The job of Civil War cavalry was to be the army's eyes. Pre-radio armies could see only as far as their cavalry could ride. Stuart's cavalry division was the eyes of the Army of Northern Virginia, and through the first two years of the war he was the most effective reconnaissance commander on either side. He rode completely around McClellan's army on the Peninsula in June 1862 and brought Lee the intelligence that opened the Seven Days. He screened Lee's invasions of Maryland and Pennsylvania, screened Jackson's flank march at Chancellorsville, and at Brandy Station on June 9, 1863, fought the largest cavalry battle ever waged in North America to a tactical victory against Union cavalry that had finally been organized as a serious corps. Three weeks later, in the opening movements of the Gettysburg Campaign, Stuart made the worst decision of his career. Lee had given him discretionary orders. Stuart used the discretion to take his three best brigades on a wide raid around the Union army, captured a Union wagon train, and rode into Gettysburg on the evening of July 2, 1863 — two days after the battle began. For two days Lee had fought without cavalry intelligence and without knowing where the Union army was. Lee greeted Stuart with the only public reproach he is known to have given any officer: "Well, General Stuart, you are here at last." On July 3, Stuart tried to redeem the campaign by riding around the Union right rear during Pickett's Charge and was stopped at East Cavalry Field by George Armstrong Custer's Michigan Brigade. Ten months later, on May 11, 1864, at Yellow Tavern north of Richmond, Stuart was shot in the stomach by Pvt. John A. Huff of the 5th Michigan Cavalry — a former Berdan's sharpshooter — and died the following day. He was thirty-one years old. This W. Britain figure depicts Stuart in the dress he made famous: the light gray cavalry officer's frock coat, dark trousers with cavalry stripe, the high black field boots that pulled over the knee, the wide-brimmed slouch hat with the ostrich plume he wore at every public review, and the long crimson-lined cape draped from his shoulders. The full reddish-brown beard was deliberate — Stuart was self-conscious about a weak chin and grew the beard at West Point to compensate. The cape, the feather, the gold-laced sleeves were all part of an image Stuart cultivated for tactical reasons as much as personal ones. Cavalry depended on morale, on aggressive recruitment, and on the perception that cavalrymen were the army's elite, and Stuart understood that a flamboyant commander could produce all three. His staff officers told stories about him singing on the march and dancing at balls in occupied Virginia farmhouses. They also told stories about his stamina in the saddle and his almost photographic memory for terrain. Pair this figure with Captain George Armstrong Custer, the cavalry counterpart whose Michigan Brigade stopped Stuart at East Cavalry Field on July 3, 1863; with General Robert E. Lee, the commanding general who relied on Stuart's reconnaissance for two years and was deprived of it on the morning of Gettysburg; or with Lt. Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, the corps commander Stuart screened on the fourteen-mile flank march at Chancellorsville and replaced in command for the rest of that battle after Jackson's wounding. Scale: 1/30 (60mm). Matte-painted metal. W. Britain model 31301. From the American Civil War range. Single foot figure, supplied painted and ready for display.
