GDG- Re: Gettysburg Digest, Vol 27, Issue 10

[Tom Ryan]

Hi Dave,

	Very interesting thoughts you put forward here.  With regard to the first
one in which you stated:
_________________________________________________
<<I wonder if the doubling of subordinates caused pause
(apart from command and control
shake-out). I am thinking of Stuart's service a short time earlier as
replacement for Powell Hill, who took over from Stonewall at
Chancellorsville and was then wounded himself. My impression is that Stuart
easily moved into "corps commander" responsibility during that brief but
critical time, and I often wonder what the difference might have been had
he been retained in that role. (Could it have been because Lee valued him
more highly in the G2/cav cdr role and thought that Hill--on a good
fighting day--was the best he could make available as a replacement for
Jackson?)>>

	I have been reading extensively about Stuart beginning with his graduation
from West Point.  The sources are his biographers (Thomason, Thomas and
Longacre) and his staff's memoirs (McClellan, Blackford, and Robertson),
plus Henry Kyd Douglas and a few others.  What I got out of what was said
about why Lee did not choose Stuart as an infantry corps commander, was that
he was first and foremost a cavalry leader, and that was the job he was not
only good at, but was the happiest performing.  There was also a sense that
there would have been resistance from the more staid infantry folks to
having this flambouyant individual as their leader.  That is a little
abstract, but I also suspect that Lee had grown to depend so heavily on
Stuart for information and denying the same to the enemy that it would have
been too great a psychological loss for Lee to sustain.  His theory might
have been that you could develop a good corps commander over time, but a
stellar cavalry leader like Stuart with inate abilities only comes along
once in a lifetime.

	On this second point:

<<Second, as to the reviews. In one of those moments I subject myself to
every once in a while, I was re-reading the highly opinionated history of
Jefferson Davis's nemesis, Edward A. Pollard, in re G'bg. Pollard
characterized the cavalry reviews not in a negative way, but as intended
principally to attract Federal attention and divert from the ANV move
northward, characterizing the latter as being undertaken to draw Hooker and
the AoP out of Virginia--which it did. Interesting. I found none of the
criticism of Stuart I was looking for from the former editor of the
Richmond Examiner.>>

	Appears to be speculation on Pollard's part (a common disease among
reporters and editors eternally).  In fact it sounds contradictory to
"divert" attention from the ANV move, and "draw" Hooker and the AoP out of
Virginia at the same time.  While Pollard may have been giving Stuart a pass
this time around, Stuart would not fare so well with "PWA" (Peter Wellington
Alexander), the reporter from the Savannah Republican who was traveling with
the ANV during the Northern invasion.  PWA skewered Stuart at every
opportunity no matter whether he was performing well or not.  As far as PWA
was concerned, Stuart could do no good.

Regards, Tom