A BRIEF ELEGANCE
The light of massed Christmas candles flickered over the men in the dining room, the most brilliant gathering of Confederate field officers the war had seen. Jackson was incredibly the host to the throng of generals and colonels in gray. He sat, flushed, head down, at one end of the long Corbin table, light gleaming on his skull through thinned hair. General W. N. Pendleton said grace, and was long at the task.
A rising chorus of talk and laughter followed. Jackson had charged Jim and Captain Smith with the dinner, and it came in such bounty that half-starved officers could not believe their eyes. A Negro boy who served the table wore a fresh white apron.
General Lee smiled at Jackson. “You people are only playing soldier,” he said. “You must come to my quarters and see how soldiers ought to live.”
Jeb Stuart laughed at the apron about the servant’s waist, and joked elaborately with Jackson over the bottle of old wine on the table. He roared his mirth when he discovered a print of a gamecock molded on the butter.
“I swear, Jackson, it’s your coat of arms,” Stuart shouted. He held up the butter to display the state of Jackson’s degeneracy.
The crowd feasted on turkeys, a bucket of Rappahannock oysters, hams, biscuit, pickles and delicacies without end which Smith had gathered from houses of the region.
Moss Neck, the home of a wealthy planter, was a rambling affair reminiscent of English country houses, with the addition of long columned porches. Its knoll commanded a magnificent view of the valley of the Rappahannock, with the river about a mile away. Jackson had for a long time camped in a tent in the yard of the place, refusing to disturb Mrs. Corbin and her young children, and her husband’s sister, Kate. The master of the house was absent, as Jackson had explained to Anna in a letter of December eighteenth:
Our headquarters are now about 12 miles below Fredericksburg, near the house of Mr. Richard Corbin, which is one of the most beautiful buildings I have seen in this country. It is said to have cost sixty thousand dollars.… Mr. Corbin was absent, serving as a private in the Virginia cavalry, but Mrs. Corbin bountifully supplied us … she urged me to remain, and offered me a neat building in the yard for my office, but I declined, and am now about 500 yards from the house, encamped in the woods. She told me that if at any time I needed house room, she could let me have it.
Baby’s letters are read with great interest, and it does her father’s heart good to read them.… I have much work before me, and today I expect to commence in earnest. The reports of the battles of McDowell, Winchester, Port Republic, Richmond, Manassas, the Maryland campaign, Harpers Ferry, and Fredericksburg have all yet to be written.
When his dinner party was over and the general officers had left, Old Jack returned to his tent, and the young men around him joined the women in the Corbin house. The dinner had some solemn undertones, for the matter of Jackson’s reports had become pressing; and one of the diners at Moss Neck was Colonel Charles J. Faulkner, called from the adjutant general’s office in Richmond to fill in the missing papers of Jackson.
Faulkner was a capable and pleasant man, with eight years’ experience in the United States Congress and three years as the Minister to France in prewar days. He was to deal with what Kyd Douglas called Jackson’s “neglected reports,” one of the army’s serious gaps in the official records. Jackson readily acceded to the plan, but he maintained full, almost jealous control. His battles, after all, were among the most famous fought by the army, and they had been piled one on another, fourteen in eight months, so that Old Jack, bedeviled by the business of training and supplying his troops while fighting them, had scant time to deal with reports.
He demanded that Faulkner read the papers to his staff at intervals. The reports must be simple, of verified accuracy, must evade controversy, and be subject to Jackson’s approval and revision. Jackson dictated most of them himself. It was the first outburst of paper work in Jackson’s command.
