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[91]

Stonewall Jackson.

From this humble grave on the green Virginia hillside, Jackson rises before the American people as one of the mightiest figures of a mighty conflict. When he died on May 10, 1863, in the little town of Guiney's Station, not far from the battlefield of Chancellorsville, his remains were taken to Richmond. In the Hall of Representatives the body lay in state while the sorrowing throngs passed by the open coffin in silence. In the Military Institute at Lexington, which Jackson had left two years before as an obscure professor, the remains of the illustrious leader were under the charge of the cadets, until his burial in the quiet cemetery above the town. The pure and noble words of Lanier need no comment. A few lines from an Englishman, Colonel G. F. R. Henderson, declare Jackson's life a message not for America alone. ‘The hero who lies buried at Lexington, in the Valley of Virginia, belongs to a race that is not confined to a single continent; and to those who speak the same tongue, and in whose veins the same blood flows, his words come home like an echo of all that is noblest in their history: “What is life without honor? Degradation is worse than death. We must think of the living and of those who are to come after us, and see that by Gods blessing we transmit to them the freedom we have ourselves inherited” ’

‘Stonewall’ Jackson: ‘still shine the words that miniature his deeds’

Jackson's grave at Lexington, Virginia


   

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