Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/98

 88 Southern Historical Society Papers.

known to all civilized nations. His career was brief, but brilliant as the meteor that flashes athwart the heavens and leaves in its track refulgent light. Our hero was born at Laurel Hill, Patrick county, Virginia, on the 6th day of February, 1833, and fell on this field the nth day of May, 1864. In this short period of thirty-one years, four months and twelve days, he wqn a glorious and imperishable name, and one that posterity will delight to cherish and honor for his noble attributes and his transcendent military achievements. It would be supererogation in me to follow this sublime man from his birth-place, through the school-room at Wytheville, Emory and Henry, at West Point, and the trackless forest in pursuit of the red- man for the protection of the early settlers on the frontiers in the great Western wilds, or the conspicuous part he took in all the cam- paigns in our late civil war, until he fell on this field, and now known to every intelligent school-boy.

In the spring of 1855 he was transferred to the ist Regiment United States Cavalry with the rank of second lieutenant. In De- cember of the same year he was promoted to be first lieutenant in his regiment. With this rank and in this regiment, on the 2gth day of July, 1857, upon the north fork of Solomon's river, he was engaged in a very severe battle with 300 Cheyenne warriors, in which he was shot in the breast, and the ball was never extracted. There was the same valor exhibited in this engagement that he evinced in all subsequent ones. He acted as volunteer aid to Lieuten- ant-Colonel R6bert E. Lee in the suppression of the John Brown insurrection at Harper's Ferry and in a parley with old " Ossawa- tomie," at the engine house where he and his followers had taken shelter, Stuart says: "I approached the door in the presence of perhaps 2,000 spectators, and told Mr. Smith that I had a commu- nication for him from Colonel Lee. He opened the door about four inches, and placed his body against the crack, with a carbine in his hand. Hence his remark after his capture that he could have wiped me out like a 'mosquito. When Smith first came to the door I re- cognized old Ossawatomie Brown, who had given us so much trouble in Kansas. No one present but myself could have performed that service. ' '

In March, 1861, Lieutenant Stuart obtained a two month's fur- lough, in order that he might be able to direct his own course in the event of his State seceding and with the view of returning to Vir- ginia or removing with his family to Fort Lyon as soon as there was some decided action of his State. He first learned of the ordinance