Jeb Stuart

Jeb Stuart. . , "This son of Virginia" , Born on February 6, 1833, James Ewell Brown, "Jeb" Stuart was the eighth child of Archibald and Elizabeth Stuart. Stuart's birthplace, "Laurel Hil," was located on the fringe of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Patrick County, Viginia near the North Carolina border. Stuart would say of Laurel Hill, "I can call no other place home, but that of my youth and happy dreams.", Stuart's father, Archibald, a veteran of the War of 18 12, was an attorney and popular local politician, serving in the Virginia Constitutional Conventions of 1820 and 1850. His mother, Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart, was a cousin of Virginia's governor during the Civil War, John Letcher., A Soldiers Journey West Point and Beyond , "So far I know of no profession more desirable than that of being a soldier." Cadet Jeb Stuart. West Point class of 1854 , In 1848, Jeb Stuart attended Emory and Henry College, and by 1850 he had received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. President Zachary Taylor signed the formal acceptance papers., Stuart's early prowess riding horseback over the hills of Virginia would help to contribute to his earning a promotion to second captain and an appointment as a cavalry officer., Cadet Stuart developed a number of friendships, counting as one of his closest friends Custis Lee, the son of the Superintendant of West Point, Col. Robert E. Lee. It was during these years that a personal relationship of loyalty and respect between Lee and Stuart developed., Flora Cooke Stuart - 1836-1923 , Flora was only nineteen years old when she first met Jeb Stuart, they became engaged less than two months later. Stuart humorously wrote of his rapid courtship of Flora in Latin, "Veni, Vidi, Victus sum" (l came, I saw, I was conquered). They were married on November 14, 1855., Flora Cooke Stuart was the daughter of the Virginia born General Philip St. George Cooke, often called the "Father of the United States Cavalry." The matter of secession deeply split Cooke and his family, his son John Rodgers Cooke became an infantry brigade commander in the Confederate army. Cooke himself remained loyal to the Union saying, "I owe Virginia little, my country much.", Once war was declared in 1861, Stuart and his father-in-law never spoke again, Stuart saying, "He will regret it only once, and that will be continually."