A Sense of Place

Searching for Stonewall Jackson: Past and Present


Guinea Station--"The Stonewall Jackson Shrine"

BC photo--Guinea Station.jpg

The Past

Mrs. Jackson arrived with their infant daughter as the crisis was unfolding. She seemed to sense the prognosis immediately.

More doctors arrived. There were consultations, prayers, and hymn singing. Jackson sank into delirium, talking as though he were still commanding his troops. Then he would rally, talking to his wife and playing with his daughter. “Little comforter,” he called her, still insisting to those around him that he would recover.

Sunday, May 10: McGuire was certain that Jackson would not last the day. Mrs. Jackson went into him and, weeping, broke the news. Jackson sent for McGuire.

“Doctor,” he said, “Anna informs me that you have told her I am to die today; is it so?”

McGuire answered in the affirmative.

“Very good, very good,” said Jackson. “It is all right.”

He tried to comfort his wife. After he died, he said, she should return to live with her father, who was “kind and good.” They discussed that he wished to be buried in Lexington, near where they had lived when he taught at the Virginia Military Institute.

There was a farewell visit with his daughter. “Little darling,” he called her. “Sweet one.”

“It is the Lord’s Day,” he said later. “I have always desired to die on Sunday.”

He sank into delirium, talking as though he was still on the battlefield: “Order A. P. Hill to prepare for action! Pass the infantry to the front!”

He died at 3:15 p.m. His final words: “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”[i]


The Present

I often stop at Guinea, the “Stonewall Jackson Shrine,” north of Richmond off I-95. The last time was late on a winter afternoon. A train went by on the tracks that are just to the west. It blew for the crossing. Then it was gone and only the quiet stillness remained.


[i] Mrs.Mary Anna Jackson, Life and Letters of General Thomas J. Jackson, 442-4–73; Doctor Hunter McGuire, “The Death of Stonewall Jackson.”


White's Ford

BC photo--White's Ford on the Potomac.jpg

The Past

The Confederates cheered and gave the Rebel yell as they crossed the Potomac at White’s Ford. Heros von Borcke, who could always be depended on for a poetic rendering of military events, wrote of the cavalry’s crossing, “It was indeed a magnificent sight, as the long column of many thousand horsemen stretched across this beautiful Potomac. The evening sun slanted upon its clear placid waters, and burnished them with gold, while the arms of the soldiers glittered and blazed in its radiance.”

            He spoke of his excitement and exhilaration, especially when he mounted the opposite bank and heard a military band play “the familiar but now strangely thrilling music of ‘Maryland. My Maryland.’” But then he added ominously, “I little thought that in a short time I should recross the river into Virginia, under circumstances far different and far less inspiring."

The Present

At first, I drove at the speed of a marching column because of northern Virginia traffic. Later, after making the turn to White’s Ford in Loudoun County, the spot where the Confederates had crossed into Maryland, I still drove at the speed of a marching column, but now it was because of the accordioned dirt-and-gravel road, which wound scenically through woods and fields as it dropped slowly toward the Potomac.

The parking lot was set amid acres of magnificent eight-foot-high corn. I parked and walked to the boat ramp. An angler was stashing gear into the Pescador fishing kayak he’d unloaded just before I arrived. A young man, he met my gaze forthrightly and spoke in a low voice so as not to alarm the fish. He was going after smallmouths, he told me. They liked the deeper water up- and downstream. He pointed out a grassy inlet across the river where he’d had some luck. He was surprised when I said I wasn’t going fishing. Civil War? You might find something out there…

I went back to the car and put on my swimsuit and river shoes. The angler parked his pickup, waved, and headed back to the river. He was far upstream by the time I started wading, which was good, because he didn’t see me slip and fall, an action I repeated several times both on the way out and the way back.

The water was slightly chilly but not unpleasant. My soaked T-shirt stuck to my body. The day was overcast, with incredible blue-gray clouds and intermittent sun. Long weeds waved like mermaid hair on the river bottom—I didn’t want to walk through them because anything could be under there, but I had to, so I did.

The angler disappeared. I was halfway to Maryland, alone with the river, which by now was up to my waist. I looked back. I’d left no impression on the water. Fifty thousand men crossed here without leaving a trace—just as I wouldn’t leave a trace.

Sharp mussel shells and stones on the other side of the weeds. I thought of barefoot Confederates. How did they do it? Twenty-plus miles a day; nasty food or none at all; death waiting up the road. And for what? Glory? The Cause? Slavery? And what did it matter now anyway? They were all dead and gone, just like I’d be dead and gone…

My dark mood lessened somewhat after I reached the opposite bank. Such a beautiful day—why be melancholy? Then an interesting thought: Maybe solitude and natural beauty allowed me to tune in to a psychic impression from the past, a remnant of what the soldiers were really thinking.

I turned around and headed back to Virginia. I swung downstream to avoid the weed patch, then climbed out on the muddy bank.

Maybe the angler was right. Maybe I had found something out there.