My favorite “Jeb Stuart As Clotheshorse” story comes from the first volume of Foote’s Civil War. I’ll let the venerable man himself start it:
Midnight came; Jeb and his staff decided to get some sleep on the porch of a roadside house. Just before dawn, hearing hoofbeats in the distance, two officers rode forward to meet what they thought was (Fitz) Lee, but met instead a spatter of carbine fire and came back shouting, “Yankees!” Stuart and the others barely had time to jump for their horses and get away in a hail of bullets, leaving the general’s plumed hat, silk-lined cape, and haversack for the blue troopers, who presently withdrew across the river, whooping with delight as they passed the captured finery around… Skilled as (Stuart) was at surprising others, the laughing cavalier was not accustomed to being surprised himself. Nor were matters improved by the infantrymen who greeted him for several days thereafter with the question, “Where’s your hat?” (Foote, The Civil War, Volume I, p. 607)
The story has an even better ending. Stuart’s pride was powerful injured by losing his hat, so he set about making up for it by riding against General Pope’s forces. He ended up surrounding Pope’s tent in the middle of the night and charging it with a thousand horses. During the fighting, one of his men (Fitz Lee, nephew to Robert E.) managed to nab Pope’s dress coat. Stuart, delighted, fired off a note to Pope:
“You have my hat and plume. I have your best coat. I have the honor to propose a cartel for a fair exchange of the prisoners.”
General Pope did not write back.
– Count Dolby von Luckner