“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,