by S. C. Gwynne
• • •
Though there were duties to keep the men busy that winter—drilling, as always, the occasional review, the building of defensive works on the high ground of the south bank, and the usual run of camp chores—there was also a good deal of free time. The winter at Moss Neck was a time for those rarest of wartime pursuits: reading and meditation. Jackson did a good deal of both. He devoted large chunks of the Sabbath to quiet prayer. He and his staff discovered the Corbins’ library. Jackson especially liked Henry Hunter’s Life of Moses. He wrote Anna that it was “a delightful book. I feel more improved reading it than by an ordinary sermon.”18 His staff plunged into Shakespeare, Thackeray, Hugo, Dickens, Tennyson, and Browning.19 The very idea that there would be leisure time to read was new to them. Jackson’s adjutant Sandie Pendleton not only found time to read, he also courted and won Kate Corbin, whom he would soon marry.
But mostly that winter there was just talking, a lot of it, in the tents, around campfires, on long walks and rides that their lessened duties now afforded them. Jackson demonstrated that he could actually participate in light conversation. He welcomed a number of English visitors, holding forth at length on his favorite topic of medieval cathedrals, especially York Minster and Westminster Abbey. He sat before campfires with his staff, especially Hotchkiss and McGuire, and listened to and told stories. One night he spoke of his life as a teacher, saying that he had been very fond of it. He spoke, too, of his love of the Spanish language and of certain idioms of both the Spanish and English languages. He even talked about his childhood and his family, especially about his beloved mother.
Such conversation was without precedent at Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters. He was clearly more relaxed, as was everyone else, including Robert E. Lee. In this more casual world of the winter camp, Lee, too, teased Jackson, once facetiously introducing him to two ladies as “the most cruel and inhuman man you have ever seen.” When one of the ladies protested that she considered Jackson a Christian soldier, Lee replied, shaking his head, “Why, when we had the battle up at Fredericksburg, do you know . . . that it was as much as we could do to prevent him from taking his men, with bayonets on their guns and driving the enemy to the river?”20 Jackson’s staff even persuaded him to play a prank on General Jubal Early, who had taken to commandeering ambulances for social outings with lady friends. Over Jackson’s signature, a note to Early demanded to know why ambulances were being deployed for frivolous purposes. “Great and hilarious was the merriment when [Early’s] long report came,” wrote James Power Smith later.21
Private soldiers seemed just as swept up in this new, lighthearted feeling. In December they built a theater out of logs and clapboard and staged amazingly elaborate performances every night, a combination of variety shows and burlesques on officers, quartermasters, and commissaries. In one a soldier is told that his head wound would require his head to be amputated. He replies that at least then he will be able to get a furlough, only to be told that his headless body is needed as a decoy to fool the enemy.22
The grandest show of all took place in February, put on by the Washington Artillery with music by the 12th and 16th Mississippi Regiments. Programs were printed in Richmond, and people came from twenty miles around to see it. Though Lee sent a letter of regret, Longstreet and other generals attended in full dress. The main feature was titled Pocahontas or Ye Gentle Savage, which brought the house down several times. The show concluded with a thumping rendition of “Bonnie Blue Flag.”23 (A month later a group of soldiers quartered near Fredericksburg put on an all-male burlesque in which one of the principal actors completely disrobed.24)
Probably the most fun the soldiers had that winter were the snowball fights. Many of them had never seen snow before. Now there was lots of it, and they knew just what to do. Every time it snowed—which was frequently—there were battles, usually involving small groups of soldiers. But on at least one occasion they mounted a fight on a massive scale. Two armies were formed, of 2,500 men each, complete with authentic generals, colors, signal corps, fifers and drummers beating the long roll, couriers, and cavalry. They conducted head-on assaults and flank attacks. There were formal demands under flags of truce, and fortifications everywhere. “It was probably the greatest snowball battle ever fought,” wrote one participant, “and showed that ‘men are but children of larger growth. . . . ’ If all battles would terminate that way it would be a great improvement on the old slaughtering plan.”25 Robert E. Lee, who came out to observe the battle, was struck by several snowballs.26 The Richmond newspapers each devoted several columns to accounts of the fight.
