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23. “Beverly Tucker Lacy’s Narrative of His War Experiences,” Dabney Collection, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
24. G.F.R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, vol. 2, pp. 431ff.
25. James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Legend, the Soldier, p. 717.
26. Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 201.
27. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 228.
28. Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee, p. 248.
29. Ibid.
30. Jackson dispatch to Lee, May 2, 1862, 3 p.m. (original in Virginia Historical Society, Henry Brainerd McClellan Papers).
31. James Power Smith, “Stonewall’s Last Battle.”
32. David Gregg McIntosh, The Campaign of Chancellorsville, p. 76.
33. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 286.
34. Captain Richard Eggleston Wilbourn, letter to Charles J. Faulkner, May 1863, Virginia Historical Society, Faulkner Papers.
35. Robert K. Krick, “The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy,” essay in Gallagher, Chancellorsville: The Battle and Its Aftermath, p. 108.
36. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 284.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE: “AN IRON SABRE VOWED TO AN IRON LORD”
1. From the description of Stonewall Jackson in Stephen Vincent Benet’s epic poem “John Brown’s Body.”
2. Stephen W. Sears, Chancellorsville, p. 290.
3. Robert K. Krick, “The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy,” essay in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., Chancellorsville: The Battle and Its Aftermath, p. 111.
4. Ibid., p. 113.
5. Ibid. Though much historical ink has been used up trying to figure out what happened and who was to blame, Krick’s meticulous 1996 account of these events is the best I have read and I am largely following his analysis here.
6. Letter from Richard Eggleston Wilbourn to Colonel Charles Faulkner, May 1863, Virginia Historical Society.
7. Krick, “The Smoothbore Volley That Doomed the Confederacy,” pp. 129–130.
8. Hunter McGuire, “The Death of Stonewall Jackson,” in Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 14, p. 155.
9. James Power Smith, “Stonewall’s Last Battle,” Century Magazine 32, no. 6 (1886).
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. McGuire, “The Death of Stonewall Jackson.”
14. “Beverly Tucker Lacy’s Narrative of His War Experiences,” Dabney Collection, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
15. Ibid.
16. Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 443–444.
17. McGuire, “The Death of Stonewall Jackson.”
18. Lacy narrative.
19. James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Legend, the Soldier, p. 739.
20. Lacy narrative.
21. Robert Lewis Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, pp. 714–715.
22. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 446; Lacy narrative.
23. McGuire, “The Death of Stonewall Jackson.”
24. “Surgeon: Pneumonia Likely Killed ‘Stonewall’ Jackson,” Associated Press, May 10, 2013.
25. Source: CivilWarAcademy.com
26. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 449.
27. Hetty had been given along with two other slaves to the Jacksons as a wedding gift from Anna’s father. She had then accompanied Anna to North Carolina after the war started.
28. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 450.
29. Ibid., p. 451.
30. Ibid., p. 452.
31. McGuire, “The Death of Stonewall Jackson.”
32. “Translated” in Christian terms means “passing on” or “entering paradise.” The sentence means, simply, that he will be much better off in the presence of God.
33. Ibid.
34. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 456.
35. Lacy narrative.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: IMMORTALITY
1. Davis to Lee, May 11, 1863, Official Records, Series 1, vol. 25, pt. 2.
2. Raleigh Colston, “Address of General R. E. Colston Before the Ladies’ Memorial Assoc. at Wilmington, NC, May 10, 1870,” Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 21, p. 45.
3. Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 458; Jackson’s death mask, at the Valentine Museum in Richmond, shows how thin his face had become, especially when contrasted with the photograph taken of him a few months before.
4. Ibid., p. 459.
5. Cited in James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Legend, the Soldier, p. 755.
6. Lee to Seddon, May 10, 1863, Official Records, Series 1, vol. 25, pt. 2, p. 791.
7. Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering, p. 155.
8. Cited in Lenoir Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, vol. 2, pp. 451–452.
9. Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 38.
10. Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, vol. 2, p. 453.
11. There are various versions of this list of generals serving as pallbearers. This one, from Robertson, seems to be the most reasonable.
12. Little Sorrel had bolted through Union lines and was a captive. He would later be returned.
13. “Funeral procession of Lieut. Gen. Thos. J. Jackson,” Richmond Dispatch, May 13, 1863; “The death of General Jackson and Funeral ceremonies,” Richmond Dispatch, May 12, 1863. Note that I have left off Longstreet as a pallbearer, as did the Dispatch in its several articles that listed in detail the participants in the procession. Though some books have included Longstreet in the list, it would seem impossible for the leading local paper to have missed the presence as pallbearer of the second most prominent soldier in the Confederacy.
14. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 461; Robert Lewis Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, p. 731.
15. James Longstreet, From Manassas to Appomattox: A Memoir of the Civil War in America, p. 332.
16. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 756.
17. Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, p. 165.
18. Dabney, Life and Campaigns of Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, p. 731.
19. Faust, This Republic of Suffering, p. 156. Faust makes some of these points in regard to Lincoln’s death. I am extending her point to include Jackson since the two are so obviously similar. The comparison is mine, not hers.
20. Ibid.
21. Thomas Reed Turner, Beware the People Weeping: Public Opinion and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, p. 91.
22. Charles Royster, The Destructive War, p. 45.
23. Robert K. Krick, “The Smoothbore Round That Doomed the Confederacy,” essay in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., Chancellorsville: The Battle and Its Aftermath, p. 133.
24. Chronicle, May 13, 1863.
25. Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, vol. 2, p. 459.
26. D. X. Junkin, George Junkin, D.D., LL.D.: A Historical Biography, pp. 551–552.
27. Royster, The Destructive War, p. 213.
28. Ibid., pp. 227–228.
29. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 463.
30. Ibid.
31. “The Funeral of Stonewall Jackson,” Lexington Gazette, May 20, 1863; VMI archives online.
32. Chambers, Stonewall Jackson, vol. 2, p. 457.
33. Letter from Jackson to his sister, Laura, March 4, 1854, commenting on his mother-in-law’s passing: “Her death was no leaping into the dark. She died with the bright hope of an unending immortality of happiness.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
In writing this book I have not attempted to be comprehensive in reporting the details of Jackson’s life. I leave that to such admirable biographers as Lenoir Chambers, James I. Robertson Jr., and G.F.R. Henderson. Instead of putting in everything known about Jackson, my approach has been to include facts and ana
lysis that I feel best illuminate my subject. Thus, if there are twelve recorded incidents of Jackson raising his hand in prayer during battle, the reader will see only three or four of them, with an explanation that this is what he generally does. Jackson mentions his relationship with God frequently in letters to his wife, Anna, and his sister, Laura, but here the reader will find only a fraction of those cited, with the idea that they are representative of his behavior. The book is thus highly selective, and I will leave it to the reader to decide if I have chosen the facts that best bring the man into focus. I offer Rebel Yell as a biographical work, but not as a full-scale, A-to-Z biography.
I have consulted a variety of sources. My main reliance has been on the truly astounding quantity of published primary sources available on the Civil War and on Jackson’s life, including much material that is now available online from various collections. I have tried to base my own analysis and conclusions as much as possible on documents of the era, from the Official Records and the Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War to letters, memoirs, diaries, battle reports, and other contemporaneous observations. I have also made use of various library collections of manuscripts and other materials, as noted below. Another hallmark of Civil War research is the tremendous amount of secondary material, including eight significant biographies of Jackson since 1864. One of the burdens of this sort of research is that one has to be familiar with the work that has gone before, and there is a fair amount of it.
I have relied on some very fine monographs or microhistories—detailed, well-researched books focused on single battles or campaigns. I would like to acknowledge my debt to Peter Cozzens for his definitive work on the valley campaign, Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign; John Hennessy for his two equally definitive works on the Manassas battles: First Battle of Manassas: An End to Innocence and Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas; Robert K. Krick for his excellent analysis of two valley battles, Conquering the Valley: Stonewall Jackson at Port Republic and Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain, plus a number of good essays, including the definitive studies of Jackson’s death and his time at Moss Neck plus his generally encyclopedic knowledge of Stonewall Jackson; Gary Ecelbarger’s solid research in Three Days in the Shenandoah: Stonewall Jackson at Front Royal and Winchester and We Are in for It! The First Battle of Kernstown; Brian K. Burton for his exhaustive Extraordinary Circumstances: The Seven Days Battles; and finally Stephen W. Sears for his superb works on two battles, Chancellorsville and Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. Though I cannot possibly match the depth of their research (without writing a five-thousand-page biography), I can use them as one might use a wise and experienced guide through dense forest. They have my gratitude.
