Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 9.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[43] at the court-house. It was a small gathering, and when the two leaders, Colonel Massie and Frank Paxton, had reported their resolutions, a voice from the rear part of the building, in a quick, decisive tone, was heard to call out, “Mr. Chairman.” All eyes were instantly turned toward the speaker and beheld the stiff-looking figure of Major Jackson. No one suspected him of being a politician, and a general anxiety was manifested to know what he was going to say, and consequently the strictest attention was paid. In a speech of fifteen minutes he reviewed the resolutions, endorsed them, spoke of the dangers threatening the South, the duty of taking a firm stand, and then sat down. He displayed one quality of an orator not always exhibited by political speakers; when he was done he quit.

The Frank Paxton spoken of in this connection, went out the next spring as a lieutenant in the Rockbridge Riflemen, and when he was killed at Chancellorsville, held the position of brigadier-general, and fell at the head of Jackson's old “Stonewall” brigade. His was as dauntless a spirit as that of his old commander, and they are quietly sleeping together in the Lexington cemetery.

At the request of a young friend in the town of Lexington, who expected to be absent several weeks, I agreed to supply his place temporarily as a teacher in the colored Sunday school. Accordingly on the next Sabbath afternoon I repaired to the lecture-room of the Presbyterian church. I found the room well filled with colored children, whose clean clothes and shining ebony faces evinced their appreciation of the interest taken in them by the white folks. I found present a dozen or more young white ladies and gentlemen who acted as teachers, and standing by a table on the inside of the railing surrounding the pulpit, was the superintendent of the school.

I doubt whether in after days, during the great historical events in which he was the chief actor, General Jackson felt more sensibly the responsibility of his position than he did that afternoon as the commander of that little army of sable children. With characteristic promptness, just as the hand on the clock touched the figure 3, the exercises of the school were opened by his saying, “Let us pray.” According to the Presbyterian mode he prayed in a standing attitude. My recollection is that his prayer was striking for its beautiful simplicity. There was no superfluous ornamentation about it, neither were there any rhetorical flourishes. It was the simple pleading of an earnest soul. It was free from the preamble so often used by both ministers and laymen in their public prayers, wherein they undertake to inform Deity of the current events of the past. Taking it for granted