civil War been fought sooner and in the State of Virginia where Lee retained an advantage, the outcome may have been different.
What follows is bad history, contingent history, the yield of fanciful “what if’s.” These speculations are laden with possibilities that provide interesting insights to the affective core of America’s favorite bloodbath running beneath settled history.
On the night of August 31, 1862, a quixotic episode occurred not far from what on the next day would become the Ox Hill Battlefield. A man imbued with extraordinary power wielded it in a curious way with disastrous results. In doing so, a window of opportunity, however slight, slammed shut.
The deciding factor in the early evening of that balmy August night in 1862 was a man whose name remains above reproach—JEB Stuart.
A golden idol in the Lost Cause pantheon, JEB’s tenure at the helm of the Confederate cavalry in the east cemented his legacy as an icon of the Old South.
Dashing, romantic, chivalric, brave, unyielding, tempestuous—he was the idealized South personified. Stuart seized the position atop the Rebel cavalry in 1861 and shaped it in his image and likeness during the dogfights of early 1862. Throughout that violent and eventful year, Stuart secured his position with a bold ride around the entire Yankee army.
Beginning on August 10, Stuart and his mounted Rebels were in the vanguard for Stonewall Jackson during the fight at Cedar Mountain and the subsequent sprint northwards that yielded the battle of Second Manassas.
The fight that took place over three days on parts of the old Manassas Battlefield far eclipsed the carnage of July 1861. Two powerful and seasoned armies belted one another with a new savagery. On August 30, 1862, Federal field commander John Pope shifted his forces for a renewed assault on Confederate lines, unknowingly exposing his flank. The subsequent attack by Confederate Major General James Longstreet shattered the Federal Army and left its commander in a stupor.
"Good!"
An 1866-vintage bust of dear old JEB.
An 1866-vintage bust of dear old JEB.
Renowned Confederate cartographer Jedediah Hotchkiss mapped the movements of Jackson's 2nd Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia from August 26 to September 1, 1862.
Having successfully flanked John Pope's Union Army, Stonewall Jackson's Corps descends on the vital Yankee supply depot at Manassas Junction. This move destabilizes the Federal Army's position in Central Virginia.
Jackson's Corps holed up in a railroad cut north of the Warrenton Turnpike, just west of the hill where Jackson earned the nom de guerre "Stonewall" thirteen months prior.
The Federals could not find Jackson until the 28th when the sight of a Union column on the Warrenton Pike tempted Old Jack. When Jackson advanced his beloved Stonewall Brigade out of the woods to gobble up John Gibbon's freshly minted brigade of western Yankees at Brawner's Farm, few could have predicted that the two most famous brigades of the war were about to slog it out.
By battle's end, the Yankees knew well where Jackson's Confederates were and John Gibbon's nameless brigade was known better as the "Iron Brigade."
Having successfully drawn the Federal Army out of central Virginia, Jackson drew the Yankees into a fight on ground of his choosing on a brutal slope crested by a railroad cut.
Union soldiers fought valiantly on August 29 and 30 against both veteran Confederate infantry and the ineptitude of Yankee high command.
As the shattered Yankee army regrouped at Centreville, Lee issued orders for Jackson and his 2nd Corps (with JEB Stuart's cavalry out front) to march north across Sudley Springs to the Little River Turnpike. There, the Second Corps turned east towards Jermantown.
The fight at Chantilly (or Ox Hill) on September 1, 1862 was not the engagement Lee or Jackson had hoped for. Instead, the minor battle was an inconclusive dust-up that both exhausted armies used to shore up their positions.
An Alexander Gardner photograph from 1862 depicting the earthworks at Centreville, Virginia. LoC.
An Alexander Gardner photograph from 1862 depicting the earthworks at Centreville, Virginia. LoC.
The Yankees retreated over Bull Run and along the Warrenton Pike four miles, where they encamped around the fortified hilltop town of Centreville, Virginia. There they holed up to reorganize and block the advancing Confederate Army so that long wagon trains of wounded men and supplies could lace eastwards eighteen miles over the Braddock Road and the Warrenton and Little River Turnpikes to the line of forts protecting Washington, D.C.
