Calamity at Chancellorsville Page 17

  In 1998, the National Park Service decided to open Ellwood to the public, but feared publicity surrounding the location of Jackson’s arm could tempt looters to dig at the site. The agency decided to protect the artifact by first locating its exact location, followed by the pouring of a concrete apron over it. Despite an extensive archeological survey, the Park Service failed to discover a metal box, and found no evidence that a grave shaft had ever been dug near the stone marker. The Service’s final conclusion was that the Smedley Butler story was probably fictional and that Jackson’s arm remains buried within the cemetery in an unknown and unmarked location.

  1 Robert K. Krick, The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy (Baton Rouge, LA, 2002).

  2 Joseph G. Morrison to A. C. Hamlin, May 3, 1895, ACHC, Harvard University; Extracts of Joseph G. Morrison letter to G. W. Sanderlin, 1895, ACHC, Harvard University; William Palmer to A. C. Hamlin, September 15, 1894, ACHC, Harvard University.

  3 James H. Lane to A. C. Hamlin, November 30, 1892, September 30, 1892, November 17, 1892, January 5, 1895, ACHC, Harvard University; Hamlin, The Battle of Chancellorsville, 108-109.

  4 Kyle, “Jackson’s Guide When Shot”; Kyle, manuscript for CV magazine (1895).

  5 James P. Smith to Jedediah Hotchkiss, July 21, 1897, Hotchkiss Papers, reel 14, LC; Jedediah Hotchkiss to James P. Smith, July 23, 1897, Hotchkiss Papers, reel 34, LC; Jedediah Hotchkiss to G. F. R. Henderson, July 23, 1897, Hotchkiss Papers, reel 34, LC.

  6 Kyle, manuscript for CV magazine (1895).

  7 Chisolm, A Manual of Military Surgery, 159.

  8 McGuire, “Last Wound of the Late Gen. Jackson,” 406; Richard E. Wilbourn to Robert Dabney, December 12, 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863; Richard E. Wilbourn to Jubal A. Early, February 19, 1873; James P. Smith to Mr. Stuart, April 27, 1905, Thomas J. Jackson Collection, MOC; Joseph G. Morrison to Spier Whitaker, June 27, 1900, VHS; “The Death of Stonewall Jackson,” Daily Richmond Whig, October 7, 1865; Edward E. Hueske, Practical Analysis and Reconstruction of Shooting Incidents (Boca Raton, FL, 2006).

  9 Early, “Stonewall Jackson—The Story of His Being an Astrologer Refuted—An Eyewitness Describes How He Was Wounded,” 261-282; Richard E. Wilbourn to Jubal A. Early, February 18, 1873; Richard E. Wilbourn to Jubal A. Early, February 19, 1873; Richard E. Wilbourn to Jubal A. Early, March 3, 1873.

  10 Richard E. Wilbourn to Charles Faulkner, May 1863.

  11 Joseph G. Morrison to Jubal A. Early, February 20, 1878, Jubal Anderson Early Papers, vol. 10, LC; [Morrison], “Wounding of Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson.”

  12 Benjamin W. Leigh to wife, May 12, 1863.

  13 James P. Smith to Jedediah Hotchkiss, n.d.; Smith, “Lt. Smith Narrative”; Smith, “Stonewall Jackson’s Last Battle”; McGuire, “Last Hours of Stonewall Jackson”; Lacy, “Narrative.”

  14 Cooke, Stonewall Jackson: A Military Biography, 444; Dabney, Life and Campaigns, 711; Jackson, “Narrative”; Jackson, Life and Letters, 471; Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by his Widow Mary Anna Jackson (Louisville, KY, 1895), 457.

  15 A copy of the marginalia is in bound volume 176, FSNMP; Douglas, I Rode With Stonewall, 228.

  16 McGuire, “Last Wound of the Late Gen. Jackson,” 412; McGuire, “Death of Stonewall Jackson,” 162; McGuire, “Last Hours of Stonewall Jackson.”

