This brilliantly conducted expedition was as fruitful of results as the ride round McClellan’s army in the previous June.  The information obtained was most important.  Lee, besides being furnished with a sufficiently full report of the Federal dispositions, learned that no part of McClellan’s army had been detached to Washington, but that it was being reinforced from that quarter, and that therefore no over-sea expedition against Richmond was to be apprehended.  Several hundred fine horses from the farms of Pennsylvania furnished excellent remounts for the Confederate troopers.  Prominent officials were brought in as hostages for the safety of the Virginia citizens who had been thrown into Northern prisons.  Only a few scouts were captured by the enemy, and not a man was killed.  The distance marched by Stuart, from Darkesville to White’s Ford, was one hundred and twenty-six miles, of which the last eighty were covered without a halt.  Crossing the Potomac at McCoy’s Ford about 6 A.M. on October 10, he had recrossed it at White’s Ford, between 1 and 2 P.M. on October 12; he was thus for fifty-six hours inside the enemy’s lines, and during the greater part of his march within thirty miles of McClellan’s headquarters near Harper’s Ferry.

It is often the case in war that a well-planned and boldly executed enterprise has a far greater effect than could possibly have been anticipated.  Neither Lee nor Stuart looked for larger results from this raid than a certain amount of plunder and a good deal of intelligence.  But skill and daring were crowned with a more ample reward than the attainment of the immediate object.

In the first place, the expedition, although there was little fighting, was most destructive to the Federal cavalry.  McClellan had done all in his power to arrest the raiders.  Directly the news came in that they had crossed the Potomac, troops were sent in every direction to cut off their retreat.  Yet so eminently judicious were Stuart’s precautions, so intelligent the Maryland soldiers who acted as his guides, and so rapid his movements, that although constant reports were received by the Federal generals as to the progress and direction of his column, the information came always too late to serve any practical purpose, and his pursuers were never in time to bar his march.  General Pleasanton, with such cavalry as could be spared from the picket line, marched seventy-eight miles in four-and-twenty hours, and General Averell’s brigade, quartered on the Upper Potomac, two hundred miles in four days.  The severity of the marches told heavily on these commands, already worn out by hard work on the outposts; and so many of the horses broke down that a period of repose was absolutely necessary to refit them for the field.  Until his cavalry should have recovered it was impossible for McClellan to invade Virginia.

In the second place, neither the Northern Government nor the Northern people could forget that this was the second time that McClellan had allowed Stuart to ride at will round the Army of the Potomac.  Public confidence in the general-in-chief was greatly shaken; and a handle was given to his opponents in the ranks of the abolitionists, who, because he was a Democrat, and had much influence with the army, were already clamouring for his removal.