VIRGINIA MAY HAVE HANGED JOHN BROWN, BUT HER LEGIONS of other enemies grew as 1859 became 1860. The Jacksons traveled North to Vermont, then Massachusetts early in the summer in search of hydropathic water relief. Both had recurring intestinal irritation, and his eyes experienced frequent pain and some deterioration of sight. During the travels, Jackson winced at the realization that he had failed to experience good health for any period beyond a few days since the Mexican War!
Like other Southerners, the Jacksons experienced rudeness and bigotry from some of the Northern locals. His calm demeanor and refusal to participate in the increasingly frequent and rancorous arguments regarding the sectional disputes over states' rights, slavery, tariffs, culture, and economics and politics in general kept the Jacksons' trip less stressful than those of many Southerners.
However, the trip, in light of the looming fall elections, where presidential hopes shined for Abraham Lincoln of the young, strongly antislavery Republican Party, prompted Jackson to confide to Anna a horror he had never before considered, even within himself: “I fear now that our differences, on top of the coming elections, may portend armed civil war.”
Anna gasped at the suggestion, then dismissed it. In fact, she decided to remain North for further treatment even after her husband returned to Lexington for the fall VMI term.
As the carriage pulled away from their hotel for his solo return south, the curious thought struck Jackson that though he loved his wife dearly, he could not imagine ever having parted with Ellie, by choice, for months at a time, as he had already done several times with Anna. For a moment, he wrestled with reconciling those contrasting situations, before his attention was captured by the conversation of two other passengers. Their accents revealing their Northern heritage, one read to the other from an article in one of the Boston newspapers. The words chilled Jackson as none others yet had.
“Here are the words of the abolitionist senator from Pennsylvania, Thaddeus Stevens,” the man with the paper said, “‘If the South's whole country must be laid waste, and made a desert, in order to save this Union from destruction, so let it be. I would rather, sir, reduce them to a condition where their whole country is to be repeopled than perpetrate the destruction of this people through our agency.’”
Nor did matters calm upon Jackson's return to Lexington. Most of Lexington, Rockbridge County, and Virginia, including Jackson, remained staunchly pro-Union and opposed to splintering from the Union. Secession talk blazed red-hot across the Deep South Cotton Belt, however. And the majority of men in Rockbridge County and Virginia—women not yet being entrusted with the vote—favored the conservative new Constitutional Union Party and its proslavery presidential candidate John Bell of Tennessee. But unanimity was not the order of the day in the South, at least not yet. Jackson and most of his colleagues belonged to the conservatively inclined Democrat Party. Even they were split. The larger group backed Governor John Letcher, a Lexington native, and his support of old Lincoln nemesis Stephen Douglas of Illinois. Jackson, Preston, and others stood with former U.S. vice president John Breckenridge of Kentucky, a staunch backer of the expansion of slavery, not for its own virtues, but for the attendant political punch to protect Southern culture and society in the halls of Congress.
The disputes grew closer to home than Jackson desired, especially after Abe Lincoln won the election. The tall, sad-faced Illinois lawyer garnered only 40 percent of the national popular vote, but he easily carried the determinative electoral vote, his strongholds being the electoral-rich Northern industrial powerhouses.
Abraham Lincoln received exactly one vote in Rockbridge County and none at all in ten Southern states.
Now secession became the only course remaining in the eyes of planter-controlled South Carolina and several other Deep South states. Lincoln! Though he had promised repeatedly never to infringe on the rights of slaveholders, and in fact said he would not abolish the practice even if he could, if to retain all of it or part of it would better ensure the continued health of the Union, Southern Democrats heard the death knell of their political and economic leverage with the ascendancy of the Republicans.
Events began at long last to outrun the efforts of any man to slow them.
One crisp November evening, shortly before Anna's return from the North, Jackson's servant George pulled the professor's buggy up in front of Dr. Junkin's home. There, Preston was to join Jackson for the ride to the evening's Franklin Society meeting, which promised to be a lively one.
His eyes bothering him, Jackson decided to fetch Preston himself, thinking to clear his head a bit with the walk.
He heard the shouting from outside, even before he reached the door.