Five miles west of the Union Army, Robert E. Lee was not content to rest on his laurels. Meeting with his top lieutenants early on August 31, Lee ordered a miniature version of the very maneuver that had brought on the battle at Second Manassas. Sensing that John Pope and his Federal army were content to remain stationary, Lee ordered Longstreet’s Corps to press against the Yankees at Centreville while Jackson and his men slipped northwards through Sudley Springs until they hit the Little River Turnpike where they would turn east and strike towards the hamlet of Jermantown.5
Lee could afford to be bold. His men had just crushed a far more powerful Federal Army and a relief column of 25,000 fresh men under D.H. Hill was less than a day away. When this conjunction occurred, Lee’s forces would total over 75,000 effectives.
The Confederate commander targeted Jermantown because of its obvious value as a strategic crossroads. Here, a mile west of Fairfax Court House, two macadamized turnpikes intersected. If Confederates could hold this intersection, the road that John Pope hoped to use as a retreat axis for his Yankee army would be severed, forcing him to leave the entrenchments at Centreville and fight the Army of Northern Virginia on ground of Lee’s choosing with near even numbers.
The Confederate commander targeted Jermantown because of its obvious value as a strategic crossroads. Here, a mile west of Fairfax Court House, two macadamized turnpikes intersected. If Confederates could hold this intersection, the road that John Pope hoped to use as a retreat axis for his Yankee army would be severed, forcing him to leave the entrenchments at Centreville and fight the Army of Northern Virginia on ground of Lee’s choosing with near even numbers.
As the fates would have it, the perfect terrain for a defensive battle existed just west of Jermantown. Here, a “V” of ridges owning its existence to the collision of North America and Africa into Pangea some 250 million years prior created a commanding landform that reached from Ox Hill across the Little River Turnpike, the Warrenton Turnpike, and the Braddock Road.6 The slopes of this ridge south of Ox Hill had been converted from old growth forest into agricultural land, clearing potential fields of fire. Additional military value could be found in a stretch of the never-completed Manassas Gap Railroad, which had been cut into the earth on a line facing the Warrenton Turnpike that the Yankee army would have to attack if Rebels secured this ridge.
No single commander bore more responsibility in this plan to trap and destroy the Federal Army than JEB Stuart. At surface, he was the perfect man to screen and scout ahead of the main body of Rebel infantry. Not only was he a seasoned commander, but he had maintained his own headquarters the previous fall along the “V” of ridges at Camp Qui Vive two miles beneath Ox Hill between the Little River and Warrenton Turnpikes.
With his combination of soldierly acumen and knowledge of local roads, JEB’s role was to feel out the Federal post at Jermantown without revealing himself, and then report these dispositions so that Stonewall Jackson’s infantry could carry the position early on September 1, 1862.
What JEB did instead melted any hope of destroying the Federal Army.
Riding in advance of the Confederate flanking force, JEB Stuart got within eyeshot of Jermantown just before sunset on August 31, 1862. There he found six companies of the 2nd New Jersey Infantry fanned out in advance of Jermantown on the rightward leg of the “V” ridge.7
The Yankee hold over this position was tenuous at best. Despite good terrain, their numbers were low and a viable flanking route—the Ox Road—traced an unseen valley beyond the Federal flank on a line between Ox Hill to the west and the Confederate objective at Jermantown. JEB knew about this road from his previous forays in the area. In fact, on the following day, September 1, 1862, JEB guided his command down this very same road he could have used the night before.
Instead of utilizing this terrain asset to maintain operational security, JEB did something quite different. In his own words:
“A position was gained, by a difficult road, commanding this road, which was completely occupied by the enemy with a continuous roll of wagons going toward Fairfax Courthouse. It was discovered also that we were in sight of the sentinels of a camp, the dimensions of which could not be seen. The artillery was placed in position just after dark, and opened upon the road. A few rounds sufficed to throw everything into confusion; and such commotion, upsetting, collisions and smashups were rarely ever seen. The firing continued as long as it seemed desirable, and the pieces and the command withdrew to came for the night…” 8
Civil War-era maps lack the rich contextual details of later cartography, such as this 1915-vintage topographic map of Fairfax County, Virginia. Produced before the broadscale development and requisite earthmoving of the late-20th century, the contours presented here represent some of the best tools for understanding the minutiae of August 31, 1862.
