“You are better off than I am, for while you have only lost your LEFT, I have lost my RIGHT arm.”
Then, hearing that he was worse, he said:
“Tell him that I am praying for him as I believe I have never prayed for myself.”
After his death, General Lee writes to my mother, on May 11th:
“...In addition to the deaths of officers and friends consequent upon the late battles, you will see that we have to mourn the loss of the great and good Jackson. Any victory would be dear at such a price. His remains go to Richmond to-day. I know not how to replace him. God’s will be done! I trust He will raise up some one in his place....”
Jones, in his Memoirs, says: “To one of his officers, after Jackson’s death, he [General Lee] said: ‘I had such implicit confidence in Jackson’s skill and energy that I never troubled myself to give him detailed instructions. The most general suggestions were all that he needed.’”
To one of his aides, who came to his tent, April 29th, to inform him that the enemy had crossed the Rappahannock River in heavy force, General Lee made the playful reply:
“Well, I heard firing, 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 said of Lee, when it was intimated by some, at the time he first took command, that he was slow:
“He is cautious. He ought to be. But he is NOT slow. Lee is a phenomenon. He is the only man whom I would follow blindfold.”