Inside, Preston and Dr. Junkin were engaged in very unparlorlike debate in the parlor. Their powerful voices echoed through the large house. As Jackson walked through the front foyer, an odd sound drew his attention to the staircase. Several Preston children clustered near the top of the carpeted steps, their eyes wide.
Next Jackson nearly ran into Ruthie, who had appeared from out of nowhere. She shook her head from side to side, her face a mute portrait of sadness, then peered over her shoulder in the direction of the shouting. Jackson proceeded to the parlor entrance and stopped, not in the least desirous to enter the fray. The two towering combatants stood on the lush Oriental rug only a few feet from one another in the center of the room. Only after a moment did Jackson notice Maggie cowering on the sofa to the side. Rarely in the nearly ten years he had known her had he seen her face so ready to dissolve into tears as it was at this wrenching scene.
John Preston had received the last bellowing lecture he could stand from his father-in-law, whom he loved and, truth be known, idolized. For more than a decade the strapping Virginian had held his piece during the periodic outbursts he witnessed from the old theologian-educator. Even had Maggie finally scolded her husband for not speaking up, and she a Pennsylvanian and former loather of the South.
But this night was the fourth anniversary of Sally's death and also the tenth anniversary of the painful death of Preston's eldest son to typhus. Two of his children were now ill and so had he been of late. And he had just returned from a trip to the North, where everyone from a train porter to a hotel manager had made certain he knew in their eyes he, scion of one of Virginia's finest families, former best friend of Edgar Poe, and descendant of General Washington's secretary of state, was no more than a subhuman Southron slaver.
So when the old patriarch once again lit into the “imbecility and supreme foolhardiness” of the South's political leadership, Preston, aching in body and spirit, stood and, respectfully at first, begged to differ.
“I'll not stand silently while depraved mercenary lunatics rend this sovereign Union to pieces,” Junkin now roared as Jackson observed, the old warrior's chin thrust forward and his eyes blazing like Moses come down from Mount Sinai to find his people worshiping a golden calf.
Before Preston could respond, Junkin spotted Jackson. “My dear son,” he said, moderating his tone and waving Jackson in, “come, Son, come. Please, try to reason with John. He takes umbrage at my defense of God's sovereignly established Union. Please, please, Tom, talk sense to our brother.” With this last, Junkin managed the winning smile and sparkle of eye that had helped win Rush long years ago and many a congregation and student body since.
Blood scaled the top of Jackson's high forehead as all eyes bore in on him. Preston fumed, clearly not wishing to relinquish the floor, whatever Jackson's position might be. But Maggie sat up straight, her pale face a shade whiter than normal, even her painted lips pale. The blue eyes were wide like those of a deer realizing he has been sighted. She is looking to me in hope for an answer, an answer that will please all, Jackson realized. Alas, he knew, sighing audibly, he had no answer that could satisfy all.
“I …” Jackson began, his eyes uncharacteristically blinking several times. He had never backed off from a scrap in his life, but the thought struck him that this might be the first time. His lips moved, but the well from which he drew his words seemed dry.
“Come on, Tom,” Preston urged, in a contentious manner Jackson had never before seen, “I've never seen you set store by a man not speaking his mind when the question is put to him. Tell him what you think.”
Junkin's eyes were hopeful as Jackson cleared his throat. Jackson had never dared take issue with the old man during his Unionist tirades either. Usually he agreed with him, at least with most of what he said.
“The union of states is a divine compact constructed by the Lord Jehovah Himself,” Junkin said, sounding now more like the firm but reasonable Scots-Irishman behind the pulpit or lectern. “Those who seek to destroy that compact shall only bring down upon themselves the wrath of He whose fury swallowed the hosts of Egypt and Syria, the Amalekites, the Philistines, the Canaanites, and all the others who sought to stand in defiance of the Almighty's sovereignly ordained plans and purposes.” Then he turned his again-burning gaze back to Preston. “And all those who would seek to do so.”
Preston blanched, but before he could speak, Jackson's gentle voice sounded forth: “I believe Christians should not be disturbed about the dissolution of the Union. It can come only with God's permission, and will only be permitted if for His people's good. I cannot see how we should be distressed about such things, whatever be their consequences.”
Spoken like one true Calvinist to another, in the witness of other Calvinists.
