Late on the evening of May 11, 1864, Dr. Charles Brewer worked over a severely wounded patient at his home on Grace Street in Richmond, Virginia. The patient, Brewer’s brother-in-law, was shot in the abdomen by the pistol of one of United States Cavalry General George Armstrong Custer’s men. As Brewer worked to remove his patient’s clothes, he took off the cavalryman’s yellow sash. The sash stained with blood is on display in the Virginia Historical Society’s exhibit, “The Story of Virginia.”
Brewer may have thought of seven years earlier, when he had seen this same man shot in the chest by a Cheyenne at the Battle of Solomon’s Fork in July 1857. The young soldier survived that wound, but as Charles looked at him now, he knew the prognosis was not good. Brewer no doubt remembered the young Lieutenant James Ewell Brown “Jeb” Stuart, and his young wife, Mrs. Brewer’s sister. Flora Cooke Stuart and Maria Cooke Brewer were born to Philip St. George Cooke and his wife, Julia. They all met while serving in the U.S. Cavalry in the Kansas Territory in the 1850s.
Brewer wrote a manuscript that recently went on sale through a manuscript dealer about his experiences on the Solomon River in 1857, where Stuart was wounded by a Cheyenne, saving the life of Lunsford Lomax. I have never read the manuscript but would love to one day.
“Charles E. Brewer (1832–1909) was born in Annapolis, Maryland, to Judge Nicholas Brewer and his wife Catherine, and served as an army surgeon with the 10th Infantry Regiment on the western frontier in the 1850s during the Utah Expedition. He participated in the Battle of Solomon’s Fork between U.S. Cavalry and the Cheyenne (July 9, 1857), one of the earliest conflicts of the Plains Indian Wars and the only one involving a mass saber charge. Brewer was also involved in the aftermath of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which Mormons killed all but seventeen young children in a wagon train of Arkansas emigrants (September 7–11, 1857). As Assistant Surgeon General, Brewer buried the remains of the victims and submitted a detailed report on his findings. In May 1861, Brewer joined the medical corps of the Confederate army—causing a break with his father, who supported the Union—and served as surgeon general under Gen. Robert E. Lee. Brewer and J.E.B. Stuart married sisters (Flora and Maria Cooke).”
Nearly seven hours after Stuart was struck at Yellow Tavern, his ambulance pulled up at Dr. Brewer’s residence around 11 p.m. The cavalryman was carried to a room upstairs. Upon examination, Brewer found little he could do for Stuart except make him comfortable. A pistol ball had penetrated his left side, entered near his stomach, and then exited through his back. Stuart spent a fitful night placing ice on his wound and gradually growing weaker as he bled to death internally.
Word of Stuart’s wounding quickly spread through the city. Beginning early on the morning of May 12, a stream of visitors began to arrive at the Brewer house. Former Prussian aide Johann August Heinrich Heros Von Borcke, himself wounded the previous summer in the Loudoun Valley, also visited Stuart.
Stuart’s chief of staff and first biographer, Henry B. McClellan, visited his stricken chief. As he left, McClellan met President Jefferson Davis, who, as Secretary of War, appointed Stuart to the 1st U.S. Cavalry in 1855. The doctors told Davis of Stuart’s fate. Davis returned to what we call the White House of the Confederacy, and his wife, Varina, recounted in the book that they knelt in prayer that Stuart might be saved for his country.
Recently, I found the following listing on a manuscript dealer website. “Memorial Ode to Jeb Stuart by his Brother-in-Law, Charles Brewer. ” A beautiful manuscript document signed, ‘Charles Brewer M.D.’, shortly following the mortal wounding of J.E.B. Stuart, who was brought to his home in Richmond where he died before his wife Flora and son arrived. Dr. Brewer attended to his care in his home in Richmond and was with Stuart there when he died, after which Dr. Brewer penned this eloquent eulogy.
“In Memoriam To my old friend and comrade, one of the gallant leaders of the Confederate Cavalry, the lamented General James E. B. Stuart of the Army of N. Va. These lines are affectionately dedicated.” The dealer wrote that it was “Penned by a professional hand except for the signature and, oddly enough, the introductory phrase ‘affectionately dedicated’. Effusive Victorian language and imagery is used here in this flowery tribute to Stuart. A brief excerpt, by example, reads: ‘…From fair Richmond’s spires steal the church bell chimes, as they tell down the twilight air / Of Virginia homes now redeemed from the dust, and of rose wreaths clustering there, / Whilst as long as Virginia’s name shall last, and her soil be trod by the free, / Sire to son shall tell, how bold Stuart fell, and shall treasure his memory.’ A unique and heartfelt 19th-century tribute by the anguished physician who was unable to save Stuart’s life.”
“After the war, Brewer moved with his family to Vineland, New Jersey, where he continued his medical practice and took up his pen, publishing at least one tale closely based upon his experience with the Mountain Meadows Massacre, titled Retribution at Last: A Mormon Tragedy of the Rockies (Cincinnati: The Editor Publishing Co., 1899).”
