by Burke Davis
General Stuart has been seriously wounded. Come at once.
Fontaine put it into his pocket and did not tell Flora immediately. He summoned a locomotive to carry her to Richmond and asked his wife to give her the news.
Blackford saw Flora leave on the strange conveyance, watching from the camp as the engine puffed into the station without cars. A carriage went swiftly down the Fontaine drive. After questioning men around the depot, Blackford learned that Flora and her children had gone to her wounded husband.2
They left Beaver Dam at one P.M. in the rocking engine, off to Ashland over the last undamaged stretch of rails. At the last moment Flora got an escort, Rev. George Woodbridge, who had been visiting his son, a cavalryman. Another friend, Charles Carter, of Hanover County, also accompanied her.
The engine puffed along the track for two hours before they reached Ashland, for the engineer was an amateur, a volunteer haled into service by Fontaine. There were new troubles at Ashland. The rails into Richmond had been torn up.
An ambulance stood near the station, and though several wounded cavalry officers were in it, ready to go into the city, they hobbled out and insisted that Mrs. Stuart take it, instead. Wood-bridge accepted it for her and they lurched off over rutted and miry roads. A storm broke over them as they left Ashland, and the dark sky, lit by lightning and loud with thunder, added to the fright of the children. The wagon did not halt.
There were frequent calls from passing soldiers, and always Woodbridge asked for news of Stuart. They were usually told: "No news, but we heard his wound was not serious."
At eight P.M. they reached the Chickahominy, where they found the Confederate cavalry had destroyed the bridge in the face of Sheridan. After a wait in the storm a cavalry picket was found to lead the driver to a ford a mile or so away. The wagon splashed through the water in a frantic hurry.
Just before reaching the city the wagon was halted; it was ten o'clock, and the storm still rolled. Woodbridge suddenly saw dark masses of men and horses just in front of the wagon, and along the roadside. A rider was at the head of the wagon horses. The wagon stopped, and once the wheels had halted, Woodbridge heard the challenge: "Who's there? Stand!"
Woodbridge found it was a Confederate sentry, and told him Mrs. Stuart was in the wagon, on her way to the general's side.
"Thank God!" the sentry said. "My pistol cap snapped twice when you didn't answer my challenge, and wouldn't fire."
These were men of Lomax, driven back on the city, defending the approaches against Sheridan. The wagon rolled into Richmond at the height of the storm, which was so severe that the steeple of St. John's Church was blown away.8
In the bedroom where four doctors now worked, Stuart's condition changed rapidly during the day of May twelfth. There was occasional delirium, followed by periods of ease and quiet. In the morning he seemed to get relief from his pain, and the doctors became hopeful; perhaps he might survive the wound, after all.
Someone who left the room told a newspaper reporter that Stuart's mind wandered as Jackson's had, almost a year ago to the day, when Stonewall was on his deathbed. Jeb had given snatches of orders to his commanders, this man said, urging them against the enemy. Once he had shouted, "Make haste!"
McClellan, who had reported to General Bragg, at last arrived at the Brewer house. He found Stuart "calm and composed, in the full possession of his mind," but said their conversation was interrupted by "paroxysms of suffering."
Stuart told McClellan to dispose of his official papers and to send his personal belongings to Flora. That was not all.
"I want you to take one of my horses and Venable the other. Which is the heavier rider?"
"I think Venable is."
"Then," Stuart said, "let Venable have the gray and you take the bay."
Stuart stirred again.
"You will find in my hat a little Confederate flag, sent to me by a lady from Columbia, South Carolina. She wanted me to wear it on my horse in battle and send it to her. Send it."
McClellan searched the big plumed hat for some time before he found the flag; it was tucked beneath the stained sweat band. The staff had known nothing of this request from the distant woman patriot, but later, in the papers, McClellan found the letter from this admirer.
Stuart had another request: "My spurs. I want them sent to Lily Lee in Shepherdstown. The gold ones, I mean. My sword I want to go to my son."
There was a roll of cannon fire in the distance. Stuart turned eagerly to McClellan: "What's that?"
"Bragg sent Grade's brigade out to take Sheridan in the rear on Brook Turnpike. Fitz is going after the vanguard at the Meadow Bridges. It may be them, hitting him now."
That seemed to remind Stuart of the action at Yellow Tavern, and he told him feelingly of the death of Henry Pate, and of their reconciliation. McClellan then recorded Jeb in a melodramatic moment as he spoke of the men still fighting Sheridan:
"He turned his eyes upward and exclaimed earnestly, 'God grant that they may be successful.' Then turning his head aside, he said with a sigh, 'But I must be prepared for another world.' "
They listened to the guns for a time, and Stuart said, "Major, Fitz Lee may need you."
McClellan stood, and took Stuart's hand to say good-bye.
As he left, President Davis entered the room, and McClellan halted to overhear the conversation.
"General," Davis said, "how do you feel?"
"Easy, but willing to die, if God and my country think I have fulfilled my destiny and done my duty."
