Stonewall Marches Through the Shenandoah

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Stonewall Marches Through the Shenandoah

The 1862 Shenandoah Campaign

Strategically the 1862 Valley Campaign ranks as one of the greatest masterpieces in military history. Yet its battlefields remain largely unprotected. The battle sites at Front Royal and Winchester have virtually disappeared; others seem destined to share that fate.

 

BY DON PFANZ

 

IN MAY 1862, A PALL HUNG over the Confederacy. Across the nation, Northern armies were on the march, driving Confederate forces from Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri. In the East, Union forces seized important footholds along the Atlantic seaboard, and in the South, Union gunboats blasted their way into New Orleans. The young Southern nation stood on the brink of collapse.

 

In Virginia, matters looked equally grim. The Union had gained control over the western part of the state, established troops in the lower Shenandoah Valley and Fredericksburg, and was inexorably making its way toward Richmond by way of the Peninsula. Outnumbered Southern troops braced for the inevitable, and seemingly irresistible, onslaught. 1

 

Onto this desperate stage burst Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. The 38-year-old Jackson commanded Confederate forces in the lower Shenandoah Valley. Jackson's objective was to defend the Valley while at the same time preventing Union troops there from being sent to either Fredericksburg or Richmond. It was a daunting task. As the spring campaign opened, Jackson had just 4,600 men at Winchester. Opposing him was a force of approximately 30,000 Union troops led by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks. When Banks advanced on Winchester in March 1862, Jackson had no choice but to give ground.

http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/portrepublic/port-republic-history-articles/pfanzshenandoah.html

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Stonewall Jackson's Arm Lies Here

 

 

Adam Arenson May 2 2012, 12:30 PM ET

 

What a memorial for an amputated limb can teach our society about wounded veterans

 

Stonewall Jackson's left arm is buried, with its own tombstone, in a family graveyard near the Virginia battlefield where he was mortally wounded. (U.S. Park Service)

This week in 1863, the celebrated Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was returning from a nighttime reconnaissance ride near Chancellorsville, Virginia, when he was mistakenly shot by his own camp's picket guards. On May 2, Jackson's wounded arm was amputated; Jackson's chaplain, Beverley Tucker Lacy, buried it the next day in a nearby family graveyard. Seemingly on the mend, Stonewall Jackson was removed far behind the battle lines to recuperate at Fairfield Plantation, but his condition soon worsened. Stonewall Jackson died eight days later, on May 10, 1863, of pneumonia.

 

General Robert E. Lee assessed the gravity of the situation for himself and the army when he first heard of Jackson's amputation. "William," Lee declared to his cook, "I have lost my right arm. I'm bleeding at the heart."

 

The spot where Jackson was shot is marked today by a large boulder, just behind the Chancellorsville battlefield visitor center, and the outbuilding at Fairfield plantation where Jackson died is known to this day as the Stonewall Jackson Shrine. His lost limb is buried in a graveyard off the main Chancellorsville battlefield,

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/stonewall-jacksons-arm-lies-here/256649/

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Lieutenant General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (1824-1863) C.S.A.

Posted on May 3, 2013 by civilwarweek

 

Thomas Jonathan Jackson was known as “Stonewall,” but “the Christian soldier” would have been a more appropriate title. his military experience was in artillery, yet he excelled as a commander of infantry. Soldiers adored him, despite the fact that he was a tight-lipped, stern-disciplined eccentric. Fellow generals were in awe of him because his silence concealed a fiery combativeness smoldering deep inside. Although he was in the field but two years during the Civil War, he more than any other individual became the radiant hope of the Southern cause. more astounding are the number of people – past and present – who assert that had he not died in 1863, his genius would have enabled the Confederate States to achieve their independence. Such was the mystique of Thomas J. Jackson.

His life personifies the American rags-to-riches story. It began with a childhood so sad that Jackson would not talk about it except with the women he loved.

Jackson was born near midnight on 20-21 January 1824, at the village of Clarksburg in the mountains of what was then northwestern Virginia.

http://thisweekinthecivilwar.com/?p=1490