We weren’t expecting this.
We visited the Chancellorsville battlefield in June. It’s near the wild, haunted woods of the Wilderness in Eastern Virginia. There, on May 3, 1863, in the second bloodiest day in the Civil War, Robert E. Lee won another victory that helped inspire his invasion of the North a month later. It also cost him Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.
Jackson had made a successful flank attack on the Union’s right the day before. That night, under a full moon, he rode out with aides to consider the next day’s attack. As he rode back to Rebel lines, a North Carolinian regiment mistook him for Union cavalry and opened fire. Jackson was hit 3 times, one shot shattering his left arm. He was taken to a field hospital at an old farm house, where his arm was amputated.
The surgeon wrapped up the arm and buried it near the family cemetery at the Lacy Farm near in the Wilderness. There is lies today. Jackson died a week later in a delirium of fever from pneumonia. His dying words: ” “Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”
Another 3,000 soldiers, Union and Rebel died at Chancellorsville. I’m not sure what their final thoughts were.
S.A. Junk 