The Sword by Gilbert Morris Page A

defending their rights?”
    “I did my duty as I saw it.”
    Colonel Lee and Lieutenant Stuart, having accomplished their task, were obviously finished. They remained in the town for another day, mostly to rest from their sleepless night. The next day they took the train back to Washington as casually as if HarpersFerry were just an interesting interlude, no more.
    But Old John Brown’s raid was big news, all over the North in particular. Good and responsible men cried for his release and defended his actions as that of a righteous, godly man. And when they executed John Brown, he was lionized as a saint.
    His death was possibly the first small tendril of the clouds of war that would soon gather over America.

    Revolution had for years merely been a political topic. But in November 1859, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States, the rhetoric was over, at last bursting into flames. The Southern states began to secede from the United States to form their own sovereign country, the Confederate States of America.
    The beginning of the war took place in a fort just off the coast of Charleston. The man who lit the first spark was white-haired Edmond Ruffin, an editor and ardent secessionist at sixty-seven years of age. At 4:30 a.m., on April 12, 1861, he pulled a lanyard, and the first shot of the Civil War drew a red parabola against the sky and burst with a glare, outlining the dark pentagon of Fort Sumter.
    Fort Sumter was a United States Army post, but it had no real military value. In April Major Robert Anderson, commander of the post, had few supplies, and the Confederates had turned away his supply boat. Fort Sumter was built to accommodate a garrison of 650 men, but for years it had only had a nominal military presence. On that day in April there were 125 men there. Forty of them were workmen.
    The fall of Sumter was simply a matter of time. The people of Charleston stood on the balconies and the roofs of houses to watch the blazing of the guns and the firing of the shells. Major Anderson surrendered the fort the next day.
    Thus the war began. Five bloody, terrible years lay ahead for America.

    If ever men found themselves in a terrible position, the soldiers of the United States Army in the spring and summer of 1861 were well and truly caught in the worst. Many of the finest soldiers and officers were Southerners. Jeb Stuart knew each man would have to make the wrenching decision of whether to remain with the Union and fight against his home state or resign from the Federal Army and take up arms with the newly formed Confederate States of America.
    However, for Stuart, whose undying loyalty was to Virginia, the decision was easy. As soon as President Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand volunteers to fight the war against the South, with Virginia’s quota of eight thousand men, Stuart’s mind was settled. He began packing as soon as he received notice he’d been appointed a captain in the 1st United States Calvary. On May 3rd, he wrote the Adjutant General of the U.S. Army:
    Colonel: for a sense of duty to my native state (Va.), I hereby resign my position as an officer of the Army of the United States.
    That very same day, he sent a letter to General Samuel Cooper, Adjutant General of the Confederate Army:
    General: having resigned my position (Captain 1st Cavalry) in the U.S. Army, and being now on my way to unite my destinies to Virginia, my native state, I write to apprize you of the fact in order that you may assign me such a position in the Army of the South as will accord with that lately held by me in the Federal Army.
    My preference is Cavalry—light artillery—Light Infantry in the order named. My address will be: Care of Governor Letcher, Richmond.
    Jeb Stuart and his family reached Richmond on May 6th and found a commission waiting for him as Lieutenant Colonelof Virginia Infantry. The city was filled with men spoiling for a fight. The Army of the Confederate States of America