Sunday, December 31, 2006
The End of Monument Avenue
The final statue of Civil War generals, etc., on Monument Avenue in Richmond is the easternmost equestrian statue of James Ewell Brown Stuart. Jeb Stuart was a Major General at age 29 and the leader, for most of the war, of the superb Confederate cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia. Many of the things he carried are now in the Museum of the Confederacy a short distance away, including his embroidered gloves and ostrich plumed hat, his 9 shot plus center shotgun round LeMat revolver and a very strange breech-loading carbine.True to statue convention, his horse has one foot up to signify his mortal wound in battle (Yellow Tavern), and he's facing north, as are all the statues of those who died during the war. One of the things we did on our usually drunken underground tour of Richmond in the 60s was to get the new guy to get out of the car, cross the road and try to pull out one of the swords from the scabbard on the fence around the statue. Some guys actually tried to pull for a few seconds.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 1:08 PM 