  17 Jackson, “Narrative”; McGuire, “Last Hours of Stonewall Jackson”; Smith, “Narrative.”

  18 L. Whittington Gorham, “What Was the Cause of Stonewall Jackson’s Death?” Archives of Internal Medicine (1963), vol. 111, 52-56; Joe D. Haines, “What Killed Stonewall Jackson,” Journal of the Oklahoma State Medical Association (1998), vol. 91, 162-165; Timothy R. Koch and Joseph B. Kirsner, “Chronic Gastrointestinal Symptoms of Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson following Mexican-American War Exposure: A Medical Hypothesis,” Military Medicine (2007), vol. 172, 6-8; Marvin P. Rozear and Joseph C. Greenfield, “‘Let Us Cross Over the River’: The Final Illness of Stonewall Jackson,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (1995), vol. 103, 29-46; Alan D. Smith, “Stonewall Jackson and His Surgeon, Hunter McGuire,” Bulletin of the N.Y. Academy of Medicine (1973), vol. 49, 594-609; Beverly C. Smith, “The Last Illness and Death of General Thomas Jonathan (Stonewall) Jackson,” Virginia Military Institute Alumni Review (1975), vol. 51, 8-13.

  19 Smart, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (Washington, D.C., 1888), pt. 3, vol. 1, 751-810; William Osler, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, 3rd ed. (New York, NY, 1898), 132.

  20 Mathew W. Lively, “Stonewall Jackson and the Old Man’s Friend,” Journal of Medical Biography (2011), vol. 19, 84-88.

  21 Mathew W. Lively, “Early Onset Pneumonia Following Pulmonary Contusion: The Case of Stonewall Jackson,” Military Medicine (2012), vol. 177, 315-317.

  22 Chisolm, Manual of Military Surgery, 248-249; William W. Keen, “Surgical Reminiscences of the Civil War,” in Addresses and Other Papers (Philadelphia, PA, 1905), 430-431.

  23 McGuire, “Last Wound of the Late Gen. Jackson,” 1866.

  24 Walter E. Finkbeiner, Philip C. Ursell, and Richard L. Davis, Autopsy Pathology: A Manual and Atlas, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA, 2009), 151.

  25 Lacy, “Narrative”; Hotchkiss, Make Me a Map of the Valley, 140.

  26 Diary of Charles E. Phelps, from a transcript located at FSNMP.

  27 Malles, ed., Bridge Building in Wartime, 213.

  28 John H. Craige, “The Wilderness Maneuvers,” Marine Corps Gazette (December 1921), vol. 6, 418-423; “President Praises Men of the Marines,” New York Times, October 3, 1921.

  Appendix II

  Building the Stonewall Image

  Prior to the battle of First Manassas in July 1861, Thomas J. Jackson was a relatively obscure instructor at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. Although he was well-known among the residents of the town and the Institute, no one could have foreseen the eventual fame and admiration he would obtain by the end of the Civil War.

  The general public received its first glimpse of Jackson from newspaper stories relating details of the Rebel victory at the battle of First Manassas. In a story first printed in the Charleston Mercury on July 25, 1861, and later reprinted in Richmond newspapers, Confederate Brig. Gen. Barnard E. Bee, in an attempt to rally his own men, was quoted as uttering the famous words: “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Let us determine to die here and we will conquer! Follow me!” Although some have questioned the authenticity of the quote and whether Bee intended it as a compliment to Jackson’s fortitude or as a rebuke to his immobility, the metaphor became an immediate sensation within the army and the Southern populace. From that moment, he forever became “Stonewall” Jackson and his men the “Stonewall Brigade.”

  Reports of Jackson’s skillful maneuvering and string of victories during his subsequent Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862 would further establish his reputation as the “Confederate hero par excellence,” according to diarist Mary Chestnut. At the time, the Confederacy was badly in need of a hero: after winning the first major engagement at Manassas, the war was not going well for the South. In the western theater, New Orleans had fallen to the North and Union forces had won the hard-fought battle of Shiloh. In the east, an immense Federal army was encamped within miles of the Confederate capital at Richmond. The arrival of Jackson’s army from the Shenandoah Valley coupled with Robert E. Lee’s successful defense of Richmond during the Seven Days’ battles helped fuel the growing sentiment among the population that the name Stonewall Jackson was synonymous with victory.1

  A synergistic effect also developed between Jackson’s battlefield successes and his religious piety. Following the May 1862 battle of McDowell during his Shenandoah Valley campaign, Jackson sent a simple telegraph to Richmond: “God blessed our arms with victory at McDowell yesterday.” When the dispatch was publicized, the Southern people became ecstatic over their new-found Christian soldier. The Daily Dispatch (Richmond, VA) of May 29
, 1862, declared Jackson “beyond all question, the hero of the war.”

