On the morning of October 11, 1862, the streets of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania still smelled of woodsmoke and horse. The night before, roughly 1,800 Confederate cavalrymen under Major General J.E.B. Stuart had ridden into the town after a swift dash across the Potomac and through the Maryland panhandle. Citizens had surrendered the place under terms that private property would be respected. Now, in the gray light of a damp autumn day, Stuart’s troopers went to work.
They moved first on the Cumberland Valley Railroad. Machine shops, the roundhouse, and depot buildings were set alight. Warehouse after warehouse, belonging to government contractors, was emptied of uniforms, hats, boots, and equipment; what could not be carried off was burned. One storehouse filled with ammunition produced a series of explosions that shook windows blocks away. Horses—hundreds of them—were seized from farms and stables for miles around, the most practical prize for a mounted force that lived by its remounts. Roughly 280 convalescent Union soldiers were also gathered up, paroled, and left behind. Stuart’s men worked methodically and, by most local accounts, without unnecessary brutality toward civilians. Still, the destruction was thorough.
By mid-morning the column was forming again. Stuart had no intention of lingering. Union pursuit was already stirring. Pennsylvania’s Governor Andrew Curtin had wired for troops, and Federal cavalry under Brigadier General Alfred Pleasonton, and others, were being ordered onto the roads. Stuart guessed correctly that McClellan would try to seal the upper Potomac fords, so he turned his command east instead of retracing his steps. The long gray column—artillery, wagons, and the mass of troopers—wound out of Chambersburg, toward Cashtown, then south into Maryland, by way of Emmitsburg. Rain from the previous day had left the ground soft; the five-mile-long column raised little dust and was hard to track from a distance. They passed within eight miles of Gettysburg, a name that meant nothing yet to anyone on either side. YET.
All day the Confederates rode. Detachments stayed behind in Chambersburg long enough to finish the burning, then caught up. Local Union militia and scattered cavalry patrols made contact here and there, but nothing serious developed. Stuart’s scouts kept the main body informed of Federal movements, and the column simply slid between them. The raid had already accomplished most of what Lee had asked: fresh horses and supplies, a blow against the railroad that fed McClellan’s army, intelligence on Union dispositions, and a sharp reminder that Confederate cavalry could still ride rings around its opponents – only weeks after Antietam.
Nightfall found the gray horsemen well into Maryland. They continued past Frederick and turned toward the lower Potomac. The critical moment came near White’s Ferry. Union infantry and cavalry had been posted to block the ford, but Stuart’s advance drove them off the bluffs and cleared the crossing. By the time the last of the column was over the river, the pursuit had closed in but arrived too late to do more than exchange a few shots. Confederate losses for the entire three-day operation amounted to a handful of wounded and a couple of missing. Union losses were measured mainly in captured men, horses, and the cost of the ruined railroad property.
Back in Chambersburg the fires died down. Residents counted the missing horses and the gutted warehouses and wondered how a Confederate force had reached so deep into Pennsylvania – and then vanished. For Major General George B. McClellan the raid was another embarrassment; his cavalry had been unable to prevent it or to trap it. For Stuart, and his men, it was one more demonstration of the mobility that still gave the Army of Northern Virginia an edge in the eastern theater. By October 12 the troopers were safely back in Virginia, their saddlebags fuller and their horses fresher, while the smoke over Chambersburg settled into the autumn air.
Besides the élan of his infantry, General Robert E. Lee’s cavalry ran circles around that of the Federal Army of the Potomac. Lee also knew how to utilize this arm of his army: scouting, destruction of Federal stores and acquiring the military items they needed to face off against a much better-supplied Federal army. Stuart’s raids – and his ability to ride completely around the Army of the Potomac (he did this twice) – were an embarrassment to President Lincoln – and by extension, his commanders. Pleasanton showed promise commanding a brigade of Federal cavalry during his pursuit of J.E.B. Stuart, after his raid of Chambersburg. During the restructuring of the Federal cavalry arm, in June 1863, Pleasanton would be put in command of the entire cavalry corps. His leadership of the corps would bring the Federal horsemen to near parity with their Confederate counterparts.
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