WORTHY SUCCESSOR

General Robert E. Lee wept when he heard that Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, his cavalry chief, had died, lamenting, “He never brought me a piece of false information.” Stuart was mortally wounded in combat at Yellow Tavern, Va., on May 11, 1864, and died at his brother-in-law’s house in Richmond the next day. “The Cavalry corps had lost its great leader the unequalled Stuart,” wrote a member of the 12th Virginia Cavalry. “We miss him much….Stuart’s equal does not exist.”

Stuart’s death left Lee in a quandary. Major General Wade Hampton III was nominally the senior of the three division commanders assigned to the Army of Northern Virginia’s Cavalry Corps, but a smoldering rivalry, even dislike, had been building between Hampton and Lee’s nephew, Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, Stuart’s subordinate. “The mantle of Stuart finally came to Fitzhugh Lee,” asserted a Confederate trooper. “This was but natural. Stuart and Fitz Lee had fought side by side, and planned cavalry campaigns together, and Fitz was Stuart’s trusted officer to carry out the boldest maneuvers. The cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia wanted no other leader than Fitz Lee after Stuart’s death.”

Hampton outranked Fitz Lee, however, only because his name appeared above Lee’s on the list of officers being promoted to major general in September 1863 (their dates of promotion were the same). Because of this conflict and tension, General Lee elected not to appoint a new corps commander and instead maintained the Army of Northern Virginia’s three cavalry divisions as independent commands, with each division