Junkin seemed to grow very old in that instant when the shadow of Satan's ancient dark vision of the breaking apart of loving families fell again. The proud old war horse saw so many dreams dissolve before his eyes and so many hideous nightmares flash into view that he leaned from the import of the statement.
Preston, who had won the moment, seemed no happier than his father-in-law, for he too began to apprehend the first terrifying glimmer of what he might have to lose.
Jackson, who felt suddenly ill, allowed himself a glance at Maggie. Though she agreed with the Virginian's words, her head was bowed, scarlet tresses tumbling into her lap.
Junkin turned back toward the chair where he had sat, then thought better of it and pivoted toward the door. He let out a deep sad breath and trudged very slowly out of the room, muttering as he went, “I fear I have now lived too long.”
The pearly snows of Christmas descended on Virginia with South Carolina no longer a member of the Union. Stoned hearth fires toasted the airy rooms of the Jackson home. A happy and secure home it was, though still bereft of the squeals, laughter, and foot patters of children. Sometimes Jackson dreamt of little children, lots of them, following him as on the day he left for John Brown's hanging. But in his dreams, all the children were his. When he awoke from such dreams, he always found a way to steal some time at play with at least one of the village's delighted little people.
One dark evening a few days before the Lord's birthday, Anna read a letter by the light of the sitting room fire to Jackson from Laura. As always, his heart beat quicker in anticipation of her latest news. His anticipation contained mixed parts hope for her happiness and her spiritual deliverance, and disappointment at the inevitable sadness hanging over the letters like a soupy winter fog.
This night, however, he sprang to his feet as the tone of the letter indicated a sea change in Laura's spiritual temperature. No longer did the words drip with disappointment, longing, and despair. Rather, despite one or two curiously strident remarks against secession supporters in Beverly, they spoke of present and future hope—in the Savior! Temptations and challenges to her faith aplenty, yes—but though she did not say so directly, her words implied trust and belief in Christ.
“You speak of your temptations,” Jackson said, the letter Anna held in her hands the object of his words, as though Laura could hear each and every one of them. “God withdraws His sensible presence from us to try our faith. When a cloud comes between you and the sun, do you fear that the sun will never appear again? O, pray for more faith.”
“How wonderful,” Anna said, her cherub face rent in two by a heartfelt smile.
Jackson, booted, jumped straight up in the air and screeched a shrill “Yee!” that hurt Anna's ears. After landing with a thud that shook the house, he lifted her out of her chair, into the air, and swung her round and round. “My esposa, my esposa! My baby sister has come finally to the blessed cross!”
She giggled and it looked as though the gymnastics would proceed presently to the boudoir when Jackson placed her back on the rugged floor in midswing.
“I've an idea, my love dove,” he said, his eyes alight but seeing something else, not her. “I've got to go see Pastor White. Now.”
Her face crinkled in disappointment. Yet, she knew he would not interrupt such proceedings for less than something of great importance.
Five minutes later Pastor White ushered Jackson into the cozy parlor of the Lexington Presbyterian parsonage.
“So what does my hardest working deacon have on his snow-dusted mind this evening?” White asked, his gray eyes twinkling.
Jackson cut to the chase. “If the general government should persist in its threats to suppress South Carolina by force of arms, there must be war, sir. It is painful to discover with what unconcern they speak of war, and threaten it. They seem not to know what its horrors are.” Jackson's eyes narrowed. “I have had an opportunity of knowing enough on the subject, to make me fear war as the sum of all evils.”
The horrific specters of sacked cities, torn families, widows, orphans, and rotting corpses, assaulted White's mind and he winced. But then Jackson's face brightened, and he leaned so far forward in his chair that White thought he would topple out of it.
“But do you not think,” Jackson asked, “that all the Christian people of the land could be induced to unite in a concert of prayer, to avert so great an evil?” Now Jackson's face blossomed into the brightest smile White had ever seen grace it. “It seems to me, that if they would unite thus in prayer, war might be prevented, and peace preserved.”
White stared at the beaming face, which seemed intent on securing permission to launch an immediate call to national prayer. In fact, White had for months been engaged in informal discussions by letter with clergy colleagues North and South on just that subject. Yet no one had mustered the fortitude to translate words into action. How often it takes a practical-minded layman to light the fire the pastor himself has, at best, merely stoked, White thought.
