Stuart's Finest Hour: The Ride Around McClellan, June 1862

Many people are aware that Jeb Stuart was a famous cavalry general who rode for the Confederacy. Yet, how did this twenty-nine-year-old former U. S. Army lieutenant become the 1860’s version of a media sensation? What did he do to become a household name throughout the land?

At the …

Many people are aware that Jeb Stuart was a famous cavalry general who rode for the Confederacy. Yet, how did this twenty-nine-year-old former U. S. Army lieutenant become the 1860’s version of a media sensation? What did he do to become a household name throughout the land?

At the beginning of June 1862, George McClellan’s huge Union army stood poised to decimate the Confederate capital of Richmond. The city faced chaos as thousands of civilians fled. Confederate army commander Robert E. Lee wanted to launch his own attack but he needed to know what stood on McClellan’s right flank.

John Fox’s new book, Stuart’s Finest Hour, uses numerous eyewitness accounts to place the reader in the dusty saddle of both the hunter and the hunted as Stuart’s men sliced deep behind Union lines to gather information for Lee. This first-ever-book written about the raid follows the Confederate horsemen on their 110-mile ride all the while chased by Union troopers commanded by Stuart’s father-in-law, Philip St. George Cooke.

Stuarts Finest Hour was the Winner of 2014 IPPY Bronze Award for Best Regional Non-Fiction in Mid-Atlantic

What others have to say…

“John Fox’s narrative tracks the hoofprints of the Confederate cavalry through the swamps and thickets around Richmond, and around the enemy host, in miniscule detail – crossroad by crossroad, across each ford, to every nightly bivouac and along the detours made by each detachment. That makes this book the first thorough monograph on its topic.” “Dozens of photographs add appreciable value. Modern views enable readers to establish context, and will delight interested historians decades hence.” “Fox’s [dust] jacket deserves mention as a striking bit of art.” Robert K. Krick, America’s Civil War, March 2014