Within a week after his Christmas dinner, Jackson caught cold and had a recurrence of his earache. On the advice of Dr. McGuire, he moved indoors to the small yard office of the plantation, a detached frame building of a story and a half which had served as the master’s library and office. It was a curious setting for Old Jack:
Fine old books lined the walls, many in foreign languages, and learned works were scattered among Virginia law books, agricultural reports, horse and cattle registers, medical and scientific and sporting books—even ladies’ magazines. On the walls were hunting muskets and fishing tackle, and all about, on walls and floors, were skins, deer antlers, stuffed birds. Among the prints were steel engravings of famous race horses and fine cattle, gamecocks in the pit, and purebred dogs and cats. It was a setting to give Stuart great amusement. Captain Smith recalled the cavalryman’s coming:
“Stuart’s first visit to the office was memorable. With clanking saber and spurs and waving black plume he came, and was warmly greeted at the door. Papers and work were all hastily laid aside. No sooner had Stuart entered than his attention turned to the pictures on the walls. He read aloud what was said about each noted race horse and each splendid bull. At the hearth he paused to scan with affected astonishment the horrid picture of a certain terrier that could kill so many rats a minute. He pretended to believe that they were General Jackson’s selections; with great solemnity he looked at the pictures and then at the general.
“He paused and stepped back, and in solemn tones said he wished to express his astonishment and grief at the display of General Jackson’s low tastes. It would be a sad disappointment to the old ladies of the country, who thought that Jackson was a good man. General Jackson was delighted above measure. He blushed like a girl, and hesitated, and said nothing but to turn aside and direct that a good dinner be prepared for General Stuart.”
Jackson was, as Kyd Douglas said without further comment, “a frequent visitor at the house socially,” but spent most of his time working in his office. The big house sent frequent offerings of food for his table.
Jackson’s Christmas letter to Anna reflected loneliness and pessimism, overlaid with his firm self-discipline.
Yesterday I received the baby’s letter with its beautiful lock of hair. How I do want to see that precious baby! and I do earnestly pray for peace. Oh that our country was such a Christian, God-fearing people as it should be! Then might we very speedily look for peace.…
It is better for me to remain with my command so long as the war continues, if our gracious Heavenly Father permits. The army suffers immensely by absentees. If all our troops … were at their posts, we might, through God’s blessing, expect a more speedy termination of the war.…
Jackson was busy in his office. Courts-martial met daily, like factories turning out their grim decisions. Deserters were punished in wholesale lots. Jackson’s ranks began to fill slowly with the return of stragglers and the small flow of reinforcements. Men settled for the winter in their huts of logs and mud, and among these poor villages rose chapels, where the revival spirit became more intense than ever. Jackson complained of intrusions upon his time, but never of those by men like the visiting Reverend Dabney and other ministers.
Richmond’s daily papers were delivered to Jackson’s office, though they were read chiefly by the staff. The price, indicating inflation in the capital, was twenty cents per copy. Old Jack’s officers complained now of many another pinch which robbed them of their lean army pay: apples, $2 a dozen; soap, $1.25 per cake; oysters, $5 per gallon; shoe blacking, $1 per cake.
Lafayette McLaws, one of the general officers who had performed so well at Fredericksburg, noted these troubles in biting letters to his family, and also revealed that not all was sweetness and light in the official family of Lee:
“Everything we see sold is disposed of at ten times its actual worth … extortion is the rule of the hour.… The disposition to devour or destroy is predominant. This desire for extortion is a passion, a disease which has now seized the public mind … overriding all previous respectability and character, all pride of birth and family.”
He then turned to the generals of his acquaintance:
“Do you know there is a strong feeling growing up among the Southern troops against Virginia, caused by the jealousy of her own people for those from every other state? No matter who it is may perform a glorious act, Virginia papers give but grudging praise unless the actor is a Virginian. No matter how trifling the deed may be which a Virginian performs, it is heralded at once as the most glorious of modern times.”
McLaws then got down to cases:
“Stuart carries around with him a banjo player and a special correspondent. This claptrap is noticed and lauded as a peculiarity of genius, when, in fact, it is nothing else but the act of a buffoon to get attention.” (This was in strong contrast to the testimony of the Federal General Sedgwick: “Stuart is the best cavalry officer ever foaled in America.”)
McLaws attacked other Virginians: “Another general gets a friend to write a ridiculously eulogistic article in a foreign paper and has it copied in the Virginia papers.”