Rather than stay invisible and work to develop a surprise attack, Stuart ordered up the Washington Artillery, who proceeded to lob six shells at a Federal wagon train on the Warrenton Turnpike and pickets along Difficult Run. Eliciting a quick panic, JEB and his guns fled into the night. What followed was a cascade of Union dispatch writing, which caused immense alarm within the Federal command. Any decisive battle along the Little River Turnpike was averted when the intersection at Jermantown was reinforced heavily and bluecoat infantry was tasked with sweeping up towards the raiding Confederate column.
JEB Stuart remained blissfully unaware of these developments. He was busy. Rather than stay out front and scout through the night, JEB and company chose to partake in what may be the corniest episode in the entire Civil War.
On that fateful evening, Stuart did not report directly to Stonewall Jackson, whom he was nominally supporting. Rather, Stuart and his staff rode in the opposite direction of the Yankee army to a place called Frying Pan where Laura Ratcliffe lived. Though married to another, Stuart had developed an infatuation for Ratcliffe and her cousin, Antonia Ford. JEB went so far as to carry a lock of Ratcliffe’s hair in his hatband.9
Heros Von Borcke, a Prussian soldier on Stuart’s staff, penned the definitive account of Stuart’s impulsive encounter with Ratcliffe on the night of August 31 and into the morning of September 1, 1862.
“A brisk canter through the dark woods brought us about midnight to the mansion, where all were fast asleep except two ferocious dogs that tried unsuccessfully to resist our entrance to the immediate grounds. Stuart proposed that we should arouse the slumbering inhabitants with the dulcet-notes of a serenade; and the serenade was attempted; but the discordant voices that joined in the effort sounded so very like the voices of the wild Indians in their war-whoop…in a few minutes the whole household, young and old, were aroused, and we remained talking with our kind friends, until the morning sun, stealing through the curtains of the drawing-room, reminded us that it was time to be off. And so, after a hasty but hearty breakfast, we took leave of the hospitable family and rode back to our command.”10
This was not JEB’s only dalliance in what moderns might characterize as emotional infidelity. He doted on many attractive young women, wore their kisses gleefully, exchanged letters, and gave them gifts. This continued even after his wife, on hearing about these relationships through the grapevine, demanded an explanation from her husband.11
16th-century image of the human brain from the New York Public Library.
16th-century image of the human brain from the New York Public Library.
Civil War historiography has a way of ensnaring its students in a world view governed by rationality. It is convenient to attribute maneuvers and battles as the fruit of well-kept plans steeped in strategic reason. The truth is more unwieldy. The lived war was a disorienting tangle of feelings and instincts, as irrational and chaotic as the men who fought it.
An invisible network of turnpikes and crossroads mapped with the desires and biases of the war’s generals mirrored the concrete objectives apparent on war-era cartography. These unconscious landscapes are as important in unlocking the war’s totality as any well-trod battlefield or monument.
JEB Stuart’s Civil War is fundamentally misunderstood when rendered as a collection of seductively simple rectangles hovering on Virginia’s pastoral landscape. These graphics deny a larger truth: the Confederate cavalry chief was subject to the gravity of primal desires as much as any order from a commanding officer. His mission as a scout and buffer for the Army of Northern Virginia was complicated by an internal prerogative to identify and capture spaces where the opportunity for dopamine production was highest.
Much of what made JEB great—his willingness to take extreme risks to elicit the maximum reaction from his adversaries—echoes in the structure of his particular addiction. Stuart, a teetotaler, potentially harbored a dependency on the chemicals that fired in his brain when he was praised.
A fixture of today’s psychological vernacular, dopamine and brain chemistry were unknown factors during the Civil War. Receptor sites on the brain process lived experience into a cocktail that feeds the body dosages of pleasure. Eventually the brain prioritizes these sensations and behavior adjusts to a “reward-seeking” paradigm. Consciously or not, the actions, however risky, that cause the brain to generate dopamine become the modus operandi of the host.12
Harmless in abstract, the concrete reality of dopamine fixation is addiction.
There is evidence that Stuart may have had a genetic susceptibility to addictive behavior. JEB’s father, Archibald Stuart, was rumored to be a degenerate gambler, whose proclivity for the wager sent his family through dire financial straits.13 Addiction and its attendant pattern of receptor sites carry hereditary potential.
