Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 38.djvu/288

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Southern Historical Society Papers.

the return of the army from the advanced point which overlooked Hancock, Maryland, one of the baggage wagons sank so deep in the mud that the straining horses were powerless to move it. Jackson was in the neighborhood, and at once dismounted, and, seizing the spokes of a wheel, aided the men to lift the wagon from the rut into which it had deeply sunk. The writer recalls the mutter of a Colonel who was looking on: "Yes, that is the business he ought always to be at."

It may well be thought that Jackson was the most energetic, enterprising and indomitable man in the Confederate army. When he almost testily replied to the despairing cry of the gallant Bee at First Manassas, "General, they are beating us back"—"then we will give the bayonet," his courage knew no bounds. When during that battle his staff officer, the writer's uncle, who lost his life before Richmond gallantly leading his regiment, despairingly remarked, "General, I fear the day is against us," and he almost angrily replied, "If you think so, you should not say it," his indomitable will was asserting itself.

Colonel Henderson passes in natural order from the picture of Jackson the professor to Jackson the rock upon which the Federal army split at First Manassas. The writer was in that battle as Sergeant Major of the 33d Virginia Infantry, which at that time, composed of eight companies, was commanded by Colonel C. Cummings. who still lives, the only surviving regimental commander of the Stonewall Brigade as it was organized in July, 1861. In September, 1896, Colonel Cummings in a letter says, that as Griffin's and Rickett's batteries descended from the elevation west of the Warrenton turnpike following the Sudley Mills road to gain the hills on which the Henry and Robinson houses are situated—supported in their movement by the powerful Federal Infantry—General Jackson rode quietly along the line of his brigade and cautioned his officers to withhold their fire until the enemy had approached "within thirty paces." Visiting in 1896 the very ground on which on the edge of the pine and stunted oak growth the line of the brigade was partially concealed, the meaning of this order became a mystery. The presence of the Confederate line could hardly have been concealed from the advancing enemy, and it was subjecting the raw recruits, who so splendidly fought in that battle, to an un-