The Gettysburg Campaign - Full Report of General J. E. B. Stuart Page 22

In the exercise of the discretion vested in me by the Commanding-General, it was deemed practicable to move in the enemy's rear, intercepting his communications with his base - Washington - and inflicting damage upon his rear, to rejoin the army in Pennsylvania in time to participate in its actual conflicts. The result abundantly confirms my judgment as to the practicability as well as utility of the move. The main army, I was advised by the Commanding-General, would move in two columns for the Susquehanna. Early commanded the advance of that one of these columns to the eastward, and I was directed to communicate with him as early as practicable after crossing the Potomac and place my command on his right flank. It was expected I would find him in York. The newspapers of the enemy, my only source of information, chronicled his arrival there and at Wrightsville on the Susquehanna with great particularity. I, therefore, moved to join him in that vicinity. The enemy's army was moving in a direction parallel to me. I was apprized of its arrival at Taneytown when I was near Hanover, Pennsylvania, but believing from the lapse of time that already in York or at Harrisburg, where it could choose its battle-ground with the enemy, I hastened to place my command with it. It is believed that had the corps of Hill and Longstreet moved on, instead of halting near Chambersburg, that York could have been the place of concentration instead of Gettysburg.

This move of my command between the enemy's seat of government and the army charged with its defence, involved serious loss to the enemy in men and material, over one thousand prisoners having been captured, and spread terror and consternation to the very gates of the capital. The streets were barricaded for defence, as was also done in Baltimore on the day following. This move drew the enemy's overwhelming force of cavalry from its aggressive attitude towards our flank near Williamsport and Hagerstown to the defence of its own communications, now at my mercy. The entire Sixth army corps, in addition, was sent to intercept me at Westminister, arriving there the morning I left, which, in the result, prevented its participation in the first two days' fight at Gettysburg.

Our trains in transmit were thus not only secured, but it was done in a way that at the same time seriously injured the enemy. General Meade also detached four thousand troops, under General French, to escort public property to Washington from Frederick - a step which certainly would have been unnecessary but for my presence in his rear - thus weakening his army to that extent. In fact, although in his own country, he had to make large detachments to protect his rear and baggage. General Meade also complains that his movements were delayed by the detention of his cavalry in his rear; he might truthfully have added, by the movement in his rear of a large force of Confederate cavalry, capturing his trains and cutting all his communications with Washington.

It is not to be supposed such delay in his operations could have been so effectually caused by any other disposition of the cavalry. Moreover, considering York as the point of junction, as I had every reason to believe it would be, the route I took was quite as direct and more expeditious than the alternate one proposed; and there is reason to believe on that route that my command would have been divided up in the different gaps of South mountain, covering our flank, while the enemy, by concentration upon any one, could have greatly endangered our baggage and ordnance trains, without exposing his own.