He then came to Jackson—undoubtedly Jackson:
“Another panders to the religious zeal of a puritanical church and has numerous scribes writing fancy anecdotes of his peculiarities which never existed.”
While this unsuspected criticism was being penned, Jackson was busy with the further reorganization of the army, whose improvement in the seven months of Lee’s command was remarkable. The fighting had brought forty-eight thousand Confederate and seventy thousand Union casualties, even this a ratio the South could not bear. But the troops were now well-armed, mostly with captured Federal rifles and muskets. And, most striking of all, the graycoats had 155 captive cannon, and had lost but eight themselves. Excepting only Sharpsburg, the rebels had driven the Federals from every field where the armies had clashed since Lee had led them.
The troops seemed to show no optimism for the future, however, despite Fredericksburg. Except for moments of exuberant celebration, of drinking and snowballing and gambling, it was a sober encampment.
Lee himself had been less than optimistic in speaking of the victory on the Rappahannock:
The war is not yet ended. The enemy is still numerous and strong, and the country demands of the army a renewal of its heroic efforts in her behalf. Nobly has it responded … in the past, and she will never appeal in vain to its courage and patriotism. The signal manifestations of Divine mercy that have distinguished the eventful and glorious campaign of the year just closing give assurance of hope that, under the guidance of the same Almighty hand, the coming year will be no less fruitful … and add new lustre to the already imperishable name of the Army of Northern Virginia.
In this galloping rhetoric was the rise of a new Confederate legend: the invincibility of Lee’s army in its present form, with the cumbersome old divisions replaced by two corps, and with Longstreet and Jackson at hand to carry out the orders of their chief.
The enemy was little heard from in these weeks, though the Federals were in sight over the Rappahannock and once caused a stir by trying to move toward the river’s fords during a siege of rain and snow—a futile attempt, to be known as “The Mud March.”
Lee sent Stuart on several raids which brought loot and prisoners, but little information. Lee sent D. H. Hill to Richmond, and two brigades to meet a Federal threat in North Carolina. He finally sent Longstreet and his men below Richmond, to defend against a threatened Federal invasion of the Tidewater country.
In these days, Lee lived less ostentatiously than Jackson, in a tent near Hamilton’s Crossing, with only a cot, a folding desk and camp stove inside; though beneath his cot a pet hen laid an egg for him each day. Lee and Jackson and other officers rode out one day to visit Hayfield, a near-by mansion owned by one of Lee’s cousins, Mrs. W. P. Taylor. Lee spent most of the visit teasing Jackson.
“I have brought my great generals for the young ladies to see,” Lee told Mrs. Taylor. And as Jackson flushed he added, “Jackson is one of the most cruel men I have known. I had all I could do at Fredericksburg, to keep him from having his men drive all those people into the river.”
Jackson was further embarrassed by Mrs. Taylor’s defense of him as “a good Christian man,” and even more by the request of a small girl for a kiss.
Lee and Jackson once sat together on a log to hear one of the revival services in camp, a sermon by Jackson’s chief chaplain, the Reverend B. T. Lacy. Captain Smith watched them with affection as the generals wept, tears streaming into their beards, staring at Lacy as he dramatically described the peaceful homes from which the Confederate soldiers had been taken by the war.
Lee’s kindliness and Jackson’s stern sense of duty once came into conflict. Lee ordered Jackson to come to his headquarters one night, and Jackson told Captain Smith to be ready to make the journey. There was a snowstorm in the night, and Smith, already in bed, concluded that Jackson would not go out on his ride in view of the weather. He was rudely shaken, an hour or so later, and taken out into the storm.
Lee, “surprised and quite indignant,” Smith said, emerged bareheaded into the snow when the two had finished their fourteen-mile ride.
“You know I did not wish you to come in such a storm,” Lee said. “It was a matter of little importance; I am so sorry that you have had this ride.”
Jackson replied, “I received your note, General Lee!”
