Stuart's Ride

Stuart's Ride. Baltimore Store. In May 1862, Union Gen. George B. McClellan led the Army of the Potomac up the Peninsula to the gates of Richmond. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee assumed command of the Army of Northern Virginia in June and began planning a counterattack. On June 12, Gen. J.E.B. Stuart led 1,200 cavalrymen on a daring 3-day reconnaissance and discovered that the Union right was unsecured. Stuart’s “Ride around McClellan” gave Lee the vital information he needed to launch the offensive known as the Seven Days’ Battles on June 26., With Lt. William Robbins, 9th Virginia Cavalry, in command of Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s advance units, the column trotted into the village of Talleysville early in the evening of June 13, 1862. On the left (across the main road to your left) they passed a Union hospital with about 150 patients in William Talley’s house (private)., Baltimore Store stood at the crossroads to your far right along the main road, and a Union sutler occupied it. The Confederates helped themselves to canned meats, sausages, pickles, preserves, fruits, cakes, crackers, and candy, as well as wine and spirits, from the sutler’s ample stocks. Col. Heros von Borcke, one of Stuart’s staff members, recalled, “My parched tongue was cleaving to the roof of my mouth. When one of our men galloped up to me and held out a bottle of champagne…. Never in my life have I enjoyed a bottle of wine so much.” Pvt. John S. Mosby, the future partisan ranger, found the night “a carnival of fun I can never forget. Nobody thought of the danger or sleep, when champagne bottles were bursting and wine was flowing in copious streams.”, At 8:30 P.M., Stuart himself arrived and ordered a halt for three and a half hours for rest and to allow scattered detachments to close up. At midnight, the column moved on toward the Chickahominy River, with prisoners mounted double on captured mules and horses. Stuart and many of his men slept in the saddle, while pursuing Union cavalry halted at Tunstall’s four miles behind them.