J.E.B. Stuart’s gold pocket watch.
Heritage Auctions (ha.com)
Timepiece of a Confederate Cavalier
The Artifact
J.E.B. Stuart’s gold pocket watch
Condition
The watch is not in running condition and is missing the key. The case is in very good condition with minor dents and a small chip on the dial at the four o’clock position.
Details
By the start of the Civil War, James Ewell Brown (“Jeb”) Stuart had compiled a diverse military résumé. An 1854 graduate of West Point, he had experienced frontier conflict with Native Americans and, as a U.S. Army peacekeeper, the violence of “Bleeding Kansas” before participating in the capture of John Brown after the abolitionist’s failed Harpers Ferry raid. When his home state of Virginia seceded in 1861, Stuart resigned his commission and joined the Confederate army, where his reputation and responsibilities steadily grew as a cavalry commander. Promoted to brigadier general that September (he had fought as colonel of a Virginia cavalry regiment at First Bull Run), Stuart was put in command of the Army of Northern Virginia’s newly unified cavalry brigade, which he led throughout the Peninsula Campaign. In June 1862, Stuart pulled off a daring reconnaissance that saw him and some 1,200 troopers ride entirely around the massive Army of the Potomac, a feat that embarrassed his enemies and earned him the praise of comrades—including a promotion to major general the next month.
By May 1864, when he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Yellow Tavern, Stuart, 31, had played key roles at a number of the war’s largest and most consequential engagements, including Second Manassas, Antietam, Chancellorsville, Brandy Station, and Gettysburg. Along the way he actively cultivated the image of an ideal (bold, dashing, chivalrous) southern cavalryman, his outgoing personality and personal flamboyance—including a trademark resplendent uniform accented with red-satin-lined gray cape and ostrich-feather-plumed hat—becoming legendary. Among the personal items he regularly carried was this triple-cased gold pocket watch, the case crafted by the prestigious Paris clockmakers E. Maurice and Company and the movement by London watchmaker John Cragg. The watch’s case is inscribed with Stuart’s initials (“JEBS”), which are surrounded by a belt-and-buckle symbol meant to convey his family’s Scottish heritage, and its gold chain bears an eagle-head terminal and fob.
Quotable
Stuart’s distinctive flair made a deep and lasting impression on comrades. “[N]ever have I seen such a magnificent looking soldier,” wrote a Georgia soldier upon seeing Stuart in 1862. “Faultlessly dressed, grandly mounted, with long, silky auburn locks curling beneath his plumed hat.” Years after the war, Confederate veteran John Esten Cooke, who had served on Stuart’s staff, wrote of his former commander: “Everything about Stuart was broadly and vividly defined. There were no half tints or negative colors either in his personal appearance or his character, and he stood out from the great war canvas like a prominent figure in some painting, brilliant and imposing, catching and holding the eye.”
Price
$131,450 (realized at Dallas, Texas, in December 2006). “Stuart’s dashing cavalier style of dress uniform was completed with this beautiful gold watch,” a Heritage Auctions representative noted then.
