On May 12, 1864, J. E. B. Stuart was at the home of Charles Brewer on Grace Street in Richmond. He was dying, having been shot in the abdomen by one of George Custer’s Michigan cavalrymen at the Battle of Yellow Tavern.
Dr. Charles Brewer married another of Philip St. George Cooke’s daughters and had been with Stuart when he was wounded in 1857 in Kansas Territory by a Cheyenne Indian. H. B. McClellan visited Stuart at the Brewer house after staying with Fitz Lee until a lull in the action at Yellow Tavern. Stuart told him that official papers must be sent through channels. Stuart told McClellan and Venable they must take one of his horses. He wanted a small Confederate flag forwarded to a lady in Columbia, South Carolina, and his spurs to Lilly Lee of Shepherdstown, Virginia, now West Virginia. He wanted his sword given to his son. After hearing of defenses against Sheridan, “God grant that they may be successful, but I must be prepared for another world.”
As McClellan leaves, he meets Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, who is coming in. President Jefferson Davis visited Stuart, grasping Stuart’s hand. Davis said,” General, how do you feel?” “Easy, but willing to die if God and my country think I have fulfilled my destiny and done my duty,” Stuart replied. Davis wrote, “He was so calm, and physically so strong that I could not believe that he was dying until the surgeon…told me he was bleeding inwardly and that the end was near.” Mrs. Varina Davis wrote, “Mr. Davis came home and knelt with me praying that this precious life might be spared to our needy country.”
At 1 pm on May 12, the wagon carrying the wounded James B. Gordon passed by the Brewer house, creating some loud noise, which stirred Stuart from his sleep, but he never knew of Gordon’s fate. James B. Gordon was taken to the officer’s hospital on the east side of Tenth Street between Clay and Marshall Streets, where he died on May 18. He was returned to Wilkesboro, where he is buried in St Paul’s Episcopal Church Cemetery. J. E. B. Stuart had written his wife thinking of Gordon and his men. “North Carolina has done nobly in this army.”
Stuart suffered through pain, holding ice to his side, saying, “I am resigned if it be God’s will, but I would like to see my wife.” Flora Cooke Stuart desperately tried to reach him from Beaver Dam between Fredericksburg and Richmond. At 11:30 p.m., Flora Stuart arrived to find darkness in the house and darkness for the rest of her life as the light of her life was gone.
At 7 pm, ministers came into the room, Rock of Ages was sung. Stuart’s last words were, “I am going fast now. I am resigned. God’s will be done.” At 7:38 pm, Doctors Brewer, Garnet, Gibson, and Fontaine were present with Reverends Peterkin and Kepler when Stuart died.
On May 13, 1864, “George put on his best uniform and went to pay his respects, taking his son with him. A hushed crowd of soldiers and citizens filed slowly into the house. Mourners passed in silence before the billiard table on which Stuart was laid out. The white sheet draped over his legs and torso was smooth as marble and contrasted vividly with his wiry red beard. He can’t be dead. People like that do not die. The boy breathed the scent of flowers as he left the house. Yellow roses were in bloom outside the door, and it would be this, the scent of yellow roses in spring, that for the rest of his life would remind him of that day. The father could offer no more eloquent comment on the occasion than the fact he wanted his son to witness it. But after that day, the phrase, “our glorious struggle” was absent from his letters. The war, its outcome ever more apparent became a grim obligation of honor.” Eight-year-old George Smith Patton never forgot the scene, and no doubt told his son. His son was World War Two George S. Patton. This comes from a book titled, “The Pattons,” by Robert H. Patton.
Robert E Lee in the rain at Spotsylvania Courthouse. “General Stuart has been mortally wounded: a most valuable and able officer.” He paused a moment and then added in a shaken voice, “He never brought me a piece of false information.” Later, when a dispatch of Stuart’s death arrived, Lee put his hands over his face to hide emotion and quickly retired to his tent, where one of Stuart’s staff later entered to tell him of the last moments, “I can scarcely think of him without weeping!”
Lee released an order to his Army of Northern Virginia stating, “Among the gallant soldiers who have fallen in this war, General Stuart was second to none in valor, in zeal, and in unfaltering devotion to his country. His achievements form a conspicuous part of the history of this Army, with which his name and services will be forever associated. To military capacity of a high order and all the nobler virtues of the soldier, he added the brighter graces of a pure life, guided and sustained by the Christian’s faith and hope.” A.R. Boteler of his staff wrote, “When I announced his death to the couriers, those brave men bowed their heads and wept like children.”
The funeral occurred in the rain on Friday, the 13th, at St. James Episcopal Church, with Reverend Peterkin officiating around 5 pm. Pallbearers included George W. Randolph, Thomas Jefferson’s grandson. Among those in attendance were President Jefferson Davis and General Braxton Bragg. The hearse was covered in black plumes drawn by four white horses that carried Stuart to Hollywood Cemetery. Theodore Garnett wrote, “The interment took place in Hollywood Cemetery, and all that was mortal of the best soldier I ever knew rests there.”
His family’s military tradition continued when his son, Jeb Stuart Jr., served in the Spanish American War and as a Volunteer in World War I. He rests today at Arlington National Cemetery. Flora Cooke Stuart went to teach at the Virginia Female Institute in Staunton, Virginia, which was renamed Stuart Hall in her honor in 1907. She lived until 1923.
The Stuart Monument, sculpted by Fred Moynihan of New York, a student of Edward Valentine, was dedicated on Monument Avenue on May 30, 1907. Theodore Garnett gave a dedication speech with 50,000 present. Granddaughter Virginia Waller Davis unveiled the sculpture and was not amused to have veterans dripping with tobacco juice trying to kiss General Stuart’s granddaughter.
Stuart’s biographer John Thomason wrote, “So, in the thirty-second year of his life, and in the fourth year of his country’s independence, as he would say it, passed Jeb Stuart. All his life, he was fortunate. It was given to him to toil greatly, and to enjoy greatly, to taste no little fame from the works of his hands, and to drink the best cup of living. He died while there was still a thread of hope for victory. He was spared the grinding agony of the nine months’ siege, the bleak months that brought culminating disasters, and the laying down of the swords at Appomattox. He took his death wound in the front of battle, as he wanted it, and he was granted some brief hours to press the hands of men who loved him and to arrange himself in order to report before the God of Battles, Whom he served.”
