This text is part of:
[359]
support worth naming for his batteries; and his few remaining troopers, being green recruits, were not adapted to such an emergency; yet these for a time were all the support he had.
In front of these batteries, fell Stonewall Jackson, mortally wounded — by the fire of his own men, they say;1 but it was dark, in dense woods, and men were falling all around him from our canister and grape; so that it is not impossible that he was among them.
Prisoners taken by Pleasanton soon afterward told him that Jackson was mortally wounded, and mentioned other high officers as, like him, stricken down by our fire; adding that their forces were “badly cut up,” and, “as to the men, they were disorganized.”
Still, it seems probable that Jackson fell by a fire from his own infantry, delivered in accordance) with his orders.
His loss was the greatest yet sustained by either party in the fall of a single man; though Sidney Johnston had probably military talents of a higher order.
But Jackson's power over his men was unequaled; and it was justified by the soundness of his' judgment as well as the intrepidity of his character.
Contrary to the vulgar notion, his attacks were all well considered, and based on a careful calculation of forces; and he showed as high qualities in refusing to squander his men toward the close of the fray at Antietam, and again at Fredericksburg, as he did in his most brilliant charges.
Accident seemed to favor him at times, especially in his later Valley campaign; but then, accident is apt to favor a commander who is never asleep when there is anything to be gained or hoped from being awake, and who, if required, can march his men forty miles per
1 “The life of Stonewall Jackson, by a Virginian,” gives the following account of his fall:
Gen. Jackson ordered Gen. Hill to advance with his division, reserving his fire unless cavalry approached from the direction of the enemy; and then, with that burning and intense enthusiasm for conflict which lay under his calm exterior, hastened forward to the line of skirmishers who were hotly engaged in front. Such was his ardor, at this critical moment, and his anxiety to penetrate the movements of the enemy, doubly screened as they were by the dense forest and gathering darkness, that he rode ahead of his skirmishers, and exposed himself to a close and dangerous fire from the enemy's sharpshooters, posted in the timber. So great was the danger which he thus ran. that one of his staff said: “General. don't you think this is the wrong place for you?” He replied quickly: “The danger is all over; the enemy is routed. Go back, and tell A. P. Hill to press right on! ” Soon after giving this order, Gen. Jackson turned, and, accompanied by his staff and escort, rode back at a trot, on his well-known “ Old Sorrel,” toward his own men. Unhappily, in the darkness — it was now 9 or 10 o'clock at night — the little body of horsemen was mistaken for Federal cavalry charging, and the regiments on the right and left of the road fired a sudden volley into them with the most lamentable results. Capt. Boswell, of Gen. Jackson's staff, was killed, and borne into our lines by his horse; Col. Crutchfield, Chief of Artillery, was wounded; and two couriers were killed. Gen. Jackson received one ball in his left arm, two inches below the shoulder joint, shattering the bone and severing the chief artery; a second passed through the same arm, between the elbow and wrist, making its exit through the palm of the hand; a third ball entered the palm of his right hand, about the middle, and, passing through, broke two of the bones. He fell from his horse, and was caught by Capt. Wormly, to whom he said, “ All my wounds are by my own men.” The firing was responded to by the enemy, who made a sudden advance; and, the Confederates falling back, their foes actually charged over Jackson's body. He was not discovered, however; and, the Federals being driven back in turn, he was rescued. Ready hands places him upon a litter, and he was borne to the rear, amid a heavy fire from the enemy. One of the litter-bearers was shot down, and the General fell from the shoulders of the men, receiving a severe contusion, adding to the injury of the arm, and injuring the side severely. The enemy's fire of artillery on the point was terrible. Gen. Jackson was left for five minutes until the fire slackened, then placed in an ambulance and carried to the field hospital at Wilderness Run. He died, eight days afterward, at Guineas' Station, five miles from the place of his fall, and his remains rest at Lexington, Va., his home.
Hartford. Published by O. D. Chase and Company. 1866.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.