JEB’s behavior itself is more indicative of an addictive personality. Famous for his womanizing, the attentions of the fairer sex were but the tip of the iceberg when it came to JEB’s compulsive need to earn adoration. Every aspect of his life was governed by a deep hunger to win accolades and admiration from his colleagues, his superiors, and his enemies.
As an intense and capable person, JEB Stuart exhibited reward-seeking behavior in ways that were drastic, even historic. His addiction to attention fueled tactical decisions. This complex had two favorite expressions: a garish predilection for dramatic acts of social grandstanding and a fervent desire to surprise the enemy with the unexpected deployment of the biggest guns in JEB’s possession.
A Civil War map you haven't seen before: JEB Stuart's travels down the dopamine highway 1861-1864.
Battle of Lewinsville, Sept. 11, 1861: At the risk of losing his guns, Stuart deploys his artillery at point blank range. He won the battle and praise. Others in the army began to look askance at Stuart.
Battle of Dranesville, Dec. 20, 1861: again victorious in a glorified skirmish, JEB kept busy socializing with a pack of well-to-do local ladies while his men finished up the battle.
Stuart's Ride Around the Federal Army, June 12-15, 1862: "Do not take risks," Robert E. Lee warned his cavalry chief before departing on a bold ride around the Federal Army. JEB then proceeded to take unimaginable risks. It was a great success! JEB got his name in all the papers and was commissioned a Major General.
Evelington Heights, July 3, 1862: Stuart happens upon a large chunk of the Federal Army of the Potomac encamped beneath commanding heights without pickets or videttes to alert them of Stuart's presence. Should Stuart have a) relayed this information to Robert E Lee to set up a crushing defeat at the hands of the ANV or b) shoot artillery at the Federals and alert them to his presence? (JEB chose b.)
Skirmish at Jermantown, August 31, 1862: It was a very different time. Maybe JEB's choice to fire shells at an unaware enemy before disappearing to serenade his quasi-mistress in "dulcet tones" reads corny to modern Americans because of our relative distance from the 19th-century romantic movement. Or maybe it was actually one of the most consequential corny moments in American history.
Sabres and Roses Ball , September 8, 1862: It had been over a week since young women had last fawned over JEB Stuart. Something had to be done. JEB tasked his staff with borrowing battle flags to decorate the Shirley Female Academy for a grand ball to be held quite near the front line during an active campaign that ended poorly for the Confederate cause. If only the Yankees had attacked a little harder that night, maybe JEB would won some of the self-reference that was always in such short supply at his headquarters.
Battle of South Mountain, Sept. 14, 1862: without any proof to support his hunch (and there was ample easy-to-find evidence disproving him), JEB shifted his forces from Turner's Gap to Crampton's Gap to chase a little glory. Unfortunately glory went looking for him at Turner's Gap, the place he had just left. Great job, JEB.
Battle of Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862: JEB kicked off the battle by directing artillery fire from Nicodemus Heights. Then, facing massed Federal guns later in the morning, JEB got the bright idea to send John Pelham's artillery forward to "stir them up." Pelham got spanked by concentrated Yankee artillery. No worries, though, JEB was fine.
Battle of Kelly's Ford, March 17, 1863: Despite commanding a competent retinue of junior officers, JEB saw fit to lead a dangerous charge himself. For once consequences for grandstanding began to filter in, albeit indirectly. John Pelham, Stuart's artillery commander and dear friend, joined a cavalry charge on a whim. The prize he won for playing this stupid game was a mortal wound from a piece of shrapnel that knocked into his head. Stuart was crushed.
Battle of Brandy Station, June 9, 1863: Amidst a mortality crisis in Stuart's immediate friend group, JEB was jonesing for a bit of the old dopamine. So he staged a parade! Two full reviews, in fact. Because Robert E. Lee couldn't make the first one. So he had guys do it all again on June 8. Well, surprise, surprise, the Yankee cavalry crossed the Rappahannock River early on June 9 and lit into JEB's cavalry. It was really quite embarrassing.
Jeb's Ride, June 24-July 2, 1863: So embarrassing, in fact, that JEB acted like a man desperate to salvage his image at any cost. So he devised an amazing plan! With discretionary orders in hand, he would lead an undersized cavalry division around the entire Yankee Army. Just like he had in 1862. This would assure his status as the unquestioned pinnacle of Virginia's cavalier culture. Unfortunately, JEB was so fixated with this self-promotional maneuver that he lost touch with objective reality. In doing so, he lost literal touch with the army he was meant to serve and the ANV went into Gettysburg effectively blind.