Men in ranks learned much about their commanders in the winter camp but did not materially change their estimates of Lee and Jackson. One who wrote home expressed a general feeling: “You need have no apprehension that this army will ever meet with defeat while commanded by General Lee. General Jackson is a strict Presbyterian, but he is rather too much of a Napoleon Bonaparte in my estimation. Lee is the man, I assure you.”
Old Jack did not neglect his work. On most days he dictated from morning until late afternoon in his office, and then went into the woods for a ride or a walk, often alone. He would return to his chores at night. Smith saw him late at his desk: “In the evening great stacks of papers, prepared by his own direction, were brought for his signature, and he signed his name until sometimes he would fall asleep over his table; he often wrote T. J. Jakson in his haste and weariness.”
Jackson’s correspondence with Richmond assumed vast proportions as he sought guns, clothing, food, harnesses and horses; but despite all, thousands of his men remained inadequately clothed, and Lee was forced to write that the troops were scarcely fed at all.
One memorable day brought a visit from a group of Englishmen, including Francis Lawler of the London Times, Frank Vizetelly of the Illustrated News, and several British officers, among them the young Marquis of Hartington and a Colonel Leslie, chairman of the military committee of the House of Commons. There was also a man who was to become commander of the British army, Colonel Garnet Wolsely.
Captain Blackford took these men to visit Jackson, warning them of Old Jack’s peculiarities in advance. He described Jackson’s amusing habit of taking the hats of all who came to his office, though there was no place to hang them, so that in the end the General would stare around in confusion and place the hats in a pile on the floor. The visitors could hardly contain their laughter when Jackson went through the routine described by Blackford.
Lawler, who closeted himself with Jackson, tried to get from him some dramatic remarks on his campaigns, but came out in chagrin. Jackson, he said, talked learnedly of many things but could not be brought to talk of the war. He was deucedly interesting on English cathedrals he had inspected, but on the Valley campaign he was mute. Lawler ended a week with Jackson with the statement that Old Jack was the “best informed military man he had met in America,” and “as perfect a gentleman as I have ever seen.” But he got no reminiscences of the war for his readers.
Now and again Jackson’s humor flashed, as on a unique occasion when spring was drawing near. He rose from his paper work and stretched on his cot, eyes closed, listening to the heated argument between Colonel Faulkner and Dr. Hunter McGuire, who held a learned discussion on the merits of the wines of France and Italy. To the astonishment of his young officers, Jackson asked if there was not some wine in his supply wagons. When Jim brought it out in glasses, Faulkner and McGuire and others sipped at it, nodding and exclaiming, as Jackson asked them to tell him which European vineyards had produced it. Old Jack buried his face in a pillow, giggling, as the officers debated. He at last told them, with almost uncontrollable glee, that it was a wine of the country, made by a friend in Front Royal, in the Shenandoah Valley.
As usual, however, his humor was far from brilliant, and he was prone to burst into laughter over the simplest of jokes. One day when he expected company, he asked Major Hawks, the commissary officer, to send him some chickens for lunch. Hawks replied, “We have no chickens. The hawks have eaten them up.” The pun rocked Jackson with laughter, from which he suffered recurrences several hours afterward.
He seemed to be devising a defense against the constant teasing of Stuart and his henchmen, however. One day when he visited in a plantation house, two young women besieged him, asking for souvenirs. When they asked for some locks of his hair, Jackson bantered with them.
“You have so much more hair than I do.”
And:
“My hair is gray, and your friends would think me an old man. Why, don’t you know the boys call me ‘Old Jack’?”
His strongest attachment of the winter was for little Janie Corbin, the six-year-old daughter of the household. Janie was free to break in upon his work at almost any hour, and she played day after day on his hearth as he droned his reports to Faulkner. When his work was done, he took Janie into his lap; he usually had an apple for her. One day, lacking a gift, he tore from his new cap the broad band of gilt which had caught the eye of Anna. Jackson tied the golden strand about the hair of the child and watched fondly as she ran to the big house. More than once, officers recalled, the General stopped his work to cut paper dolls for Janie, usually folding paper to fashion a long line of figures holding hands. The men of the Stonewall Brigade, he told Janie.
