"Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”
Guiney Station, Virginia | May 10th, 1863
To walk through the door of Guiney Station is to be transformed, as if transplanted by a time machine of sorts. The door through which you have entered is one hundred and sixty years old, and the stories it could reveal would be endless. The room itself, the bed, the blanket Jackson clutched at death, and the ticking clock on the mantle, all present when Jackson died, combine to create an sensation that is similar to walking in misty fields, searching, looking for the familiar and yet being tugged into an awareness of history that is rarely found on this planet. This is the place where General Jackson died, where his soul was ushered into eternity, thus changing the history of the United States of America.
NOTE: I have shared my feelings in past writings about this man who still casts such a shadow over the Civil War and the Confederacy. If you are interested, you can read that HERE.
Such a poetic farewell from Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson probably astonished those who surrounded his deathbed that quiet sunny Sabbath in rural Virginia, twenty-seven miles from the bloody battlefield of Chancellorsville. More true to form had been his hallucinatory ravings the previous several hours, mostly commands, terse and to the point, that brooked no contradiction—“Push up the columns! Pendleton, you take charge of that. Where’s Pendleton? Tell him to push up the column!” Only his wife knew the gentler side of his personality, rooted as it was in loneliness and insecurity. To everyone else on the wider stage of Civil War topography—what was becoming, in point of fact, the bloodiest war ever fought on earth—“Old Jack” presented a picture of total mayhem, the hunter who, if he had his way, would never grant quarter to an enemy. “Draw your sword and throw away your scabbard,” was his battlefield credo. “Give them the bayonet! Kill them, sir! Kill every man!”