The night of August 31, 1862 found JEB juicing the moment of all its dopamine-rendering potentials. A largely forgotten moment in Civil War history, the bizzarro decisions Stuart made that night to the detriment of his army were predictable events in a larger campaign of self-indulgence.
A year prior and eight miles distant, JEB Stuart was commanding a small Confederate contingent at a minor dust-up at Lewinsville, Virginia, when he ordered up a battery of artillery into a dangerous position. It was rash, hazardous, and glorious all at once. Though ultimately victorious, the episode earned a warning from his superiors.14
On July 3, 1862, Stuart stumbled upon the bulk of a Federal army encamped in a vulnerable quilt of fields near Evelington Heights, Virginia. Had he alerted his superiors to this salient fact, JEB could have precipitated a decisive strike against the Yankee army. Instead, he called up a battery and watched it lob shells at the Yankees while savoring the resulting chaos. Of this poorly chosen bombardment, Lee himself was apparently “deeply, bitterly disappointed.”15
Weeks after the fiasco west of Fairfax Court House on August 31, Stuart was derelict in his duty to protect the roads over South Mountain that separated the main Union Army from the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. Instead, he rushed southwards to be present at a place where he anticipated he could play a conspicuous role. When a courier informed JEB that Union forces were advancing against exactly the position he had abandoned, another general described Stuart as appearing “completely dazed.”16
Interspersed throughout these fits of tactical impulsivity are episodes of almost manic skirt-chasing. On September 8, 1862, JEB and company were too busy hosting their “Sabers and Roses Ball” at the Shirley Female Academy in Urbana, Maryland to notice an attack from Yankee cavalry. Two days later, Stuart failed to detect a similar Federal thrust because he was busy “dancing with spirited Irish girls.”17
These lapses had consequences. As the war dragged into 1863, a mood of seriousness impacted JEB’s ability to milk pure pleasure out of his romantic war. His daughter’s death in November of 1862 inaugurated a season of sadness. In short order over two months, his best friends in the Confederate Army—John Pelham and Stonewall Jackson—were killed.
Recent science confirms that dopamine-seeking behavior is a common compensatory mechanism in times of extreme grief.18 Consciously or not, JEB knew all about this phenomenon. He fell into familiar patterns.
An attempt to earn a formal commendation from his father figure commander, Robert E. Lee, for conduct during the Battle of Chancellorsville ended in an icy rebuke of Stuart’s perceived self-service.19 Jonesing, JEB ordered a review of his cavalry for distinguished guests at Brandy Station, a move calculated to earn him accolades in the Richmond papers. The event was subject to much press, especially after a substantial Federal cavalry force surprised and roughed up their Confederate counterparts.
Embarrassed and grieving, Stuart then embarked on a risky attempt to restore his high standing with an ill-considered and ultimately disastrous ride around the Federal army in June of 1863 that left the Army of Northern Virginia blind and scattered in the days leading up to Gettysburg.20
The best thing that ever happened for JEB Stuart’s enduring reputation was his death at Yellow Tavern in June of 1864. Despite his many flaws and the failures they enabled, JEB’s memory endures as a pristine paragon of supposed Southern manhood, chivalry, and glory.
As a living colleague, JEB was not as highly regarded by his brothers in arms in the Army of Northern Virginia. The satisfaction Stuart garnered from being the center of attention was a source of ire and mistrust in the organization he purported to serve. Even Robert E. Lee let slip later in life that some measure of responsibility for the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg fell on “Stuart’s failure to carry out his instructions.”21
The cavalier was never taken to task for his misdeeds on the night of August 31, 1862. Sandwiched between monstrous battles, the event was largely forgotten. Exhausted armies were happy enough not to fight a winner-take-all contest west of Fairfax Court House. The minor battle at Ox Hill took place on September 1 and the war carried on, seemingly unaffected.
Lurking beneath this footnote is a curious moment. Were it not for the chemical appetites of one of its chief adversaries, the Union could have suffered a death blow in the first days of September 1862.