He could turn from these moments to grim duty. He once sentenced to death four soldiers of his command found guilty of desertion. Shortly before the time of their execution, a chaplain came to Jackson’s office to plead that the men be released. Jackson paced back and forth, apparently disturbed, but he heard the chaplain’s story. Old Jack remained quiet when the minister had finished his appeal.
“General, consider your responsibility before the Lord,” the chaplain said. “You are sending these men’s souls to hell.”
An officer recalled that Jackson uncharacteristically strode forward and gripped the minister’s shoulders, saying, “That, sir, is my business! You attend to yours.”
Jackson never forgot Anna and home. One morning he was forcibly reminded of Lexington when he caught sight of a Negro boy from that town who had come to serve Captain Smith. Jackson peered closely at the Negro and said, “Why, John, is that you?” To the surprised Smith, John explained, “Oh, I know the Major; the Major made me get the catechism.” The servant had been trained in Jackson’s strict Sunday school.
The cold months passed. There was a grand review of Stuart’s cavalry, attended by Lee and Jackson with a huge cluster of staff officers; there were numerous elaborate dinners. For the troops there was almost constant work, for Lee was developing a bristling line of earthworks south of the Rappahannock, twenty-five miles long.
There were continuing troubles of command, and feuds smouldered between officers. Few of them involved Jackson, but when he entered controversy, as ever he was implacable. His old friend, General E. F. Paxton, protested Jackson’s decision that six deserters from his brigade be punished and three of them be shot. Paxton suggested that one man only be shot, and that he be chosen by lot. Jackson replied in severe language: “With the exception of this application, General Paxton’s management of his brigade has given me great satisfaction. One great difficulty in the army results from over lenient courts, and it appears to me that when a court-martial faithfully discharges its duty that its decisions should be sustained.”
Similarly, when General W. R. Jones was charged with cowardice in action, Jackson was inflexible in his determination to see him brought to trial, though Jones had been one of his own candidates for promotion. Speaking to the Reverend Lacy of this, Old Jack said, “I have almost lost my confidence in man. When I thought I had found just such a man as I needed, and was about to rest satisfied in him, I found something lacking in him. But I suppose it is to teach me to put my trust only in God.”
While Jackson busied himself with such affairs, an important change was made north of the Rappahannock. General Burnside went out rather abruptly, and General Joseph Hooker came in. The move drew limited attention from the Confederates.
Jackson was still deep in his old feud with A. P. Hill, which neither officer seemed willing to give up. Hill continued to demand a hearing on Jackson’s charges against him, and Jackson prepared by collecting eyewitnesses to Hill’s alleged neglect of duty. The squabble was never to reach a decision.
At the middle of March, Jackson moved his headquarters from the Corbin home to a tent near Hamilton’s Crossing, some ten miles nearer to Fredericksburg. He was settling down there when he learned of the death of Janie Corbin, stricken by scarlet fever. He wept like a child, Smith said.
In the same week, Jackson was saddened again, this time by the death of young John Pelham, whose courage had won the praise of all at Fredericksburg. He had fallen on a raid against the enemy in a minor skirmish. Cavalrymen saved the body with a daring swoop and brought it to camp for Stuart to weep over. The army mourned.
Jackson seemed unable to forget the approaching opportunity to attack and destroy the Federal army. He sent most of the personal baggage of his officers and men to rear camps and kept his wagons ready and waiting. In conversation with an officer, he spoke with confidence of the coming battle. “My trust is in God,” he said, but then, with flashing eyes and a rising voice he cried, “I wish they would come!”