McClellan went out of the room.
The Reverend Joshua Peterkin, of St. James Episcopal Church, visited the bedside, and prayed with Stuart. Jeb had a request:
"Sing," the general said. "Let's sing 'Rock of Ages.' " The room resounded to the slow tune of the old hymn, and Stuart joined in a low voice. He seemed weaker when he finished.
During the afternoon, on one of Dr. Brewer's visits, Stuart asked, "How long can I live, Charles? Can I last through the night?"
"I'm afraid the end is near," Brewer said.
Stuart nodded.
"I am resigned, if it be God's will. I would like to see my wife. But God's will be done."
He asked for Flora several times during the afternoon. When the pain became intense, ice was placed on the wound, and Stuart held it there himself.
After a time Stuart talked again of disposing of his property among friends and relatives; there was precious little to be left to Flora or anyone else.
The specific bequests in his will were rather pathetic. He left Flora his class ring, diplomas, commissions and wardrobe, and added:
I give & bequeath to my son the saber used by me in the war of my country's independence with the injunction to draw it whenever his country's rights are violated or her territory invaded.
And the document repeated an injunction Flora had read before:
I desire my children to be educated South of the Mason and Dixon Line, and always to retain the right of domicile in the Confederate states.
During May twelfth, just north of the city, Sheridan had moved against Fitz Lee at the Chickahominy, where he found the Meadow Bridges burned. But though there was fierce fighting, Sheridan did not seriously attempt to storm Richmond—probably because it did not attract him as a temporary objective, and could not long be held by his cavalry.
The Federal riders went away eastward, toward the blue infantry of General Butler. The lead corps, in fact, camped near the great house Shirley, on the James, with others strung out behind as far as the Meadow Bridges. In the rear James Gordon, "The Murat of the Army of Northern Virginia," struck hard at the enemy. At Brook Church he tied up an entire brigade of the Federal rear with the ist and 2nd North Carolina.
Bragg sent fresh artillery from Richmond, but when Gordon put it into action and enemy canister showered them, the green crews ran for a ditch and could not be driven out.
Gordon raged at the "bandbox artillery" and its cowardly men, and his veterans laug
hed at the gunners from Richmond. "We asked them to go back to their guns," one soldier wrote, "but they looked at us as if we were surely crazy. Gordon became utterly disgusted."
In this frame of mind Gordon galloped into the shell-swept road as if he would charge the Yankees alone. He pitched from his horse, mortally wounded.
Men carried Gordon rearward and put him into an ambulance, which took him into Richmond after dark. A throng gathered about it.
Theo Garnett was in Stuart's room by now, holding the general's pulse, which throbbed faster and faster. Garnett wrote:
"Suddenly a loud shout arose from a crowd of men and boys passing along Broad Street. Awakening with a startled look, Stuart said, 'Go and see what it means.' "
Garnett hurried into the street and saw an ambulance pushing through the rain toward the capitol. Someone said it carried a wounded general to the hospital. After a few moments Garnett returned to Stuart.
He found Jeb almost asleep, and did not repeat to him either the rumors or the fact: Stuart's able lieutenant, James Gordon, had passed the house on his slow way to his deathbed.
Von Borcke sat on Stuart's bed, holding his hand. The German fed him ice, and Jeb crunched it rapidly. Jeb drew von Borcke closer to him.
"My dear Von, I am sinking fast now. But before I die I want you to know that I never loved a man as much as you. I pray you may live a long and happy life. Look after my family when I'm gone, and be the same true friend to my wife and children you have been to me."
Von Borcke, at any rate, had that recollection when he came to write his memoirs.
The memories of others were less heroic.
Soon Stuart said to Dr. Brewer:
"I am going fast now. God's will be done. ..."
He was gone. The pulse was still. It was twenty-two minutes be* fore eight, in the evening of May twelfth.4
More than three hours later Flora arrived in the wagon. One who rode with her wrote: "A certain quiet resting on all about the house instantly impressed them, and words were not necessary to convey to the ... wife the sad intelligence.',
Flora's children were taken by quick hands, and she was soon alone with him in candlelight, the pale image she had so long held in her mind's eye. Despite stunning grief, perhaps it did not seem so strange to her. She had feared it from the start, and had read it in almost every line of his letters, in the war and in the long-gone days of Indian raids on the frontier.
Others tried to help. Her sister Maria snipped off a lock of the red-golden hair from Jeb's head, tied it with a ribbon and thrust it into an envelope. And she, or one of the staff, assembled the few items found in his pockets:
A pincushion, thin and round, on one side a blue background with the legend worked in gold embroidery: "Gen. J. E. B. Stuart"; on the reverse side in red and blue a Confederate flag, with the legend: "Glory to Our Immortal Cavalry!"
There was a copy of one of Stuart's orders to his troops, ringing with familiar phrases:
We now, as in all battles, mourn the loss of many brave and valued comrades. Let us avenge our fallen heroes; and at the word, move upon the enemy with the determined assurance that in victory alone is honor and safety.
