By Tom Perry
The battle of Yellow Tavern on May 11, 1864, called “the darkest day I have seen” by one member of the 6th Virginia Cavalry resulted in the capture of thirty men from the regiment, including James T. W. Clement. J. E. B. Stuart realized that the end of Lunsford Lomax’s line was a key position and rode over to the spot in the Telegraph Road to find the 5th and 6th Virginia Cavalry holding the line under the command of Henry Clay Pate, who Stuart helped rescue from John Brown with the 1st U. S. Cavalry in the Kansas Territory back in 1856 at the Battle of Black Jack.
Pate and Stuart were not on friendly terms due to politics within the army, which led to a court-martial of Pate initiated by Thomas L. Rosser. Pate, the author of two books, former editor of a Petersburg newspaper, and “fire eater,” which brought him to Kansas to lock horns with Brown, now found himself face to face with Stuart, who said, “Colonel Pate, you have done all that any man could do. How long can you hold this position?” Pate replied, “Until I die, General.” Stuart commended Pate for his courage. Pate, moved by this approval from his commanding officer, walked to Stuart, offered him his hand, and, as Douglas S. Freeman wrote, “effaced all differences” between them.
Pate held the line until he died leading a last stand with about sixty men of the two regiments. He shouted, “One more round, boys, and then we’ll get to the hill,” and fell dead on the Telegraph Road. Stuart told diarist Alexander R. Boteler, “You know that Pate and myself have had unkind feelings toward each other. I want to say that his conduct in holding in line, which was the key to our position with a small force against overwhelming numbers, was one of the most gallant and heroic acts of the war.” By this time in his life, Stuart no doubt knew of many “gallant and heroic” men, and this was surely high praise. Pate was born in Bedford County, Virginia, on April 21, 1833, and was buried in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery not far from Stuart’s grave.
Among the men with Pate that day was James T. W. Clement of the 6th Virginia Cavalry. Americans will often travel for hours to visit a place that is not as interesting as a place right in their own neighborhood. Growing up in Ararat, Virginia, I helped mow the grass at Hunter’s Chapel Church, about one mile north of Laurel Hill, the birthplace of J. E. B. Stuart. The cemetery at Hunter’s Chapel contains the mortal remains of James T. W. Clement, Company E, 6th Virginia Cavalry.
Born on January 7, 1844, in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, the son of Thomas and Susan Ann (Graves) Clement, James T. W. Clement enlisted in the Pittsylvania Dragoons in April 1862. He witnessed many memorable events during the Civil War. On June 6, 1862, Company E was stationed on the Port Republic Road and witnessed the death of the Virginia cavalryman General Turner Ashby (October 23, 1828, to June 6, 1862).
Near Harrisonburg, Virginia, the 1st New Jersey Cavalry attacked Ashby’s position at Good’s Farm. Although Ashby defeated the cavalry attack, a subsequent infantry engagement left him with a wounded horse, and he charged ahead on foot. Within a few steps, he was shot through the heart, killing him instantly. His last words were “Charge, men! For God’s sake. Charge!” waving his sword when a bullet pierced him in the breast and he fell dead. Confederate Capt. Campbell Brown wrote that, “Later in the evening I saw a party of cavalry pass by with Ashby’s body, crying, most of them, like children.”
In fact, members of Clement’s company carried the fallen “Knight of the Valley” off the battlefield that day. Union forces captured Clement that summer and exchanged him in December 1862. His record reports him absent, wounded in December 1863. After Pate’s death in May 1864, Clement fell into Union hands when captured at Yellow Tavern. Clement may have been among sixty men who made a last stand during the battle, so that the Southern forces could flee the field. He was later exchanged near the end of October 1864.
After the war, James T. W. Clement moved to Patrick County. Clement was married three times. He married Anna Elizabeth Moore on November 9, 1865, in Patrick County. They apparently divorced. He then married E. M. Carter on October 29, 1882, in Patrick County. His third wife was Jennie E. Slaughter, whom he married on September 21, 1897. His children were John S Clement, 1863–1947, James Thomas Washington Clement, 1870–1941, William Orville Clement, 1872–1945, Anna Virginia Clement Booker, 1873–1947, Robert W Clement, 1873–1937, and Samuel J. T. Clement, 1875–1949.
Clement died on March 23, 1934 (aged 90) in Mount Airy, Surry County, North Carolina. He was laid to rest at Hunter’s Chapel Church in Ararat. I have often thought what it would be like to spend a few moments with Clement or other veterans of war and persuade them to speak of what they saw right before their eyes. Did he relive the war by imagining the horror and the glory he witnessed and the sadness he must have felt being present when both of these Southern cavalrymen met their ends? I do not know of many men who were with both Turner Ashby and J. E. B. Stuart on the day both men received their mortal wounds in the War Between the States.
