Yellow Tavern is an old dismantled hostelry, on the Brook road, about
six miles from Richmond. Nothing more dreary than this desolate wayside
inn can be imagined. Its doors stand open, its windows are gone, the
rotting floor crumbles beneath the heel, and the winds moan through the
paneless sashes, like invisible spirits hovering near and muttering
some lugubrious secret. "This is the scene of some deed of darkness!"
you are tempted to mutter, as you place your feet upon the threshold.
When you leave the spot behind you, a weight seems lifted from your
breast--you breathe freer.
Such was the Yellow Tavern when I went there in the spring of 1864. Is
it different to-day? Do human beings laugh there? I know not; but I
know that nothing could make it cheerful in my eyes. It was, and is,
and ever will be, a thing accursed!
For the military reader, however, a few words in reference to the
topographical features of the locality are necessary.
Yellow Tavern is at the forks of the Telegraph and Mountain roads, six
miles from Richmond. The Telegraph road runs north and south--over this
road Stuart marched. The Mountain road comes into it from the
northwest. By this road Sheridan was coming.
Open the left hand, with the palm upward; the index finger pointing
north.
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