The sweetest and saddest moment of this dreamy season came one evening when several Union bands appeared on the northern bank of the Rappahannock to play some favorites, songs such as “When This Cruel War Is Over” (by far the most popular), “Tenting Tonight on the Old Campground,” “John Brown’s Body,” and “The Battle Cry of Freedom.” Thousands of soldiers in groups on the hillside sang along while the rebels listened. Finally the Confederates called out across the river, “Now play one of ours!” Without missing a beat the Yankee bands pitched into “Dixie,” “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” and “Maryland, My Maryland.” They ended the concert by playing “Home Sweet Home,” with 150,000 men on both sides choking up as they sang it.27
• • •
Before the war Jackson had said on several occasions how much he admired the ministry as a profession, and how deeply he was drawn to it. He understood, at the same time, that he was unsuited for it. He was a poor public speaker. He was shy. Thus what almost certainly would have been his principal calling in life became his avocation, from his work as a deacon at the Presbyterian church in Lexington and his management of the Sunday school to his behind-the-scenes efforts to promote religion in the ranks. But at no time in his life was he more actively involved in these Christian pursuits than during the winter at Moss Neck. And at no time did he have so large an effect on the religious life of the Confederate army. Perhaps his most ardent desire, after peace itself, was to lead what he often called a “converted army.”28
His efforts were rooted in his own reluctance to make his feelings and beliefs public, though he felt considerable pressure to do so. “You suggest that I give my views and wishes in such form and extent as I am willing should be made public,” he wrote Reverend White in Lexington. “This I shrink from doing, because it looks like presumption in me, to come before the public and even intimate what course I think should be pursued by the people of God.”29 He preferred to push privately, and push he did, hard, starting with what he saw as the main problem: the lack of chaplains in the army. He had discovered that more than half of the regiments in his 2nd Corps had no chaplains at all. He aimed to fix that. His first move was to bring his friend B. Tucker Lacy into camp. Lacy was six years older than Jackson, and for the years immediately before the war had been pastor of a Presbyterian church in Frankfort, Kentucky. He was a strong and inspirational speaker, with a gift for organization. Though he had arrived at Moss Neck in the expectation of being a regimental chaplain, Jackson, who contributed $700 of his own money to Lacy’s support, soon made him, in effect, the religious overseer of his entire corps.30 Jackson housed him in his personal residence and gave him one of his horses to use.
The Lacy-Jackson plan to help promote religious awakening in the army had two parts. First, chaplains had to be recruited, and money had to be found to pay them, which included lobbying Richmond. The effort was entirely nondenominational. Jackson insisted that no sectarian distinctions be drawn. “As a general rule,” he wrote Reverend White, “I do not think that a chaplain who would preach denominational sermons should be in the army.”31 Jackson had already done some of this work, but the effort was now much more ambitious and more systematic. He spent considerable time writing recruitment letters. At one point he found two soldiers who had gone into the army just before they had finished their theological courses at seminary. Jackson offered them leave to get their licen
ses, and then found places for them as regimental pastors.32 He also allowed his name to be used by his friends quietly in their own efforts to lobby the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which soon began dispatching ministers to the camps.
Second, the chaplains were formed into a tightly organized association, run by Lacy, which held weekly meetings, the main point of which was to extend religious services to as many parts of the corps as possible. Though Jackson in his own words “did not wish to provoke any criticism by being personally prominent,” he kept a tight rein on Lacy and the committee’s activities. “Now come and report,” he would tell Lacy after each meeting.33 Jackson himself contributed $300 to pay for Bibles and other religious reading, and was instrumental in recruiting prominent ministers as guest preachers.34
Jackson’s work paid off quickly. Services grew in number and size and soon were being conducted all over his corps. On March 27, designated by Jefferson Davis as a national day of prayer, more than fifty sermons were preached in the corps.35 The Stonewall Brigade built its own chapel out of logs. Other regiments and brigades followed. In late spring a large open-air chapel capable of holding two thousand or more soldiers was built near Hamilton’s Crossing. Jackson, whose headquarters was nearby, was a constant presence at the services there, as were other generals, including Robert E. Lee. Wrote Robert Lewis Dabney, “The example of so famous a warrior . . . the curiosity to see him and the galaxy of celebrities who came to worship with him . . . soon drew a vast congregation to this spot.”36 That winter Jackson also led informal prayer meetings with his staff during their mess.
Still, Jackson worried about the godliness of his country and his army. He wanted more than just a Great Awakening in his camps. In a letter to his old friend and business partner—and Maggie’s husband—J. T. L. Preston, he wanted the Southern nation itself to officially embrace God. Saying that he thought the United States had taken unnecessarily extreme means to separate church and state, he wrote, “Let our Government acknowledge the God of the Bible as its God, and we may expect soon to be a happy and independent people.”37
• • •
Though there was no fighting that winter, Jackson was caught up, like everyone else, in the great political and administrative swirl that was the Army of Northern Virginia. There was the huge backlog in the courts-martial to attend to, including death sentences that Jackson as usual upheld, though President Davis managed to commute some of them. There were battle reports to file stretching back a year, the writing of which Jackson delegated to his new chief of staff, former congressman and minister to France Charles Faulkner. The “severe Roman simplicity” that Jackson insisted on, plus Faulkner’s inexperience, made the reports often maddeningly incomplete.38 Jackson also had to navigate the usual political intrigues that surrounded staff promotions and transfers, which included the departure of his brother-in-law D. H. Hill for the western theater. The prickly Hill had clashed with his superiors, including Lee, and though Jackson tried he had been unable to patch it up.
