In a moment, on the dark road swept by awful fire, there were but three men, and, as the subject of this sketch, Lieutenant Smith, was one of them, it is apropos to quote what Prof. R. S. Dabney says in his Life of Jackson:
“The bearers and all the attendants, excepting Major Leigh and the general’s two aides, had left and fled into the woods. While the sufferer lay in the road with his feet turned toward the enemy, exposed to the fire of the guns, his attendants displayed a heroic fidelity which deserved to go down in history with the immortal name of Jackson. Disdaining to leave their chief, they lay down beside him, leaning above him and trying as far as possible to protect him with their bodies. On one side was Major Leigh, on the other Lieutenant Smith. Again and again was the earth torn by volleys of canister, and minnie balls hissed over them, the iron striking flashes from the stones about him.”
Finally when the firing ceased, General Jackson was removed from the battlefield to a hospital, and then to Mr. Chandler’s house at Guinea Station, where he died, May 10, 1863.
Lieutenant Smith became The Reverend when war ceased, and married Miss Agnes Lucy Lacy, a daughter of Major J. Horace Lacy.
He was well known in Fredericksburg. For thirty years he was pastor here; for fifty years Secretary of the Presbyterian Synod, and for years editor of the Central Presbyterian. Many know his works. All men know the deep, immovable courage it took that night to lie as a barrier, to take whatever death might be hurled down the shell-swept road toward “Stonewall” Jackson.
He still lives, in 1921, in Richmond. His voice is low, his smile soft, and his religion his life. He is the last surviving member of “Stonewall” Jackson’s staff.
Major J. Horace Lacy
There are many living now who remember him. The strong, stolid figure, the fine old face traced with the lineage of gentility, the cane that pounded down the sidewalks as he went where he willed. There are some left who knew the power and poetry and kindliness of the man.
Major Lacy was a graduate of Washington and Lee and an attorney at law, though he seldom practiced. He was married in 1848 at Chatham, when he was twenty-four years of age, to Miss Betty Churchill Jones, and later became the owner of “Chatham” and of the “Lacy House,” about each of which clings grim traditions of war; both the Wilderness place and Chatham became known in those two battles as “The Lacy House.”
Washington Irving was his guest while spending some time in Virginia; General Robert E. Lee was his guest, and many other widely known men.