The white-haired minister stood, rubbed his chin, and walked to the fireplace. He took a poker and jabbed at the already flaming logs. After a moment, he turned back to Jackson. “Son, I believe I have the men that can engineer, with God's help, a concert of prayer that might reach from one end of this nation to the other and help forestall this madness. Meantime, let us this moment begin to pray.”
Indeed, Dr. White set about with the most furious effort to marshal the Christian leadership of the nation. His Southern friends Robert Dabney of the Presbyterian Church and John Broadus of the Southern Baptist Church possessed national stature in both preaching and theological circles. Their influence proved invaluable in the quick marshaling of Southern ministers as well as Northern, though the two stood in vigorous contention with many in the latter group concerning a host of the day's volatile political issues.
Within a few weeks a national day of prayer was set. One of the few names unknown in theological circles that attached itself to the missives that furiously crosshatched North, East, South, and West was that of Major Thomas J. Jackson of the Virginia Military Institute. “Who is this Jackson?” denominational leaders asked as bulletins arrived in their far-flung towns by telegraph, stagecoach, and mounted postal rider. Most of the names were known, at least to those in the same section. But no one other than William White of the Upper Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, village of Lexington had an inkling of the identity of the military academy professor.
When the big day finally came, it found Jackson fresh but bleary-eyed. The immortal influence of Ellie on his destiny continued. He had remembered a few occasions in which she rose from her bed in the middle of the night and left the room for lengthy periods of time. The final time this occurred, just two nights before her death, he had arisen two hours later and found her in the parlor on her knees before an end table on which sat a gas lamp and her mother's old family Bible. “For what are you praying?” he had asked her. “For the baby's soul,” she said, “my honoring God—and for you, my darling Tom, should anything happen to either of us.”
So had Jackson begun, infrequently at first, to feel a strange but powerful compulsion on the nights before momentous occasions to rise from the warm comfort of his bed and go to his little office to pray, in the dark, of course, because he never read anything, even the Bible, other than by natural light.
But he meditated upon lengthy passages of Scripture he had committed to heart, lest total blindness ever overtake him, which he feared it would.
When the sun dawned on the national day of prayer, Jackson already had five hours of prayer behind him since the day began, though he would never tell a living soul. Anna knew it though, and silently thanked God for a man as strong in his faith as she was weak and lethargic in hers.
Every church in town brimmed over, especially the Presbyterian. Willy and Lylburn raced all the way to that building—Willy in his suit, Lylburn in his cleanest shirt—from the fishing hole where they had dropped an early line. Lylburn had caught the only fish of the morning, but Willy had won by a few steps the race to reach the church before the final bell pealed for services, partly because he was fast as the wind and partly because Lylburn kept trying to add new endings to the sermon he had preached for Willy at the fishing hole. Lylburn knew whenever he grabbed ahold of a sermon that both Big Sam and Willy went to shouting about, that was a sermon that would preach.
Lylburn also knew he could scream and shout with the best of them from behind pulpit, under tent, or next to river. But what he needed was to know more powerful words and how to use them, words that would not only move his people to their knees in brokenhearted repentance over their sin, but would help them understand with their minds about the eternal God who had created them for good works and to glorify Himself. Like what was talked about, Lyl-burn suspected, in those books in Pastor White's office. Only then, Lylburn believed, would the sermon he preached by sunlight help fortify his people through the devil's urgings in the darkness.
Lylburn was beginning to draw groups of blacks to hear him preach, at odd times at first, but increasingly at regular times like on Sunday afternoons and Wednesday nights in his slave cabin as well as other cabins around Rockbridge County when he was able to go. On Sunday mornings, however, he insisted on planting himself in a tiny closet just behind the sanctuary altar at Pastor White's church. Only four members of the Lexington Presbyterian Church knew he was there—Maggie and Willy Preston, and Anna and Tom Jackson. The latter had secured the space and given his approval for Lylburn's occupancy of it while Pastor White was in the pulpit, for the “betterment of the young man's mind and soul, and the improvement of his ability to serve his own people.”