As usual, Jackson was forced to grapple with the other Hill—the brilliant, stubborn, and recalcitrant A.P.—who continued to insist, over Lee’s objections, on the resolution of the charges pending against him. While the controversy smoldered, and accusations and counteraccusations flew, a more serious confrontation occurred. On March 8, Hill filed his report on the Battle of Cedar Mountain, offering explanations for his slow marches that were the cause of his arrest in the first place. Hill not only denied any delinquency, but also accused Jackson of giving conflicting orders. Jackson was furious. Instructing his staff to collect every possible piece of evidence, he wrote an unusually long comment on Hill’s report that rebutted, point by point, everything Hill had said.39 Now it was A. P. Hill’s turn to explode in anger. The feud simmered on into April with a dispute over an order from Hill to a staff member that countermanded one of Jackson’s orders. That was the end of Jackson’s patience. He immediately forwarded charges and specifications against Hill for the Cedar Mountain incidents—all of which seem petty enough today (“failed to move as directed from Orange Courthouse towards Culpeper Courthouse on Aug. 8”40)—but on April 24 submitted a new and startling request of Lee: “When an officer orders in his command such disregard for the orders of his superiors I am of the opinion that he should be relieved from duty with his command, and I respectfully request that Genl. Hill be relieved from duty in my corps.”41 Jackson was asking Lee to dismiss the commander of the finest division in his army. Lee, exasperated that he could not contain this feud between his talented generals, took no immediate action. A postscript to the affair was written later by Jed Hotchkiss, whose accounts of the war were generally accurate, fair, and reasonable. A. P. Hill, he wrote, “found in every order that was issued to him something to complain of. . . . Only a surly obedience was rendered by Hill and his subordinates to orders from corps headquarters.”42
All of this was more or less business as usual in Jackson’s army. What was not at all usual was the visit, on April 20, of Anna Jackson and her five-month-old daughter, Julia. Jackson had always wanted them to come, but the baby was still very young and had been sick several times, once with a severe case of chicken pox, and the trip from North Carolina would be long and hard.43 Jackson missed them terribly, and wrote a series of long, affectionate letters to Anna to that effect over the winter. “How much I do want to see you and our darling baby!” he wrote on January 5.
But I don’t know when I shall have this happiness, as I am afraid, since hearing so much about the little one’s health, that it would be imprudent to bring it upon a journey, so I must just content myself. Mrs. General Longstreet, Mrs. General A. P. Hill, and Mrs. General Rodes have all been to see their husbands. Yesterday I saw Mrs. Rodes at church, and she looked so happy that it made me wish I had Mrs. Jackson here too; but whilst I cannot see my wife and baby, it is a great comfort to know that you have a darling little pet to keep you company in my absence.44
In other letters he told her that he missed their home, missed gardening and preparing his “hot-beds,” and described some of the gifts he received from as far away as London.45 In February he wrote, “If you could hear me talking to my esposa in the mornings and evenings, it would make you laugh, I’m sure. It is the funny way I talk to her when she is hundreds of miles away.”46 Though we do not have Anna’s own letters, by her own account they were full of love, hope, and a deep desire to see her family reunited.
Mother and baby arrived by train at midday at Guiney’s Station, south of Jackson’s camp. It was raining. Jackson leaped aboard the train in his dripping raincoat, pushed his way through the crowd, and finally found them. “His face was all sunshine and gladness,” wrote Anna, “and after greeting his wife, it was a picture, indeed, to see his look of perfect delight and admiration as his eyes fell upon that baby!” Cheers erupted from the soldiers on the railroad platform, while Jackson and his family boarded their carriage and rode away to their lodgings at a brick estate known as Belvoir. Once inside, Jackson took off his wet coat and held his daughter in his arms. During the visit he would hold her as often as he could, walking to and fro with her, holding her up to the mirror—“Now, Miss Jackson, look at yourself !”—and kneeling over her cradle when she slept.47 Three days later, on her five-month birthday, Julia Laura Jackson was baptized by the Reverend Tucker Lacy, with a small crowd of raptly attentive officers in attendance.
Anna and the baby were wildly popular among the soldiers, who ventured great distances just to get a look at them. It did not hurt that the thirty-one-year-old Anna was slim, good-looking, and, unlike her reserved husband, extremely outgoing. She and “Little Miss Stonewall,” as one officer called the baby, received many social calls from officers, including one from General Lee, who stopped by with several members of his staff to pay their respects. Troops would be brought near the house for parade and review, and the baby would be taken out so that everybody could get a look. Mainly the men were just curious to see the
stern, unemotive taskmaster in this nearly unimaginable role as doting father and husband. Douglas thought him “the model of a quiet, well-behaved, first father.”48 On a pleasant and breezy April 26, Jackson and Anna attended religious services at the open-air chapel near Jackson’s headquarters, where two thousand men heard Tucker Lacy preach a sermon on the parable of Lazarus and the dead man, which Anna found “earnest and edifying.” The two spent that afternoon together talking. “His conversation was more spiritual than I had ever observed before,” Anna wrote later.49
The Jacksons were thrilled to be together again. Anna had never seen him healthier or as handsome. Though he worked most of the day at his headquarters, he would come home in the afternoon and devote the rest of his time to his wife and baby. He even showed off for them. He arrived one morning mounted on a splendid bay horse he had received as a gift. He let everyone look at the horse, then remounted, spun around, and galloped away at such a speed that his hat fell off. He did not stop to pick it up. Anna was duly impressed with her war-hero husband. “As far as he could be seen,” she wrote, “he was flying like the wind—the impersonation of fearlessness and manly vigor.”50