Arthur C. Clarke is dead. Another voice enthused about where reason and science might take us when guided by the best faculties of pure humanity is stilled. This depresses me really quite awfully. I have enjoyed his books, particularly those of the 50s and 60s when everything was so New and Invigorating, as I have none other in the medium, and it is an awful thought to realize that there will be no more.
– Count Dolby von Luckner
http://www.ftg-comic.com/2008/03/18/index.php
Start your piles of severed limbs and your stacks of Whimsical Letters Home To Ma, because Frederick is headed for the Civil War! The Thoremerson has been spotted aiding the Confederacy and it is up to our team to head to the Southern lines and see what’s a-happenin’. But will their cunning be great enough to outclever one of the greatest cavalry generals of all time? Probably not! Fall in soldier, it’s Episode 111: A Bodyguard of Lies!
– Geoff and The Count
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
I frequently find myself asking the internet to tell me the hair color of famous dead people. Sometimes nothing turns up. Other times, ghoulish auctions inform me that J.E.B. Stuart had sandy brown hair, and one could have bought a lock of his hair and a field compass for twenty to thirty thousand dollars in December of 2006 if they were so inclined.
–Geoff