1912] Battle of the Wilderness 



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 J^eath 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- 



C 429 H 



