Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 30.djvu/244

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

236 Southern Historical Society Papers.

War Record Journal, New York and Lexington,.

Ky., 1 893-' 6, Vol. II, page 124. Confederate Military History, Vol. Ill, (Vir- ginia), p. 246. Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government^

Jefferson Davis.

1418 Fourteenth Street, N. W., Washington, D. C, March 20,. 1902.

FATAL WOUNDING OF GENERAL J. E. B STUART.

Account of by Colonel " GUS " W. DORSEY, First Maryland

Cavalry.

In the Southern Historical Society Papers it has been the prominent desire and effort of the Editor, to give just and full credit to every soldier and officer of our incomparable Southern Army. The death of General Stuart was a calamity, and all in the South felt it to be such. Had he, "the right arm of Stonewall Jackson," have been spared it might well be beyond feeble human ken, to simply ap- prehend how signally he might have modified what was, is acknowl- edged as an inevitable result of an overwhelming host with constantly increasing resources. It remains that the death of Stuart was a grave calamity. .

It is a remarkable fact that though it is thirty-eight years since the death of the celebrated Confederate cavalry leader, General "Jeb" Stuart, never but once has an accurate account of his being wounded appeared in print, and then it was in the Staunton Specta- tor. The Richmond Dispatch, a paper that runs a Confederate col- umn, though evidently it has never heard of McClellan's book, recently stated that ' ' General Stuart was wounded at the head of the column leading a desperate charge," and in the Baltimore Sun there has appeared at different times numerous accounts of that affair, written by men who were not at nor anywhere near Yellow Tavern on May n, 1864. This maybe the reason why " Gus "'