The Last Days of Stonewall Jackson: The Mortal Wounding of the Confederacy's Greatest Icon by Mackowski Chris White Kristopher

Author:Mackowski, Chris,White, Kristopher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: COOKING / General
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Published: 2013-04-30T04:00:00+00:00

Fifteen people, most of them members of Lacy’s family, rest in peace in the family cemetery, but only Jackson’s arm has a marker.

General Smedley Butler (standing) and President Warren G. Harding (on the platform) at the Wilderness in 1921

Popular legend also has it that United States Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, in the area for a Marine Corps exercise in 1921, excavated the arm and then reburied it, in a metal ammunition box with full military honors. That story, which has taken on a life of its own, probably never happened. The Marines did, however, place a plaque on the side of the arm’s monument: “A Tribute to the Memory of Stonewall Jackson by the East Coast Expeditionary Force: United States Marines Sept. 26-Oct. 4, 1921.”

The monument itself was placed there by an intimate of Jackson’s who sought to preserve the general’s memory: James Powers Smith.

After the war, Smith had married Agnes Lacy, Horace’s oldest daughter, and went on to a successful career as a Presbyterian minister for a church on the corner of Princess Anne and George streets in Fredericksburg. Smith always kept an eye on the grave of his beloved commander’s arm. In 1903, as one of ten granite markers Smith placed around the area’s battlefields, he installed the marker at the cemetery. It reads “Stonewall Jackson’s arm—Buried May 3, 1863.” Fifteen members of the Lacy family lie interred in the cemetery, but only Jackson’s arm has a marker.

Still, Stonewall Jackson’s arm is not the only limb in United States military history with its own unique story. Major General Benedict Arnold, who would go down in U.S. history as a notorious turncoat for switching his allegiance to the British during the American Revolution, has a monument for a lost limb. At the 1777 battle of Saratoga, while still serving the American cause, Arnold led a brilliant charge against a British position, but British musket balls tore apart his left leg, which was then crushed under his fallen horse. The monument, erected in 1887 near Freeman’s Farm, depicts a bas-relief boot, but the monument’s inscription refers only to the memory of “the most brilliant soldier” in the army without naming Arnold by name because of his subsequent infamy.

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