  Analogies were frequently made between Jackson and Oliver Cromwell, the deeply religious and successful military leader of the “Roundheads” during the English Civil War of the 1600s. Cromwell’s image was undergoing its own revival during the Victorian age. The Englishman had believed, much as Jackson did, that God shaped military events and handed him victories in order to carry out a predetermined mission. Sandie Pendleton, Jackson’s chief of staff, wrote to his mother on October 8, 1862: “I have been reading Carlyle’s ‘Cromwell.’ General Jackson is the exact counterpart of Oliver in every respect, as Carlyle draws him.”2

  Interest in Stonewall Jackson and comparison of him to Cromwell were not confined to the southern half of the country. Francis Lawley, Civil War correspondent for the London Times, wrote of Jackson in 1862: “The interest excited by this strange man is as curious as it is unprecedented.” Such was the demand for photographs of “the hero of the moment” that “tens of thousands could be sold in the cities of the North.” Lawley concluded his description of Jackson by commenting that some “say that once again Cromwell is walking the earth and leading his trusting and enraptured hosts to assured victory.”3

  Robert L. Dabney, former assistant adjutant general to Jackson and one of his early biographers, argued against such comparisons to Cromwell. In his 1866 book Life and Campaigns of Lieut-Gen General Thomas J. Jackson, Dabney wrote: “To liken Jackson to Cromwell is far more incorrect. With all the genius, both military and civic, and all the iron will of the Lord Protector, he (Jackson) had a moral and spiritual character so much more noble that they cannot be named together.” Dabney believed “Cromwell’s religion was essentially fanatical,” while Jackson’s personality was “antagonistic to fanaticism and radicalism”—a perspective many people, then and now, would consider arguable.4

  During the battle of Antietam in September 1862, Baltimore native and New York Tribune reporter John Williamson Palmer anonymously composed the poem “Stonewall Jackson’s Way” as a tribute to the general’s character and his success in the war. References to Jackson’s well-known piety were contained in the verse:

  Silence! ground arms! kneel all! caps off!

  Old Blue Light’s going to pray;

  Strangle the fool that dares to scoff!

  Attention! It’s his way!

  Appealing from his native sod

  In forma pauperis to God –

  “Lay bare Thine arm; stretch forth Thy rod,

  Amen!” That’s “Stonewall Jackson’s way.”

  The following year, Charles Young used verses from the poem as lyrics for his musical arrangement “Stonewall Jackson’s Grand March,” which became a popular patriotic song throughout the Confederate states.

  Sheet music to “Stonewall Jackson’s Grand March” by Charles Young.

  Author’s Collection

  * * *

  Stonewall Jackson’s death in May 1863 was considered a serious blow to the Confederate war effort by individuals in both the North and South. “This event is a serious and an irreparable loss to the rebel army,” read an editorial in the New York Herald on May 14, 1863, “for it is agreed on all hands that Jackson was the most brilliant rebel general developed by this war.” Raleigh E. Colston, one of Jackson’s divisional commanders, believed “the star of our fortunes set when he fell.” Some even wondered whether Jackson’s death was some form of divine retribution for their hero worship. “How fearful the loss for the Confederacy,” wrote Margaret Junkin Preston, Jackson’s sister-in-law from his first marriage. “The people made an idol of him, and God has rebuked them.”5

  Among residents of the South, Jackson’s death at the height of Confederate military success made him the first great martyr in the struggle for southern independence, and his stardom would reach almost mythical proportions. “Seldom in history has one been able, in so short a time, to write his name so deeply upon the hearts of his countrymen, and to raise the admiration of the world at large,” stated the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina, while memorializing his death in 1863. Although Robert E. Lee had by this time also reached prominence as a central figure in the Confederacy, many in the south felt as diarist Emma LeConte did when she wrote: “He was my hero. I then admired Lee as grand, magnificent, but Jackson came nearer my heart.. . . Since then Lee has had the hero-worship, all—both his and Jackson’s—though the dead hero will always be shrined in every Southern heart.”6

  Authors were quick to seize upon Jackson’s unprecedented popularity by producing several books and biographies about him within months of his death. Surprisingly, two of the earliest works were printed in England and New York, respectively, and were not of Southern origin. Although the content of these books was largely based on newspaper clippings about Jackson and the battles in which he participated, the fact they were produced so quickly outside of the Confederacy illustrates the widespread demand the public had for information about the elusive Southern general.

