igi22 Battle of the Wilderfiess 



that "Stonewall" Jackson was still in Richmond — 

 he was taken by surprise when the latter, marching 

 by night some forty miles around and through the 

 woods past Wilderness Church, fell upon and deci- 

 mated his army. Thus he was forced to fall back 

 northward across the Rappahannock, leaving the 

 field behind "so covered with dead men that a horse 

 could not pick its way across." 



Hooker might even have been driven out of ^eatk of 

 Virginia except for a combination of circumstances -^'"^^•^°" 

 which led to the death of his pursuer, Jackson having 

 been accidentally shot in the arm by one of his own 

 men in a hollow in the woods of Wilderness Creek 

 beyond Chancellorsville, and then dropped by a 

 wounded soldier, trying to carry him to safety, on a 

 sharp point of steel which pierced his lungs. A 

 strategist of rare ability, as teacher of Mathematics 

 in the Virginia Military College at Lexington before 

 the war Jackson had nevertheless been "a very poor 

 one, with no control at all over the students." 



Mr. White, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in 

 Lexington of which the great general was a sternly 

 religious member, told me that just after the battle 

 of Manassas, fought on a Sunday, he received a letter 

 from Jackson. The people were naturally eager for 

 news, but the writer had simply said : 



It occurs to me that you are taking up a collection for foreign 

 missions today. Please find enclosed my check for ten dollars. 



From Chancellorsville we drove through the Spottsyi- 

 eastern part of the Wilderness to Spottsylvania Court '^"J^^ 

 House, only a little cross-roads village, for often in House 

 Virginia the county seat is located near the center 

 far from any town. At this point and in the neighbor- 



n 429 3 



