But half a mile now divided the Confederate and Federal lines; Jackson’s men were scattered in the dark woods, and were running about, “disorderly as a city mob.” Divisions, brigades, companies, all were mixed. At nine o’clock the “rising moon lit dimly the broken, shadowed spaces of the battlefield.” Jackson and his staff were moving quietly about. He drew rein one hundred yards away and listened. To the North Carolina brigade, they looked like Federal cavalry. The skirmish line fired a few shots towards the staff, then a whole company turned a volley to the front; two officers fell. Jackson struck the spurs to his horse and advanced toward the lines, when a regiment blazed out upon him. His horse jumped and started in the direction of the enemy. The limbs of the trees whipped the face of the rider, and Jackson’s arms fell to his side. He was lifted from his saddle to the ground, and Hill bent over him. “General, are you much hurt?” “I think I am,” said Jackson, “and all the wounds are from my own men.”
The North Carolina soldiers stopped firing, but soon the battle began again. As Jackson was being removed to the rear, he said: “Tell them simply that you have a wounded officer.” But, as he passed, a soldier cried out: “Good God, it is General Jackson!”
When Mrs. Jackson arrived on Sunday morning, May 10, Jackson was very low. She told him he was going to die. He tossed about during the afternoon, and his mind began to be cloudy. In a restless sleep he muttered, “Order A. P. Hill to prepare for action. Pass the infantry to the front.” It was a little later, when he made his famous saying, “No, let us pass over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.” He spoke no more, but fell into the sleep which knows no waking.
“Could I have dictated events,” wrote General Lee, “I should have chosen, for the good of the country, to have been disabled in your stead.”
It seemed strange that Jackson could die, he had survived danger so long. It was at the closing of his grave on the hill at Lexington that his deep loss was felt in the whole South. “The man was so much needed. He had the mark of victory upon him, and his presence in the fight lent faith to the cause everywhere.” A flower of the South had fallen, never to rise again.
At a dedication of a Jackson monument sometime afterwards in New Orleans, Father Hubert prayed, “God, when thou did’st decree that the Confederacy should not succeed, thou had’st first to take thy servant, Stonewall Jackson.”
Such was the brief career of a poor orphan boy,—of a Christian and patriotic soldier,—of a descendant of an Irish immigrant, “who achieved the last and greatest of his successes in dying for his country. He perished doubly a martyr, and in his last breath attested the righteousness of the cause which he sealed with his blood.”
SOME IRISH CONTRIBUTIONS TO EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY.
Paper read before the American Irish Historical Society, January 8, 1910, at its twelfth annual meeting at Hotel Plaza, New York City.
BY MICHAEL XAVIER SULLIVAN, PH. D.