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| One of the regiments that Stuart eluded: lancers in the Federal cavalry. A glance at the gallant and hardy bearing of Rush's Lancers as they looked in 1862, and at their curious weapons, suggestive more of Continental than of American warfare, brings sufficient testimony to the high quality of the men who endeavored to curb the Confederate leader, Stuart, and the resources behind them. The usual armament of the Union volunteer cavalry regiments consisted of a saber, a revolver, and a single-shot carbine. The Sixth Pennsylvania was provided with lances in addition to the pistol, twelve carbines being afterwards added to the equipment of each troop for picket and scouting duty. A clean cut, smart-looking lot they are by the streaming pennants — the privates, recruited from the fashionable athletic set of the day in Philadelphia, no less than the officer, so intent upon the coffee that his orderly is pouring out. But it was vainly that in North or South, in Pennsylvania or in Virginia, in Federal territory or along the banks of the Chickahominy, the men of this crack Pennsylvania regiment tried to catch Stuart and his fleet command. At Tunstall's Station, Virginia, they were two hours late; at Emmittsburg, Maryland, an hour early. On the occasion of Stuart's famous raid on Chambersburg, in October, 1862, General Pleasonton, irritated by the audacity of the daring Southerner, had made every disposition to head off the raiders before they reached the Potomac. General Pleasonton himself, with eight hundred men; Colonel Richard H. Rush, with his unique lancers, and General Stoneman, with his command, were all scouring the country in search of Stuart, who was encumbered with many captured horses, but was moving steadily toward the Potomac. A march of thirty-two miles from Chambersburg brought the wily Stuart to Emmittsburg about seven o'clock on the evening of the 11th. One hour before their arrival six companies of the Lancers, at that time attached to the Third Brigade, had passed through the town on their way to Gettysburg. But until the day of his death, Stuart often managed so that the Union cavalry came too early or too late. |
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[74]
Review of Reviews. New York. 1912.
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