There was a letter to his wife, telling of plans to bring her to his headquarters within a few days.
An original General Order of congratulation to the victorious infantry he had led at Chancellorsville.
A letter from his brother W. A. Stuart in Saltville, Virginia, the owner of White Sulphur Springs.
A letter asking Jeb to find a government job for a friend.
There was a poem on the death of a child, taken from a newspaper.
A New Testament.
A handkerchief.
A lock of his young daughter's hair.5
The Richmond Whig of May twelfth, on the streets as Stuart died, reported on the state of the populace:
The greatest excitement felt in this city yesterday was caused by a dog fight in Tobacco Alley, which occurred about 6 o'clock P.M.
Two fice, one yellow and white with a long tail, the other black and lobbed, after the manner of a terrier . . . were the combatants Several hundred soldiers watched..., The long-tailed fice's owner withdrew him ... no match.
And on the following day, unaware that the cavalry chief was dead, this newspaper said:
General Stuart was reported improving last evening. The rumor of his death at noon, which caused so deep a sensation among the resident and transient population of Richmond, was speedily dissipated by an announcement from his surgeon that he was getting on well. . . . We trust that he may live to meet and repel many a Yankee raid.
The Army of Northern Virginia, off at Spotsylvania, was resting after one of its most terrible blood baths, in firing that had felled large trees; Lee's ranks had been broken, and the line held only by hand-to-hand battle. Casualties had been ghastly, enough to make men forget The Wilderness.
Several officers were near General Lee when he got a dispatch telling him of Stuart's wound.
"Gentlemen," Lee said, with obvious emotion, "we have very bad news. General Stuart has been mortally wounded."
After a time Lee said, "He never brought me a piece of false information."
And when Lee heard of the end, not long afterward, he said, "I can scarcely think of him without weeping."
The funeral was held May thirteenth at St. James Church, with the Rev. Mr. Peterkin officiating. It was late, about five in the afternoon, before the procession reached the church, and in the air were sounds of fighting at Drewry's Bluff, rolling strongly up the James.
There was no music on the streets, and no military escort, since the Public Guard was in the field. The city was so nearly under siege that customary honors could not be thought of today. The metal coffin was carried into the church by the pallbearers, among them Generals John Winder, George Randolph, Joseph Anderson, and A. R. Lawton, and Commodore Forrest. The men bore their burden up the center aisle as the organ played and the choir sang. Flora wept in the front of the crowd, her sobs drowned by the cannon fire.
President Davis was there, and Generals Bragg and Ransom and other Confederate and city officials—but none of the dusty troopers. A part of the Episcopal service was read by The Rev. Mr. Peterkin, followed by a hymn and a prayer.
The coffin went out to the waiting hearse, which was topped with black plumes suggestive of Jeb's own. Four white horses drew him to Hollywood Cemetery. There were few carriages in the procession through the streets, and the short concluding portion of the funeral service was read by The Reverend Charles Minnegerode of St. Paul's Church in his heavy German accent. Stuart's coffin was placed in a vault, and the carriages moved off.
Just as the funeral party left the cemetery the rain began once more.6
The next day there was a general order from Fitz Lee at cavalry headquarters:
A terrible duty has to be performed in announcing to this division the death of Major General J. E. B. Stuart. . . . His name and fame, bright as the keen blade of his trusty saber, is at this moment encompassed by no boundaries. Great, glorious and good, his loss to his country, to our army, especially to his troopers, is inconsolable.
Whilst his bright glancing eye can no longer see, his clear ringing voice no longer be heard .. . may the principles he has taught us, the example he has shown us, be not lost. Stuart had no superior as a soldier Let the remembrance of his mighty deeds, his hopeful devotion, his buoyant courage, inspire us to emulate him, however feebly, and whilst weeping for our beloved chieftain, our sabers must be thrust to the hilt, and our motto be, Independence or Death.
And the Richmond Examiner of May seventeenth, as if Stuart had become the symbol of Confederate defiance, cried:
We have it from the lips of prisoners, that the Yankee honor and glory of having fired the chance shot that laid the gallant Stuart low is claimed by a Yankee dog, one Major Hogan, of the Pennsylvania reserves, who made a boast of it, and was complimented by such kindred mastiffs as Generals Merritt,
Wilson and Davis..,.
Hogan claims to be the slayer of the Confederate lion, the shaking of whose mane and angry roar kept the Jackal North in a perpetual terror. True to their cowardly instinct they feared him living, but insult him dead, by honoring his assassin. . . . Stuart's troopers still live, and as true as they live Hogan will die if ever found on the soil of the "Old Dominion." They swear it. Stuart has not fallen to sleep unavenged.
The apoplectic editorial voice, relentlessly critical of Stuart in life, was lost in gunfire which came ever nearer the city and the otherwise unidentified Hogan and his claim to fame were forgotten. Richmond fought for its life.
For a long time there appeared on Stuart's grave each day a mound of spring flowers.