It's important to remember that armies mirror the social systems that field them. Frederick Gutheim, chronicler of the Potomac River, ascribed the slowness of the industrialized North’s Union Army “to its preparation, its deliberate organization, and its still-tentative procedures, its heavier supply trains, its mass.”22 By comparison, the loosely conglomerated Southern Army reflected the individualistic nature of Southern society. Its greatest triumphs were miraculous feats of human endeavor attributable to genius generals. So too, its catastrophic demise can be laid at the feet of these same men’s monumental flaws.
Sources
1. Seipel, Kevin H. Rebel. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983.
2. Foreman, Amanda. A World on Fire. London: Random House, 2010.
3. Glatthaar, Joseph T. “The Common Soldier’s Gettysburg Campaign,” in The Gettysburg Nobody Knows, ed. Gabor Boritt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pg. 3-30. This has an excellent account of the ordinance issues that would critically plague the ANV in 1863 and beyond.
4. Hartwig, D. Scott. To Antietam Creek: The Maryland Campaign of September 1862. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Pg. 2.
5. Hennessy, John J. Return to Bull Run. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993. 442-443.
6. “Once Upon A Time (The Story of Rocks in Northern Virginia).” Virginia Places. Accessed 1/20/2022. http://virginiaplaces.org/nova/onceuponatime.html
7. Welker, David A. Tempest at Ox Hill. Cambridge: De Capo Press, 2002. P. 102-103.
8. “Report of General J.E.B. Stuart of cavalry operations on First Maylrnad campaign, from August 30th to September 18th, 1862.” Published via Tufts University, Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 3. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2001.05.0118%3Achapter%3D5.43
9. Wert, Jeffrey D. Cavalryman of the Lost Cause. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008. P. 78-79.
10. Von Borcke, Heros. Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence. Madison & Adams Press, 2019. P. 60.
11. Wert p. 75.
12. Wise RA, Robble MA. Dopamine and Addiction. Annu Rev Psychol. 2020 Jan 4;71:79-106. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-103337. PMID: 31905114.
13. Wert pg. 5.
14. Ibid pg. 64
15. ibid pg. 111-113.
16. Ibid pg. 147-150
17. ibid pg. 141-144
18. SE Kakaralaa, KE Robertsb, M Rogersa, T Coatsb, F Falzaranoa, J Ganga, M Chilovc , J Averyd, PK Maciejewskia,e, WG Lichtenthalb,d,1, HG Prigersona. “The Neurobiological Reward System in Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD): A Systematic Review” in Psychiatry Res Neuroimaging. 2020 September 30; 303: 111135. doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2020.111135.
19. Wert p 232.
20. ibid p. 268.
21. ibid P 260.
22. Gutheim, Frederick. The Potomac. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949. P 304.
All images sourced from the Library of Congress and other repositories of public domain content. LiDAR imagery used courtesy of the Fairfax County Department of GIS and Mapping Services.
Methodology
The charts depicting strengths for the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac on September 2 and September 17, 1862 were produced with D3.js and Observable after much heartache.
The math behind them is truly an instance of “standing on the shoulders of giants.”
In the early-1990s, a visionary graduate student at George Mason University, J.O. Allen, set out to excavate accurate numbers for both eastern armies before, during and after the Battle of Second Manassas in August of 1862. For a variety of reasons best articulated by Allen himself (and available to you in his 1993 thesis “The Strength of the Union and Confederate Forces at Second Manassas,” which you can request for free from GMU) the true strength of both the ANV and AoP were deeply jacketed in subjective phenomenon.
In the appendix to Scott Hartwig’s To Antietam Creek, effectives and present for duty numbers first explored by Allen are balanced and weighed against one another.
Though the events described above took place on August 31, I chose to utilize the Hartwig/Allen numbers for September 2, chiefly because they account for two consolidated armies. DH Hill’s relief column has arrived and the AoP/AoV have been statistically integrated. Both conceits simplify the calculus.
How Dare He?
This bearded gentleman in the gray ten-gallon hat is my great-great-great grandfather, Tom Lindley. Here he is celebrating Confederate Veterans Day in Snyder, Texas circa 1915. He served with Douglas Cooper until a portion of that unit cleaved off into Well’s Texas Cavalry, with which Tom served until war’s end.
