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Stuart's Tarheels: James B. Gordon & His North Carolina Cavalry (Army of Northern Virginia series)

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"North Carolina has done nobly in this army." What did Major General J.E.B. Stuart, the famed Confederate cavalry commander, mean when he wrote these words? Did he refer to the Tarheel infantrymen in the Army of Northern Virginia? Or the gunners in North Carolina artillery batteries? In Stuart's Tarheels: James R Gordon and His North Carolina Cavalry, author Chris J. Hartley shows how Stuart first found evidence for this statement in his own ranks-beginning with one man.

Brigadier General James Byron Gordon was a protege and kindred spirit of Stuart himself Often overlooked or confused with cousin General John B. Gordon in Civil War literature, Gordon was the consummate nineteenth century landowner, politician, and businessman. When Civil War came, the citizen became a soldier. After he helped form an infantry company, Gordon joined the Tarheel cavalry. He rose to lead two regiments, two brigades, and (temporarily) a division, before he finally settled into permanent command of the North Carolina Cavalry Brigade. When he died just a week after Stuart, he was one of the greatest cavalrymen ever produced by the state of North Carolina.

In Gordon's men Stuart found more to admire. Through them Stuart's Tarheels takes a fresh look at the vaunted cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia-its battles, its controversies, and the lives of its troopers-from the previously unexplored
438 pages, illus, maps, notes, bibliog, appendices, index.