COLLECTIONS/MANUSCRIPTS
(as cited in the text)
Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama
Duke University/Rubinstein Library, Durham, North Carolina
Henry E. Huntington Library, Pasadena, California
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia
Museum of the Confederacy/Eleanor S. Brockenbrough Collection, Richmond, Virginia
National Archives, Washington, DC
North Carolina Office of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina
Stonewall Jackson House, Lexington, Virginia
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
University of North Carolina/Southern Historical Collection, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Valentine Museum, Richmond, Virginia
Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia
Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia
Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia
West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia
NEWSPAPERS
Berkshire Eagle (Pittsfield, Mass.)
Charleston Mercury
Clarksburg News
Daily Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia)
Daily South Carolinian
London Times
Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)
Macon Daily Telegraph
Montgomery Advertiser (Alabama)
National Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
New York Times
New York Weekly Tribune
Philadelphia Inquirer
Philadelphia Press
Philadelphia Weekly Times
Richmond Dispatch
Richmond Enquirer
Richmond Examiner
Richmond Times
Richmond Whig
Washington Evening Star
Washington Post
MAGAZINES
America’s Civil War Magazine
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
Blue and Gray
Century Magazine
Civil War: Magazine of the Civil War Society
Civil War Times
Confederate Veteran
Cornhill Magazine
Hallowed Ground Magazine
Harper’s
Land That We Love
Scribner’s Monthly
Southern Literary Messenger
The Independent (New York)
Union Seminary Review
GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS
U.S. Senate, 37th Congress, Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, 10 volumes.
U.S. War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 volumes, Washington, DC, 1880–1901 (referred to throughout as Official Records).
GENERAL CONTEMPORANEOUS SOURCES
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, volumes 1–3.
Confederate Veteran, 40 volumes.
Southern Historical Society Papers, 52 volumes; DVD published by Eastern Digital Resource.
MISCELLANEOUS SOURCES
Boteler, Alexander R. Speech to House of Representatives, January 25, 1860, West Virginia State Archives, Boyd F. Stutler Collection, John Brown Pamphlets, vol. 12.
Brown, Dee. “War on Horseback,” The Image of War 1861–1865, Volume 4; Fighting for Time, National Historical Society.
Haley, Megan. “The African American Experience in Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson’s Lexington,” paper for graduate fellowship, Stonewall Jackson House, Lexington, Virginia.
McGuire, Dr. Hunter. Career and Character of Stonewall Jackson, Address on June 23, 1897, at the dedication of the Jackson Memorial Hall in Lexington, Virginia, and later to the R. E. Lee Camp Confederate Veterans, Richmond, July 2, 1897.
Smith, James Power. “The Religious Character of Stonewall Jackson: Delivered at the Inauguration of the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Building, VMI, June 23, 1897,” Lynchburg, Virginia, J. P. Bell, 1897.
———. Stonewall Jackson and Chancellorsville: A Paper read before the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts on the First of March, 1904. Published by R. E. Lee Camp, no. 1, Confederate Veterans, Richmond, Virginia.
Snell, Mark A. “Bankers, Businessmen and Benevolence: An Analysis of the Antebellum Finances of Thomas J. Jackson,” typed manuscript. Stonewall Jackson House Graduate Student Fellow, 1989, Virginia Historical Society.
INTERNET SOURCES
CivilWarAcademy.com
Frye, Dennis, “Stonewall Jackson at Harper’s Ferry,” Historynet.com
Grimsley, Mark, “How to Read a Civil War Battlefield,” www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/history/people/grimsley.1/tour/default.htm
Krick, Bobby, interview with, “The Battle of Gaines’s Mill: Then and Now,” Civil War Trust
Miller, William J., “The Seven Days Battles,” 2013 essay in Civil War Trust.
Pittman, Rickey E., “Stonewall Jackson’s Black Sunday School,” reviewed in Black History Month magazine, February 24, 2010.
“The Rifle-Musket and the Minié Ball,” History.net, June 12, 2006.
Smith, Sam, “Jackson Is With You! The Battle of Cedar Mountain,” Civi
l War Trust website.
Taylor, Lonn, “Blue Light Presbyterians,” online posting, Texas History Forum, August 15, 1998.
“War on Horseback,” civilwarhome.com
Wilbourn, Captain Richard Eggleston, letter to Charles J. Faulkner, May 1863, Virginia Historical Society, Faulkner Papers (online).
BOOKS
Alexander, Bevin. Lost Victories and the Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson. New York: Henry Holt, 1992.
Alexander, Edward Porter. Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander. Edited by Gary Gallagher. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Allan, Elizabeth Preston. The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1903.