Additionally, my great-great grandfather, Bray Colman Kitchen, served with the 4th Confederate/34th Tennessee in Maney’s Brigade. He fought with Cheatham’s Division at Murfreesboro’s Slaughter Pen when he was eighteen years old.
The war was nothing short of a disaster for my Confederate ancestors. A long heritage of hard-scrabble existence culminated in intense post-war poverty. This seeded a culture of cruelty, illiteracy, and disregard in my family. Specifically, I link the outcome of the war and the Confederacy’s deliberate exploitation of working poor to serve the interests of its slaveholding elite with my great-grandmother’s death from pellagra in Rising Star, Texas in 1928. I consider this event a carried over consequence of the war.
W.J. Cash referred to this world of repercussions as “the frontier the Yankee made.” I’m not sure I agree. The Confederacy made these enduring social badlands with its choices and its conduct. The echoes of this tragedy continue to reverberate in my family where the Confederate battle flag is shorthand for pain, poverty, and disgrace.
I feel inspired to illuminate this background because of a certain popular and hysterical response to any legitimate attempt to criticize Confederate leadership. The cult of the Lost Cause has calcified around its cherished heroes and daubed the bondo of flowery language into the gaping character flaws that marred their 19th century lives.
Stuart especially is a third rail in Civil War historiography. Particularly in my native Virginia, where the myth of the dashing cavalier lives on with greater lucidity than the reality of his hambone existence.
A culture nominally steeped in personal responsibility and the noblesse oblige of its white aristocracy somehow cannot find the marrow to criticize a profoundly unserious figure that has been enlisted as a load-bearing column in the structure of its historical gaslighting.
In the occam’s razor of Lost Cause thinking, it is easier to blame the war’s outcome on a sinister cabal of northern industrialists enlisting Teutonic and Hibernian immigrant hordes to overrun the Anglo-Saxon South than it is to acknowledge that the flower of the Anglo-Saxon South made bad decisions at critical moments that cost them the war.
Please allow me to propose an alternative, one dressed in the homespun of time-beloved Confederate heritage. When you find the courage to criticize JEB Stuart and question his role as a demi-God of the Confederacy, you stand with the likes of Sandie Pendleton, William Palmer, Henry Kyd Douglas, Lafayette McLaws, Henry Heth, Moxley Sorrel, Tom Rosser, Charles Marshall, and, of course, Grumble Jones.
It is my great delight to bring this alternative to the forefront. The inability to criticize its supposed heroes and the tendency to ostracize those who do so is a salient feature of Southern society. One that manifests as an inability to engage in reasonable self-criticism and to misinterpret any call for accountability as an attack. This perplexing unwillingness to acknowledge fault has had murderous consequences on southern consciousness.
So who am I to judge JEB?
In that spirit, let me offer that I, too, am vain and have sought pleasure at the cost of my highest responsibilities. I, too, have simped. I have thought with my dick on more than one occasion. I have never been under concentrated enemy fire, nor have I led others in combat. I was not there that day in August of 1862 and that detachment means I can never understand how exhausted these men were in the moment. I relate to JEB and the Confederacy in that the hardest fight I ever fought, the one I really wanted to win, left me in the hospital.
It will be easier to write me off as a guttersnipe or a dilettante or a loser and much more difficult to recognize that I have every right to ask these questions of JEB Stuart, because I am a child of the world his decisions helped bring into being.
If you, a true Southerner, are reading this and chomping at the bit to point out how little I have accomplished with my life and thus how I have not earned the right to offer criticism of a man who died a legend, please take a step back, look yourself in the mirror and ask aloud, “Do I deserve to criticize James Longstreet?” Funny how that works.
Perhaps your interpretation of Confederate heritage is not the same as mine. That’s fine. The world is wide and it takes all types.
I have spent an exhausting amount of my life engrossed in a historical event we all find fascinating. I get no satisfaction from approaching the Civil War as a once-upon-a-time diorama that lives in an eternal static moment of pristine romanticism. The war I love is ugly and ongoing. It is dynamic and chaotic. It was, and remains, devastating. I am keenly aware of the ways it has molded my existence and my worldview. Maybe you are too.
Living as I do in the lee of this common tragedy, I refuse to believe any of it is beyond reproach. I cannot brook with the idea that constituent parts of my existence cannot be assayed and, when necessary, found wanting.
-Dan Johnson, August 2025
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