While Longstreet’s corps, which was the last to move from Culpeper, was advancing to the Valley, Stuart and his cavalry had a hard time trying to protect Ashby’s and Snicker’s gaps, through which Longstreet’s forces would have to pass. The battles of Aldie, Middleburg, and Upperville, severe cavalry engagements in which Stuart’s forces were slowly forced back to the foot of the Blue Ridge, were all fought to protect these gaps until Longstreet could pass through them on his northward march. On June 22, General Pleasanton, who had forced General Stuart back from Upperville to Ashby’s Gap, withdrew, and Stuart moved forward to Rector’s Cross Roads, where he could better watch the Federal movements. On that same day, General Ewell, who commanded the advance division of General Lee’s army, crossed the Potomac. By June 27, Lee’s entire army had reached Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. In the meantime, Stuart was in Virginia watching the Federals, in order to report to Lee the moment that Hooker began to move. He wrote General Lee that he thought he could move with some of his cavalry around General Hooker’s rear into Maryland, thus throwing himself between the Federals and Washington, and so probably delay Hooker’s northward movement. General Lee wanted General Stuart and his cavalry to join General Early and guard his flank as he marched toward York, Pennsylvania; he thought that Stuart could reach him in this way just as easily as by crossing at Shepherdstown where the rest of the army crossed. Therefore, he gave Stuart permission to cross at one of the lower fords, telling him to annoy the Federals in the rear and collect all possible supplies for the army. Major Von Borcke, the young Prussian officer, had been severely wounded and Major McClellan was now Stuart’s adjutant general. He tells us that on the night before General Stuart started, a cold drizzling rain was falling, but the general insisted on sleeping on the ground under a tree, because he said his men were exposed to the rain and he would not fare better than they. He could have had more comfortable quarters on the porch of a deserted house near by, where McClellan, by the light of a tallow “dip,” was receiving and writing dispatches. When General Lee’s letter, containing instructions for Stuart’s march, came, McClellan carried it to the general, who quietly read it, and then turned to go to sleep on his hard, cold bed. It was by such an example as this, as well as by his bravery in battle, that Stuart won the undying love of his soldiers. I am going to quote for you a beautiful tribute paid him by Mosby, his chief scout, who guided Stuart past the Federal lines on the first part of this expedition.