Jackson had not been idle in his personal correspondence. His Lexington pastor, the Reverend White, had asked him to make a public statement on religion and the army, and drew this reply:
This I shrink from doing, because it looks like a presumption in me to come before the public and even intimate what course I think should be pursued by the people of God.…
Each Christian branch of the Church should send into the army some of its most prominent ministers, who are distinguished for their piety, talents and zeal.… A bad selection of a chaplain may prove a curse rather than a blessing.
I would like to see no questions asked in the army as to what domination a chaplain belongs; but let the question be, “Does he preach the Gospel?” The neglect of spiritual interests in the army may be partially seen in the fact that not one half of my regiments have chaplains.
He wrote to Boteler in Richmond, outraged that the Congress had repealed its ban against carrying mail on Sunday, saying, “I do not see how a nation that thus arrays itself, by such a law, against God’s holy day, can expect to escape His wrath.”
To a friend in Lexington:
Let our Government acknowledge the God of the Bible as its God, and we may expect soon to be a happy and independent people. It appears to me that extremes are to be avoided; and it also appears to me that the old United States occupied an extreme position in the means it took to prevent the union of Church and State. We call ourselves a Christian people; and, in my opinion, our government may be of the same character, without connecting itself with an established Church.
To one visitor he made a forceful statement somewhat in the vein of these letters:
Nothing earthly can mar my happiness. I know that heaven is in store for me; and I should rejoice in the prospect of going there tomorrow. Understand me: I am not sick, I am not sad; God has greatly blessed me; I have as much to love here as any man, and life is very bright to me. But still I am ready to leave it any day … for that heaven which I know awaits me.
But, chiefly, he wrote to Anna. At the death of Janie Corbin, he wrote movingly to his wife; and at news of the death of a kinsman’s child he wrote: “I wish I could comfort her, but no human comfort can fully meet her case; only the Redeemer can, and I trust that she finds Jesus precious.”
Anna wrote that their daughter Julia had chicken pox. Jackson, worried, called in McGuire and questioned him on the disease, and then wrote a long letter of advice and treatment to Anna. He also wrote:
How much I do want to see you and our darling baby! But … I am afraid since hearing so much about the little one’s health, that it would be imprudent to bring it upon a journey, so I must content myself. Mrs. General Longstreet, Mrs. General A. P. Hill, and Mrs. General Rodes have all been to see their husbands. Yesterday I saw Mrs. Rodes at church, and she looked so happy that it made me wish I had Mrs. Jackson here too.”
The month-old Julia was much on his mind:
I am gratified at hearing that you have commenced disciplining the baby. Now be careful, and don’t let her conquer you. She must not be permitted to have that will of her own, of which you speak. How I would love to see the little darling.… Can’t you send her to me by express?… I am glad to hear that she sleeps well at night, and doesn’t disturb her mother. But it would be better not to call her a cherub; no earthly being is such …
Don’t you accuse my baby of not being brave. I do hope she will get over her fear of strangers. If, before strangers take her, you would give them something to please her … I trust she would lose her timidity … I am thankful that she is so bright and knowing. I do wish I could see her funny little ways, and hear her “squeal out with delight” at seeing the little chickens.
I am sometimes afraid that you will make such an idol of that baby that God will take her from us. Are you not afraid of it? Kiss her for her father.
He wrote that he was reading Hunter’s Life of Moses, that he devoted most Sundays to meditation. “Time thus spent is genuine enjoyment.” He wrote of a variety of things, always returning to the baby.
Just to think our baby is nearly three months old. Does she notice and laugh much? You have never told me how much she looks like her mother.
I tell you, I want to know how she looks.
If you could hear me talking to my esposa in the mornings and evenings, it would make you laugh, I’m sure. It is funny the way I talk to her when she is hundreds of miles away.
At times he seemed wrapped in gloomy religious thoughts: “I think that if, when we see ourselves in a glass we should consider that all of us that is visible must turn to corruption and dust, we would learn more justly to appreciate the relative importance of the body that perishes and the soul that is immortal.”
He began to urge Anna to come to visit him: “Do you remember when my little wife used to come up to my headquarters in Winchester and talk with her esposo? I would love to see her sunny face peering into my room again.”
