STONEWALL JACKSON.
Address of William A. Anderson Upon the Laying of the Corner-
Stone of the Equestrian Statue of Stonewall Jackson in
Richmond, Virginia, on June 3, 1915, at the
Request of the Stonewall Jackson
Monument Association.
I desire, in simple language, to speak briefly of the great and good man whom the statue to be erected here is to commemorate.[1]
Simplicity of speech becomes any remarks about one whose simplicity of character was so marked a feature of his greatness.
Nor will, nor need the truth be colored in his eulogy.
Extravagance of statement would rather detract from than add to his moral and intellectual stature.
There have been many delineations of the character of Stonewall Jackson—some true to nature and to the facts, some so exaggerated in one direction as to be fanciful, and some so distorted in another direction as to make him appear grotesque.
To those who knew him best in peace, to his family, his pastor, his servants, his friends, and the poor; to those who knew him best in war, the members of his staff, the officers who served under or with him, and were thrown intimately with him, in camp, on the march, and upon the field of battle; to the soldiers of his brigade, division, and army, who, through two years of tremendous effort and glorious achievement, bivouacked,
- ↑ Note.—The maker of this address lived in the town of Lexington as a college student for three sessions before the Confederate War, and knew there, then, some of Major Jackson's most intimate friends and acquaintances; saw him hundreds of times during that period, and knew him personally as a youth of from 15 to 18 would know a man of from 34 to 37; served under General Jackson as a soldier in Company I, 4th Va. Infantry (Stonewall Brigade), until the battle of Manassas, in which Mr. Anderson received a wound which disabled him for life; has known
