Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
shadowy cedars.”[5]
The headquarters of the Second Army Corps were established at Moss
Neck, on the terrace above the Rappahannock, eleven miles below
Fredericksburg. After the retreat of the Federals to Falmouth, the
Confederate troops had reoccupied their former positions, and every
point of passage between Fredericksburg and Port Royal was strongly
intrenched and closely watched. At Moss Neck Jackson was not only
within easy reach of his divisions, but was more comfortably housed
than had usually been the case. A hunting-lodge which stood on the lawn
of an old and picturesque mansion-house, the property of a gentleman
named Corbin, was placed at his disposal—he had declined the offer of
rooms in the house itself lest he should trespass on the convenience of
its inmates; and to show the peculiar constitution of the Confederate
army, an anecdote recorded by his biographers is worth quoting. After
his first interview with Mrs. Corbin, he passed out to the gate, where
a cavalry orderly who had accompanied him was holding his horse. “Do
you approve of your accommodation, General?” asked the courier. “Yes,
sir, I have decided to make my quarters here.” “I am Mr. Corbin, sir,”
said the soldier, “and I am very pleased.”
The lower room of the lodge, hung with trophies of the chase, was both
his bedroom and his office; while a large tent, pitched on the grass
outside, served as a messroom
for his military family; and here for three long months, until near the
end of March, he rested from the labour of his campaigns. The Federal
troops, on the snow-clad heights across the river, remained idle in
their camps, slowly recovering from the effects of their defeat on the
fields of Fredericksburg; the pickets had ceased to bicker; the
gunboats had disappeared, and “all was quiet on the Rappahannock.” Many
of the senior officers in the Confederate army took advantage of the
lull in operations to visit their homes; but, although his wife urged
him to do the same, Jackson steadfastly refused to absent himself even
for a few days from the front. In November, to his unbounded delight, a
daughter had been born to him. “To a man of his extreme domesticity,
and love for children,” says his wife, “this was a crowning happiness;
and yet, with his great modesty and shrinking from publicity, he
requested that he should not receive the announcement by telegraph, and
when it came to him by letter he kept the glad tidings to
himself—leaving his staff and those around him in the camp to hear of
it from others. This was to him ‘a joy with which a stranger could not
intermeddle,’ and from which even his own hand could not lift the veil
of sanctity. His letters were full of longing to see his little Julia;
for by this name, which had been his mother’s, he had desired her to be
christened, saying, ‘My mother was mindful of me when I was a helpless,
fatherless child, and I wish to commemorate her now.’”
“How thankful I am,” he wrote, “to our kind Heavenly Father for having
spared my precious wife and given us a little daughter! I cannot tell
how gratified I am, nor how much I wish I could be with you and see my
two darlings. But while this pleasure is denied me, I am thankful it is
accorded to you to have the little pet, and I hope it may be a great
deal of company and comfort to its mother. Now, don’t exert yourself to
write to me, for to know that you were exerting yourself to write would
give me more pain than the letter would pleasure, _so you must not do
it._ But you must love your _esposo_ in the mean time. . . . I expect
you are just now made up with that baby. Don’t you wish
your husband wouldn’t claim any part of it, but let you have the sole
ownership? Don’t you regard it as the most precious little creature in
the world? Do not spoil it, and don’t let anybody tease it. Don’t
permit it to have a bad temper. How I would love to see the darling
little thing! Give her many kisses from her father. “At present I am
fifty miles from Richmond, and eight miles from Guiney’s Station, on
the railroad from Richmond to Fredericksburg. Should I remain here, I
do hope you and baby can come to see me before spring, as you can come
on the railway. Wherever I go, God gives me kind friends. The people
here show me great kindness. I receive invitation after invitation to
dine out and spend the night, and a great many provisions are sent me,
including cakes, tea, loaf-sugar, etc., and the socks and gloves and
handkerchiefs still come!
“I am so thankful to our ever-kind Heavenly Father for having so
improved my eyes as to enable me to write at night. He continually
showers blessings upon me; and that _you_ should have been spared, and
our darling little daughter given us, fills my heart with overflowing
gratitude. If I know my unworthy self, my desire is to live entirely
and unreservedly to God’s glory. Pray, my darling, that I may so live.”
Again to his sister-in-law: “I trust God will answer the prayers
offered for peace. Not much comfort is to be expected until this cruel
war terminates. I haven’t seen my wife since last March, and never
having seen my child, you can imagine with what interest I look to
North Carolina.”
But the tender promptings of his deep natural affection were stilled by
his profound faith that “duty is ours, consequences are God’s.” The
Confederate army, at this time as at all others, suffered terribly from
desertion; and one of his own brigades reported 1,200 officers and men
absent without leave.
“Last evening,” he wrote to his wife on Christmas Day, “I received a
letter from Dr. Dabney, saying, ‘one of the highest gratifications both
Mrs. Dabney and I could enjoy would be another visit from Mrs.