Finally, on April eighteenth:
I am beginning to look for my darling and my baby. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear at any time that they were coming, and I tell you there would be one delighted man. Last night I dreamed that my little wife and I were on opposite sides of a room, in the centre of which was a table, and the little baby started from her mother, making her way along under the table, and finally reached her father. And what do you think she did when she arrived at her destination: She just climbed up on her father and kissed him! And don’t you think he was a happy man?
I am glad to hear that she enjoys out-doors, and grows, and coos, and laughs. How I would love to see her sweet ways! That her little chubby hands have lost their resemblance to mine is not regretted by me.… Should I write to you to have any more pantaloons made for me, please do not have much gold braid about them. I became so ashamed of the broad gilt band that was on the cap you sent me as to induce me to take it off. I like simplicity.
A few days later he added impatiently: “Yesterday I received your letter, but you did not say a word about coming.… I do hope that ere this you have received mine, saying you could come, and that you at once got an escort and started. There is no time for hesitation if you have not started.”
He made arrangements to put Anna and the baby in the Yerby house, a country home near his headquarters, and on gray Monday, April twentieth, at noon, he went excitedly to the railroad station at Guiney’s, in a dripping raincoat, pushing his way into the coach. He found a smiling wife and a fresh, pink-faced, fat little daughter, just aroused from a nap. He had scarcely time to notice dark Hetty, Anna’s lifelong maid.
Jackson and the baby grinned and cooed at each other on the journey to their quarters, Anna recalled. But he could not take Julia in his arms because of his wet coat. Once in their room:
He caressed her with the tenderest affection, and held her long and lovingly. During the whole of this short visit, when he was with us, he rarely had her out of his arms, walking her, and amusing her in every way that he could think of—sometimes holding her up before a mirror and saying, admiringly, “Now, Miss Jackson, look at yourself!”
Then he would turn to an old lady of the [Yerby] family and say: “Isn’t she a little gem?” He was frequently told that she resembled him, but he would say: “No, she is too pretty to look like me!”
Anna admired him as he knelt by the cradle of the sleeping baby: “I often wished that the picture of that father kneeling over the cradle of that lovely infant could have been put upon canvas.” But she pointed out that Old Jack was also a stern parent.
One day she began to cry to be taken from the bed … and as soon as her wish was gratified, she ceased to cry. He laid her back upon the bed, and the crying was renewed with increased violence. Of course, the mother-heart wished to stop this by taking her up again, but he exclaimed: “This will never do!” and commanded “all hands off” until that little will of her own should be conquered.
So there she lay, kicking and screaming, while he stood over her with as much coolness and determination as if he were directing a battle; and he was true to the name of Stonewall, even in disciplining a baby! When she stopped crying he would take her up, and if she began to cry again he would lay her down again, and this he kept up until finally she was completely conquered, and became perfectly quiet in his hands.
On April twenty-third, when Julia was five months old, Stonewall had her baptized in the parlor of the Yerby house, with the Reverend Lacy officiating and many staff officers present. Julia “behaved beautifully.” On the next Sunday, Jackson took Anna to church. She was much impressed.
My husband took me in an ambulance to his headquarters, where the services were held, and on the way were seen streams of officers and soldiers, some riding, some walking, all wending their way to the place of worship.… We found Mr. Lacy in a tent, in which we were seated, together with General Lee and other distinguished officers.
I remember how reverent and impressive was General Lee’s bearing, and how handsome he looked, with his splendid figure and faultless military attire. In front of the tent, under the canopy of heaven, were spread out in dense masses the soldiers, sitting upon benches or standing. The preaching was earnest and edifying, the singing one grand volume of song, and the attention and good behavior of the assembly remarkable.