Jackson, in his accustomed seat four rows back on the right aisle, noticed Willy's late entrance, and that of—Could that be Wayne Marley? The professor knew that both his eyes had been worsening over the past few months, and he could barely see to the entrance of the sanctuary. But surely that was an eye patch the man wore, and Jackson knew of no one else in the church who wore an eye patch.
After the service, where Lylburn was blessed by hearing the finest calls to repentance of the congregation by both the Reverend Dr. White and the Reverend Dr. Junkin—the former warning of the potential destruction if the North should persist in its vain imaginings of godless economic and political conquest; the latter warning against the futility and arrogance of the South's seeking to sever God's sovereign compact of Union—Jackson learned that Marley had indeed attended the gathering. The thirty-year-old, bathed and clean shaven for the first time Jackson could remember in a couple of years, hailed him on the steps outside the church.
“Hello, Tom,” Marley said, offering a hearty hand before turning to Anna and tipping his hat. “Miz Jackson.”
“Good to see you, Wayne,” Jackson said with a warm smile, noticing that the younger man clutched a bound volume under one arm, “Very good to see you within these walls again, friend.”
Marley nodded and glanced down as they stood at the foot of the steps. Then he eyed the swarm of people emptying onto the street.
He seems a bit nervous, Jackson thought, but it's good to see that gray-green ring gone from under his eye.
“Are you going home?” Marley asked.
“Yes, we are,” said Jackson.
Marley cleared his throat. “May I walk with you and visit about something?”
“Certainly,” Jackson answered.
Marley caught Anna's uncertain look. “It's nothing the three of us can't discuss,” he said.
She smiled. “And we'll insist you stay with us for Sunday dinner, Wayne Marley.”
Memories of intoxicating aromas and savory dishes at an earlier Jackson household stole into Marley's memory. But somewhere along the way, people died and the invitations stopped coming and even the desire to accept them if they did come and…. I wonder if this lady is as kind and sweet as the first Mrs. Jackson, Marley mused.
Over steaming ham and chicken and a colorful spread from the Jackson garden—corn, butter beans, onions, squash, turnips, and wheat bread (stale only for Jackson, of course)—Marley felt again the goodness and tranquility of being among God's people. For he realized, pain and regret flooding through him, that it had been a very long time since he had been with anyone other than the wrong sort.
Jackson sensed his friend did not wish to delve deeply into events of the past few years, so he channeled the conversation toward gardening, VMI cadet stories, and the day's preaching. The professor did not know if Marley had ever embraced God through faith in His Son—he certainly had not in his more “respectable” days—but Jackson felt the time might be a fragile one to broach the subject.
At length, he asked Marley about the book he had brought, which now lay on the table next to him. Marley's eye flickered, then he looked down. After a moment, he grasped the book and leveled his gaze at Jackson.
“You once told me I had become—,” he turned to Anna, “excuse me ma'am—,” then back to Jackson, “a drunkard, a whoremonger, and a ne'er-do-well, and that my father was Satan. Well, the last part may be right, I don't know, but your words set me to thinking. Oh, I don't know if just the words, but the fact it was you saying them—because you're one of the few men I know who lives what you say, whether I agree with what you say or not, which I sometimes don't.”
Amy listened just outside the closed door to the dining room. Marley handed the book across the table to Jackson. The sweet scent of new leather filled Jackson's nostrils. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. His surprised eyes darted to meet Marley's gaze.
“You are reading this?”
“I have stayed up all of the past two nights reading it.”
The two men stared at one another. Neither had to tell the other that Douglass was a Northerner and a famous abolitionist. And a free black man. A thought he had nearly forgotten snuck back into Jackson's mind: Wayne Marley is a Northerner as well, he remembered, and at least some of his family, Unitarians, are ardent abolitionists. Marley had never said much about them, and had evidenced no desire to return north to live amongst them. Yet why, Jackson pondered, with no presaging, has he appeared with this book?
Jackson leafed gingerly through the crisp new pages. “Did some member of your family send this to you?” he asked quietly.
Marley looked back down at his plate as he replied. “It has much in it that—,” again, he returned his gaze to Jackson “that gives me cause for reflection and a certain amount of uneasiness.” Once more, his eye turned downward.
All that Amy, shushing Hetty's son George, who had wandered by the dining room door, could hear from inside the room was Jackson's hand flipping pages.
