At Ashby’s Gap, General Stuart came near being cut off from his own forces. He had commanded Colonel Rosser to hold this gap while he, accompanied by a few members of his staff, rode across the mountain for a conference with General Jackson. When Stuart returned the next day, after a hard ride over a little-used mountain trail, what was his surprise on reaching a point just above what had been his own camp, to find the place literally swarming with blue-coats.
Rosser had found it necessary to withdraw before the superior numbers of the Federals and his couriers who went to inform Stuart of this fact had missed the general who had returned by a short cut across the mountain. He and his men were indeed in a serious predicament, and had they not found a mountaineer, who knew the trails on the other side of the mountain, there is no telling when or where General Stuart would have joined his command. He was guided safely to Barber’s Cross Roads where his forces had retreated and he made the simple and faithful mountaineer happy with a fifty-dollar note.
On November 10, there was an engagement at Barber’s Cross Roads, and the Confederate cavalry was forced to retreat through Orleans and across the Rappahannock at Waterloo Bridge. That night Stuart received the news of the death of his dear little daughter, Flora. For some time he had known of her serious illness, and the doctor had written that he must come home if he wished to see her, but he knew that his country needed him to hold the Federal cavalry in check.
When the second urgent call reached him on the field of battle near Union, he wrote Mrs. Stuart: “I was at no loss to decide that it was my duty to you and to Flora to remain here. I am entrusted with the conduct of affairs, the issue of which will affect you, her, and the mothers and children of our whole country much more seriously than we can believe.
“If my darling’s case is hopeless, there are ten chances to one that I will get to Lynchburg too late; if she is convalescent, why should my presence be necessary? She was sick nine days before I knew it. Let us trust in the good God who has blessed us so much, that He will spare our child to us, but if it should please Him to take her from us, let us bear it with Christian fortitude and resignation.”