Few people fit into neat, simple categories.
Memorialized last weekend at Guinea Station, Confederate Major General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson is one.
Jackson's May 10, 1863 death in Caroline County was remembered with a candlelit remembrance Friday evening and a program Saturday, marking the 145th anniversary of his passing in the white-frame doctor's office on the old Chandler plantation known as "Fairfield." The adjacent brick plantation house burned in the early 1900s and was dismantled, but the office remains.
The location, now operated by the National Park Service and known as the "Jackson Shrine," has the bed Jackson died in, the blanket that covered him and the clock that was ticking on the mantle. A Park Service employee said that the Shrine attracts about 20,000 visitors a year, making it by far the most highly visited historic site in Caroline.
Jackson, whose West Point education and battlefield genious enabled Robert E. Lee to win victory after victory, had been wounded eight days earlier on May 2, 1863, the evening of the first day of the Battle of Chancellorsville in Spotsylvania County. He and his mounted staff had been reconnoitering the battle lines when they were mistaken, shortly after dark, for Federal cavalry and fired upon by Confederate troops from North Carolina.
"Pour it into'em, boys!" the North Carolina colonel had called out. The shots his troops fired have been called "the volley that doomed the Confederacy." Jackson fell from his horse, wounded three times. With him was Confederate Lieutenant General A.P. Hill who, when he heard the North Carolina colonel's order to fire, threw himself off his horse. Hill survived unscathed.
Jackson, later, was placed in a wagon, taken to a field hospital where his arm was amputated and the next night was driven 26 miles to "Fairfield," a plantation in the Guinea Station area of Caroline. Here, well-behind Confederate lines, he could recuperate sufficiently for a train ride to a Richmond hospital. For several days he showed improvement.
But then a lingering case of pneumonia set in with a vengeance.
"I see from the number of physicians that you think my condition dangerous, but I thank God, if it is His will, that I am ready to go," he told his wife Mary Anna who'd come by train from Richmond to be by his side.
Religious fervor was common back in the days of the Civil War, but Jackson – a Presbyterian – was unusually strong in his faith.
And here's what makes him unusual among Confederates and not easily categorized on the issue of slavery.
Before the war, when an instructor at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Jackson and Mary Anna led a Bible study and reading school each Sunday at 3 p.m. when a pealing bell would announce its commencement.
Jackson's students, numbering at times over 100, were black – the children of free blacks and slaves. Jackson was defying a law that forbid teaching blacks to read. Later, during the war, Jackson was known to remark that he considered one of the worst privations of the Civil War was being away from his Sunday school class. Some of his students would go on to found black churches in Lexington, including the First Baptist Church.
What further complicates the issue of how Jackson stood on slavery was that his family owned six slaves.
What is certain, however, is that if Jackson had lived, Lee most likely would have won the Battle of Gettysburg three months later, which most likely have cost Lincoln the election and put the North out of the war. Emancipation, then, would not have happened – or been significantly delayed.
Could it have been that – indeed – God willed that Jackson no longer command Confederate troops?
What is known is that on Sunday, May 10, 1863, Jackson's physician Dr. Hunter H. McGuire told his wife he would not survive the day. She chose to tell him.
"It is the Lord's Day; my wish is fulfilled. I have always desired to die on Sunday," he said to her.
And so he did, at 3:30 p.m., uttering, "Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees."
For the Sunday school teacher who became a famous Confederate general – still studied and talked about – the war was over.
Memorialized last weekend at Guinea Station, Confederate Major General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson is one.
Jackson's May 10, 1863 death in Caroline County was remembered with a candlelit remembrance Friday evening and a program Saturday, marking the 145th anniversary of his passing in the white-frame doctor's office on the old Chandler plantation known as "Fairfield." The adjacent brick plantation house burned in the early 1900s and was dismantled, but the office remains.
The location, now operated by the National Park Service and known as the "Jackson Shrine," has the bed Jackson died in, the blanket that covered him and the clock that was ticking on the mantle. A Park Service employee said that the Shrine attracts about 20,000 visitors a year, making it by far the most highly visited historic site in Caroline.
Jackson, whose West Point education and battlefield genious enabled Robert E. Lee to win victory after victory, had been wounded eight days earlier on May 2, 1863, the evening of the first day of the Battle of Chancellorsville in Spotsylvania County. He and his mounted staff had been reconnoitering the battle lines when they were mistaken, shortly after dark, for Federal cavalry and fired upon by Confederate troops from North Carolina.
"Pour it into'em, boys!" the North Carolina colonel had called out. The shots his troops fired have been called "the volley that doomed the Confederacy." Jackson fell from his horse, wounded three times. With him was Confederate Lieutenant General A.P. Hill who, when he heard the North Carolina colonel's order to fire, threw himself off his horse. Hill survived unscathed.
Jackson, later, was placed in a wagon, taken to a field hospital where his arm was amputated and the next night was driven 26 miles to "Fairfield," a plantation in the Guinea Station area of Caroline. Here, well-behind Confederate lines, he could recuperate sufficiently for a train ride to a Richmond hospital. For several days he showed improvement.
But then a lingering case of pneumonia set in with a vengeance.
"I see from the number of physicians that you think my condition dangerous, but I thank God, if it is His will, that I am ready to go," he told his wife Mary Anna who'd come by train from Richmond to be by his side.
Religious fervor was common back in the days of the Civil War, but Jackson – a Presbyterian – was unusually strong in his faith.
And here's what makes him unusual among Confederates and not easily categorized on the issue of slavery.
Before the war, when an instructor at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Jackson and Mary Anna led a Bible study and reading school each Sunday at 3 p.m. when a pealing bell would announce its commencement.
Jackson's students, numbering at times over 100, were black – the children of free blacks and slaves. Jackson was defying a law that forbid teaching blacks to read. Later, during the war, Jackson was known to remark that he considered one of the worst privations of the Civil War was being away from his Sunday school class. Some of his students would go on to found black churches in Lexington, including the First Baptist Church.
What further complicates the issue of how Jackson stood on slavery was that his family owned six slaves.
What is certain, however, is that if Jackson had lived, Lee most likely would have won the Battle of Gettysburg three months later, which most likely have cost Lincoln the election and put the North out of the war. Emancipation, then, would not have happened – or been significantly delayed.
Could it have been that – indeed – God willed that Jackson no longer command Confederate troops?
What is known is that on Sunday, May 10, 1863, Jackson's physician Dr. Hunter H. McGuire told his wife he would not survive the day. She chose to tell him.
"It is the Lord's Day; my wish is fulfilled. I have always desired to die on Sunday," he said to her.
And so he did, at 3:30 p.m., uttering, "Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees."
For the Sunday school teacher who became a famous Confederate general – still studied and talked about – the war was over.