After a moment, she heard Marley's voice speak again from inside the room: “Sir, would you favor me by reading a certain passage I have marked for you?”
Jackson indicated a page where Marley had inserted a bookmark and noted with light pencil a certain passage.
“Yes sir,” Marley nodded, “that is the one. You are one of the few—you're one of the churchmen I respect, and I need your appraisal of Douglass's views.”
Jackson read the passage. Some of the words he had heard. Eloquent and impassioned words they were, but profoundly disturbing.
I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. The man who wields the blood-clotted cowskin during the week fills the pulpit on Sunday, and claims to be a minister of the meek and lowly Jesus. The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation.
He who sells my sister, for purposes of prostitution, stands forth as the pious advocate of purity. He who proclaims it a religious duty to read the Bible denies me the right of learning to read the name of the God who made me. He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution.
The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families—sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers—leaving the hut vacant, and the hearth desolate.…
The dealers in the bodies and souls of men gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels' robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.
Jackson closed the book and stared at it for a moment, his jaw tightening. Powerful and thought-provoking words they were, that could not be denied. But he thought of the legions of pathetic black souls who would wander in hellish chaos and destruction without the provision, security, and shelter of their masters; the many Negroes, some old, some young, some unable or unwilling to work who would never prove the financial worth of their masters' outlay of resources, but who would be kept for their own well-being even until their owners had no breath left to support and defend them. Certainly, the professor reflected, the occasional sad case occurred, perhaps with men such as Sam McDowell and Will Russell, as it did in the Northern industrial furnaces, where owners and bosses—in contrast to the typical God-fearing Southern slaveowner—cared nothing for their workers and would discard them as soon as a new immigrant came through the door. With whom has this man been? Jackson wondered. This is not the land I know.
Jackson eyed Marley. “You're troubled, aren't you, Wayne?”
A pause. “Yes, sir, I am.”
“About much, sir; some of it myself.”
“Have you become an abolitionist?”
Anna gasped.
Marley glanced sideways at her, then said, “I—I don't know, sir. I have lived in the South for many years, and I believe I know what it would do to the Southern economy.”
“Do your Northern relatives concern themselves with that?”
Marley blushed, then shook his head. “No sir, not really.”
“Dr. Junkin,” Jackson said, “himself a Pennsylvanian like you, believes the blacks in America should all be removed at the government's expense to Africa, where President Jefferson and the others established the land of Liberia for their benefit and to keep them from having to compete in the white man's world.” He hesitated. “I understand our new president Lincoln would favor such a course if the decision were left to him.” Hearing her stir, he glanced at Anna.
“Forgive me for intruding into a man's discussion,” she squeaked, “but I must say in my dear husband's defense that he is a strict but kind master, with the result—,” she swelled with pride at this, “that our slaves have become as polite and punctual as that race is capable of being. In addition to providing for their every need and requiring little work of them, he insists they attend daily family worship in the morning, church on Sunday, and his Negro Sunday school.”
Marley noticed a trace of flush on Jackson's high bronzed forehead, but knew the man to be too much of a gentleman to correct or reprove his wife in front of a visitor. Still, he thought perhaps the time had come to take his leave.
“I admire you greatly, Major Jackson,” Marley said, with meaning. “And I thank you for, hopefully, helping bring me to my senses. I sought no disrespect toward you, your hospitality, or your friendship. I am searching for resolution on certain matters and desire your wise counsel. But perhaps that is for another day.”
The two men stood and each moved to assist Anna in rising from her chair, just as Amy rushed in with tea that was not now needed.
“I do hope I was not unladylike,” Anna began.
“No, no, dear,” Jackson assured her. Then he stiffened. “Hold there, Wayne. I've something to give you. But I must go to the office and fetch it.”
In a moment he hustled back, handing Marley another thick new leather volume. The words Holy Bible gleamed in gilt embossment on its cover.
Marley stared at the book and shifted from one foot to another, then opened it. Soon, he felt his throat tighten to where he had to gulp down air to clear a passage through it. Inscribed in a flowing hand on the inside cover were the words, “To the finest young man I know, with my fervent prayers that your bright future shall soon be illumined as will that holy city of which the sainted apostle wrote, ‘had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.’ Your ardent friend and supporter, Thomas J. Jackson.”