Confederate States of America. Army -- Fiction; Historical fiction; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
“General Beauregard has come. He is at Petersburg.”
“Miss What’s-your-name, why don’t you warm your hands? That ain’t any
way to touch poor sick soldiers with them icicles like that!—O Lord, O
Lord! Why’d I ever come here?”
“Them cannon’s getting louder all the time. Louder’n’, louder’n’,
louder—”
“Shoo! They can’t cross the river. Where’s Jeb Stuart? What’s he
doing?”
“He’s fighting hard, six miles out, at Yellow Tavern. Uptown you can
hear the firing!”
A young man struggled up in bed, first coughing, then breathing with a
loud, whistling sound. The doctor glanced his way, then looked at a
nurse. “It’s come. I’ll give him something so he can go easily. Let
him lean against you. Tell the men to try to be quiet.”
Out at Yellow Tavern, six miles north of Richmond, Sheridan was formed
in line of battle. Over against him was Stuart, his men dismounted.
The blue delivered a great volley, advanced, volleyed again, advanced,
shouting. The grey returned their fire. James Stuart, sitting his
horse just behind his battle-line, swung his hat, lifted his voice
that was the voice of a magician, “Steady, men, steady! Give a good
day’s account of yourself! Steady! Steady!”
The firing became fiercer and closer. There was a keening sound in the
air. Stuart’s voice suddenly dropped; he swayed in his saddle. A
mounted courier pressed toward him. “Go,” he said; “go tell General
Lee and Dr. Fontaine to come here.” The courier spurred away and the
men around Stuart lifted him from his horse, and, mourning, bore him
to the rear.
That evening they brought him into the city and laid him in the house
of his brother-in-law. His wife was sent for, but she was miles away,
in the troubled, overrun countryside, and though she fared toward him
in haste and anguish, she spoke to him no more alive. Friends were
around him—his mourning officers, all the mourning city. The President
came and stood beside the bed, and tried to thank him. “You have saved
Richmond, General. You have always been a bulwark to us....” He asked
for a hymn that he liked—“I would not live alway.” He had lived but
thirty-one years. He asked often for his wife. “Is she come?” ... “Is
she come?” She could not come in time. The evening of the twelfth he
died, quite peacefully, and those who looked on his dead face said
that the sunshine abided.
They buried Jeb Stuart in Hollywood, buried him with no pageantry of
martial or of civil woe. One year ago there had been in Richmond for
Stonewall Jackson such pageantry. To-day
“We could not pause, while yet the noontide air
Shook with the cannonade’s incessant pealing ...
“One weary year ago, when came a lull,
With victory in the conflict’s stormy closes,
When the glad spring, all flushed and beautiful,
First mocked us with her roses—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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