  Markinfield Addey expressed the sentiment of those living above the Mason-Dixon Line in the preface of his book The Life and Military Career of Thomas Jonathan Jackson when he wrote: “The people of the North cannot but honor the noble qualities which existed in one they had so much cause to fear, and at whose hands they so much suffered. Whilst they must ever regret that Jackson, at the period of his doubtings, at the commencement of the Rebellion, should have finally decided to espouse the cause of the South, they cannot decline to pay fitting homage to the memory of one who was so noble in heart and so chivalric in action.”7

  Lithograph depicting Barbara Frietchie’s confrontation with Jackson’s army.

  Library of Congress

  * * *

  Northern poets also continued to compose works about Stonewall Jackson following his death. Herman Melville, author of the novel Moby-Dick, wrote two poems about Jackson, while Massachusetts-born and staunch abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier composed the popular piece Barbara Frietchie, which became one of the most famous Civil War poems in history. First appearing in the Atlantic Monthly in October 1863, Whittier’s poem—rather loosely based on actual events—depicts a confrontation between Stonewall Jackson and an elderly Unionist woman during the Maryland campaign of 1862. In the poem, Barbara Frietchie defiantly waves a Union flag from the attic window of her house as Jackson’s army marches past, proclaiming: “‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head/But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.” Moved by her loyalty and courage, Jackson responds to his men: “‘Who touches a hair of yon gray head/Dies like a dog! March on!’ he said.” Greenleaf concludes the poem with a tribute to both individuals:

  Barbara Frietchie’s work is o’er,

  And the Rebel rides on his raids no more.

  Honor to her! and let a tear

  Fall, for her sake, on Stonewall’s bier.

  The greatest influence on Jackson’s public persona would come from the biographies written by individuals who had direct interaction with him during the war. As each author tended to highlight a different aspect of his character, an overall—and sometimes contrasting—picture of his life developed. John Esten Cooke’s first biography of Jackson, published under the pseudonym A Virginian and hastily written from May to September 1863, documented many of the colorful “eccentricities and odd ways” of Jackson that have defined his character through history. Cooke’s second book, Stonewall Jackson: A Military Biography, published in 1866, concentrated more on Jackson’s military campaigns and less on his personal life.8

  The first authorized biography of Stonewall Jackson was Dabney’s Life and Campaigns of Lieut-Gen General Thomas J. Jackson in 1866. Following her husband’s death in 1863, Anna Jackson commissioned the Presbyterian minister to write the biography, and Dabney conducted extensive research from documents, personal interviews, and correspondence to complete the task. Dabney’s theological background, however, led him to emphasize the general’s
spiritual nature, and he further promoted the concept of Jackson’s martyrdom by writing: “He was to his fellow-citizens the man of destiny, the anointed of God to bring deliverance for his oppressed Church and Country.” Despite its deeply religious overtones, Dabney’s book was considered the authoritative work on Jackson’s life for years following its publication.9

  Broadside advertising John Esten Cooke’s first biography of Jackson.

  National Archives

  * * *

  Although Anna Jackson was generally satisfied with Dabney’s Life and Campaigns, she became increasingly displeased with the intensifying postwar image of her husband as a Cromwell-like religious fanatic. In an attempt to soften some of the harsher qualities of his character, Anna published her own book in 1892 entitled the Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, which was reprinted in slightly altered form in 1895 as Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by his Widow Mary Anna Jackson.

  Relying heavily at times on the writings of others, including Dabney and Hunter Holmes McGuire, Anna’s book highlighted Jackson’s domestic life, portraying him as a loving husband and father more than a brutal warrior: “He who saw only the stern, self-denying soldier in his quarters, amidst the details of the commander’s duties, or on the field of battle, could scarcely comprehend the gentle sweetness of his home life.” The extensive use of her husband’s surviving letters gave credence to her perspective and succeeded in presenting yet another aspect of Jackson’s complex personality.10

  Subsequent biographies of Jackson, including G. F. R. Henderson’s Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War in 1898 and Allen Tate’s 1928 work Stonewall Jackson: The Good Soldier, along with numerous stories written about him in the postwar publications of the Southern Historical Society Papers and the Confederate Veteran Magazine, further enriched Jackson’s actual and perceived persona. Most have contributed to the enduring Lost Cause image of Jackson as an eccentric, deeply religious military genius whose death at Chancellorsville was a significant factor leading to the eventual demise of the Confederacy.