Jackson,’ and he
invites me to meet you there. He and Mrs. Dabney are very kind, but it
appears to me that it is better for me to remain with my command so
long as the war continues. . . . If all our troops, officers and men,
were at their posts, we might, through God’s blessing, expect a more
speedy termination of the war. The temporal affairs of some are so
deranged as to make a strong plea for their returning home for a short
time; but our God has greatly blessed me and mine during my absence,
and whilst it would be a great comfort to see you and our darling
little daughter, and others in whom I take a special interest, yet duty
appears to require me to remain with my command. It is important that
those at headquarters set an example by remaining at the post of duty.”
So business at headquarters went on in its accustomed course. There
were inspections to be made, the deficiencies of equipment to be made
good, correspondence to be conducted—and the control of 30,000 men
demanded much office-work—the enemy to be watched, information to be
sifted, topographical data to be collected, and the reports of the
battles to be written. Every morning, as was his invariable habit
during a campaign, the general had an interview with the chiefs of the
commissariat, transport, ordnance, and medical departments, and he
spent many hours in consultation with his topographical engineer. The
great purpose for which Virginia stood in arms was ever present to his
mind, and despite his reticence, his staff knew that he was occupied,
day and night, with the problems that the future might unfold.
Existence at headquarters to the young and high-spirited officers who
formed the military family was not altogether lively. Outside there was
abundance of gaiety. The Confederate army, even on those lonely hills,
managed to extract enjoyment from its surroundings. The hospitality of
the plantations was open to the officers, and wherever Stuart and his
brigadiers pitched their tents, dances and music were the order of the
day. Nor were the men behindhand. Even the heavy snow afforded them
entertainment. Whenever a thaw took place they set themselves to making
snowballs; and great battles, in which one division was arrayed against
another, and which were carried through with the pomp and circumstance
of war, colours flying, bugles sounding, and long lines charging
elaborately planned intrenchments, were a constant source of amusement,
except to unpopular officers. Theatrical and musical performances
enlivened the tedium of the long evenings; and when, by the glare of
the camp-fires, the band of the 5th Virginia broke into the rattling
quick-step of “Dixie’s Land,” not the least stirring of national
anthems, and the great concourse of grey-jackets took up the chorus,
closing it with a yell
That shivered to the tingling stars,
the Confederate soldier would not have changed places with the
President himself.
There was much social intercourse, too, between the different
headquarters. General Lee was no unfrequent visitor to Moss Neck, and
on Christmas Day Jackson’s aides-de-camp provided a sumptuous
entertainment, at which turkeys and oysters figured, for the
Commander-in-Chief and the senior generals. Stuart, too, often invaded
the quarters of his old comrade, and Jackson looked forward to the
merriment that was certain to result just as much as the youngest of
his staff. “Stuart’s exuberant cheerfulness and humour,” says Dabney,
“seemed to be the happy relief, as they were the opposites, to
Jackson’s serious and diffident temper. While Stuart poured out his
‘quips and cranks,’ not seldom at Jackson’s expense, the latter sat by,
sometimes unprepared with any repartee, sometimes blushing, but always
enjoying the jest with a quiet and merry laugh. The ornaments on the
wall of the general’s quarters gave Stuart many a topic of badinage.
Affecting to believe that they were of General Jackson’s selection, he
pointed now to the portrait of some famous race-horse, and now to the
print of some celebrated rat-terrier, as queer revelations of his
private tastes, indicating a great decline in his moral character,
which would be a grief and disappointment to the pious old ladies of
the South. Jackson, with a quiet smile, replied that perhaps he had had
more to do with
race-horses than his friends suspected. It was in the midst of such a
scene as this that dinner was announced, and the two generals passed to
the mess-table. It so happened that Jackson had just received, as a
present from a patriotic lady, some butter, upon the adornment of which
the fair donor had exhausted her housewife’s skill. The servants, in
honour of General Stuart’s presence, had chosen this to grace the
centre of the board. As his eye fell upon it, he paused, and with mock
gravity pointed to it, saying, ‘There, gentlemen! If that is not the
crowning evidence of our host’s sporting tastes. He even has his
favourite game-cock stamped on his butter!’ The dinner, of course,
began with great laughter, in which Jackson joined, with as much
enjoyment as any.”
Visitors, too, from Europe, attracted by the fame of the army and its
leaders, had made their way into the Confederate lines, and were
received with all the hospitality that the camps afforded. An English
officer has recorded his experiences at Moss Neck:—
“I brought from Nassau a box of goods (a present from England) for
General Stonewall Jackson, and he asked me when I was at Richmond to
come to his camp and see him. He left the city one morning about seven
o’clock, and about ten landed at a station distant some eight or nine
miles from Jackson’s (or, as his men called him, Old Jack’s) camp. A
heavy fall of snow had covered the country for some time before to the
depth of a foot, and formed a crust over the Virginian mud, which is
quite as villainous as that of Balaclava. The day before had been mild
and wet, and my journey was made in a drenching shower, which soon
cleared away the white mantle of snow. You cannot imagine the slough of
despond I had to pass through. Wet to the skin, I stumbled through mud,