Anna recalled that Jackson did not allow her visit to interfere with his military duties, but on one occasion her presence led him into a surprising demonstration. He rode up to show her a new bay horse, Superior, a handsome animal given by admirers, and after taking the horse to the porch of the house, “he remounted him, and galloped away at such a John Gilpin speed that his cap was soon borne off by the velocity; but he did not stop to pick it up, leaving this to his orderly behind him, who found great difficulty in keeping even in sight of him. As far as he could be seen, he was flying like the wind—the impersonation of fearlessness and manly vigor.”
Anna had been in camp about a week when a traveling photographer—Minis of Richmond—appeared in Jackson’s headquarters, asking that Stonewall sit for a picture. The General refused, but Anna was at his elbow. She persuaded him to sit: “As he never presented a finer appearance in health and dress (wearing the handsome suit given him by General Stuart).”
Anna herself arranged his hair, “which was unusually long for him, and curled in long ringlets.” Jackson posed in a chair, seated in the draughty hall of the big country house, where “a strong wind blew in his face, causing him to frown, and giving a sternness to his countenance that was not natural.”
This was one of their last moments together.
Anna wrote of this final photograph of her husband: “The three-quarters view of his face and head—the favorite picture with his old soldiers, as it is the most soldierly-looking; but to my mind, not so pleasing as the full-face view which was taken in the spring of 1862, at Winchester, and which has more of the beaming sunlight of his home-look.”
The army had looked with curiosity at Anna Jackson, the wife of their strange, compelling corps commander. An officer left a record of the impression she made on the visit: “Slightly built and tolerably good looking, and was somewhat gaily though modestly dressed.”
On Wednesday, April twenty-ninth, a booted courier ran heavily over the porch of the Yerby House, and soon there was a rapid climbing on the stairs and a rap on the door of Jackson’s room.
“What is it?”
“General Early’s adjutant wishes to see General Jackson.”
Jackson got out of bed. “That looks as if Hooker were crossing the river,” he said to Anna. He went out of the door in his hastily arranged clothes. He was back within ten minutes.
He was changed when he returned to the bedroom and spoke to Anna. He had been right, he said. The Federals had flung some of their 138,000 fine troops over the Rappahannock, and fighting was to be expected. She must take the baby southward immediately. He must go to headquarters. If his duties permitted, he would return to see them to the train. Otherwise, her brother Joseph could accompany her. He gave her a hasty kiss, and left, without breakfast.
He was hardly out of sight when artillery began to roll. Volleys shook the house and brought the Yerby family to panic. The Reverend Lacy appeared with an ambulance, saying that Jackson had sent him to get them out of danger. They went off with no more than a note from Jackson, saying that he could not leave his post.
Anna, Hetty and Julia went with their baggage into the crude vehicle just as musketry began to rattle in the area about the house. On her way to catch the train to Richmond, Anna saw “several wounded soldiers brought in and placed in the out houses, which the surgeons were arranging as temporary hospitals. This was my nearest and only glimpse of the actual horrors of the battlefield, and the reader can imagine how sad and harrowing was my drive to the station on that terrible morning!”
Jackson no longer had time to concern himself for his family’s safety. He had immediately sent a message to Lee about the Federal move; the enemy had come over a pontoon bridge and now lay in strength on the river bank, though they did not appear to be ready to attack. Jackson was forming a strong line along the railroad track parallel to the river. The message found Lee in his tent. He was notably calm.
“Well, I heard firing,” Lee said. “And I was beginning to think it was time some of you lazy young fellows were coming to tell me what it was all about. Say to General Jackson that he knows just as well what to do with the enemy as I do.”
Jackson went to the front, saw that two vigorous officers, Early and Rodes, were making proper plans to receive the enemy, and he returned to headquarters. Here he discovered that the movement in his front was probably a feint, and that the enemy was crossing in force above Fredericksburg, to the west, and that Union troops in great numbers were moving through the rough country toward a village called Chancellorsville.
Just as his servants were striking his tent, Jackson stepped inside for a final moment, dropping the canvas behind him. Soldiers near by were startled to hear Jim cry, “Hush! The General is praying.” Within a few moments the staring men saw Old Jack emerge. There was an Old Testament look about his face.