Escape From Verdiersville  "Tardy Cavalry Brigade"  August 18, 1862

During the truce to bury the dead after the August 9, 1862, Battle of Cedar Mountain, Confederate Gen. Jeb Stuart visited with several prewar friends who were Union officers. Stuart bet one of his friends a new hat that the Northern press would claim the Union defeat at Cedar Mountain to be a Union victory. A few days later a package was sent to Stuart under a flag of truce; it contained a new plumed hat and a copy of a New York newspaper that reported on Cedar Mountain as a win for the North.

A week after the battle, Confederate army commander Gen. Robert E. Lee devised a plan to attack Gen. John Pope's Union army while it was positioned in the "V" formed by the junction of the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers in Virginia. Lee ordered Stuart to conduct a cavalry raid to Rappahannock Station and destroy the railroad bridge over the Rappahannock River. The destruction of the bridge would sever Pope's supply line as well as cut off his main route of retreat.

Gen. Fitzhugh Lee was ordered to bring his cavalry brigade to Raccoon Ford on the Rapidan River. Stuart, accompanied by half a dozen staff members, took a train to a meeting at army headquarters; then Stuart and his staff rode toward Raccoon Ford to rendezvous with Fitz Lee. Arriving at Verdiersville on the evening of August 17- along the route of Fitz Lee's advance- Stuart was surprised to find that no Rebel cavalry had been seen. He sent two of his staff members to act as lookouts down the road Fitz Lee would travel; the rest of the men lay down on the front porch of a house and went to sleep. Stuart slept on his cape with his new hat on the floor beside him.

The sleeping troopers were unaware that two regiments of Union cavalry had just crossed the Rapidan at Raccoon Ford and were only a few miles away within Confederate lines. At dawn, Stuart was awakened by the sound of approaching horses. Believing Fitz Lee's men were arriving at last, Stuart walked out to the gate by the road to greet them.

Fascinating Fact:  Two of the staff members with Stuart were Capt. John Singleton Mosby, who later in the war would achieve fame as a partisan leader, and the giant Prussian staff officer Heros von Borcke.


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