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.Within half a day, Stuart would have been somewhere along themountains north and east of Sharpsburg, scouting toward Middle-town and Frederick, where he would have encountered the advanceguard of the Union forces, which had crossed at Edwards Ferry twodays earlier.By late afternoon of June 27 he should have been intouch with Lee with his first report that the Union army was acrossthe river.Palmer s recent, and in many ways excellent, book on Gettys-burg and other Virginia campaigns contains a puzzling discussionof these matters: If Stuart had been able to cross at Shepherdstownon the 26th, and had he continued on to Frederick in an effort to feel for Ewell s right flank, the Rebel cavalry would have encoun- 94 options for the ride northtered the Federal troops which arrived there on the 27th.DespiteLee s assertions, it was impossible for Stuart, positioned as he was,to have discovered the initial Federal crossing of the Potomac onJune 25th, although Lee might have learned of the Federal advanceinto Maryland perhaps a half a day earlier than he actually did. 15Lee s report, in fact, asserted nothing about when Stuart shouldhave learned about Hooker s crossing the river, but obviously Leedid assume that one of Stuart s ongoing responsibilities was to keephim informed promptly of such enemy movements.Palmer also suggests that Lee erred in putting Albert Jenkins scavalry on the left of the advance, rather than on the right.In fact,John Imboden was on the left flank, while Jenkins was in the van.Jenkins did end up moving to the right with Early into York.How-ever, Jenkins was well north of Gettysburg, and leaving aside thequality of his scouting reports, he could hardly have been expectedto know what was going on at the crossings of the Potomac.Had Stuart crossed directly north of the Loudon Valley, he verylikely would have been encountering the Federal troops on theright flank of Lee s army, which was exactly what he was supposedto do.Stuart would presumably have skirmished with them, discov-ered who they were and where they were going, and reported thisto Lee.Lee did not hear the report of Longstreet s spy, James Har-rison, until the night of June 28 and did not fully trust it.He wasstill waiting to hear from Stuart, and it was the twenty-ninth beforehe began to react to the news and concentrate his army.Had Stuartmade his first contact with the enemy sometime on June 26 andreported this on June 27, Lee would have learned what he neededto know and started his preparations for the coming battle a full twodays earlier.And two days even one day would have given himtime to concentrate his army and position it for the coming battle.Napoleon once said, The loss of time is irreparable in war.strategy is the art of making use of time and space.I am less chary ofthe latter than of the former; space we can recover, time never. 16The Confederate experience at Gettysburg proves this Napole-onic point once again. map 4.Stuart s possible routes northThe Three Routes Open to StuartIn sum, Stuart had two other choices that did not involve ridingaround the Union rear, one west and one east of the Blue Ridge.Map 4 indicates the two alternative routes compared with the routeStuart actually followed.How long each of the routes would have taken Stuart in the actualevent is impossible to know exactly, but we can make an estimate.From Stuart s camp at Salem (where he had moved from Rector s 96 options for the ride northCrossroads on June 24) it was a forty-five-mile ride to the crossingat Shepherdstown and another fifty miles up the Cumberland Val-ley to the rear echelon of Ewell s corps.The route straight up theLoudon Valley would have brought him to the Potomac in somethirty miles, and thirty miles after that he would have been at thesouthernmost gap in the South mountain range.How rapidly evencavalry could move was variable, depending on the condition of themen and animals and, of course, the presence or absence of enemyopposition.On the 1862 raid around McClellan, Stuart had madeeighty miles in a single day, but this was exceptional.The Confed-erate infantry had made numerous marches of thirty miles in a day,and forty miles in an unopposed day was certainly a manageablepace for cavalry.17Taking the route to the west of the mountains via Shepherdstown,Stuart might have required three days to reach the right flank ofthe main body in the Cumberland Valley
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