Did Carolinians Kill
Stonewall Jackson?
TIutc's strong pviiloiu'o that tlio
fatal volley was fired in mistake by
l,a lie's men.
»!/
BURKE DAVIS
1 1 is almost — bin not quite —
certain that General Stonewall Jack-
son was fatally wounded by North
Carolina troops at Chancellorsville in
1865.
It is highly possible that the acci¬
dental shooting of the most famous
Confederate field commander was at
the hands of quail hunters from Ala¬
mance County. In any event, this is a
long-lived and flourishing legend in
the piedmont.
Jackson, already a military legend at
39, was at the very peak of his glory
on the dark evening of May 2. 1865,
as he rode through the burning scrub
of the Chancellorsville battlefield, di¬
recting the attack which might wreck
the Union army.
Daring Maneuver
All day he had marched his men in
one of the most daring flank ma¬
neuvers ever conceived. He had left
General R. E. Lee with only 14.000
men to face an overwhelming Union
force of more than 100,000. With his
50.000. Jackson fell upon the exposed
Federal flank in the late afternoon, and
within two hours had put much of the
enemy army to panicky flight.
As darkness fell, he sought to or¬
ganize the pursuit, and while he was
scouting out the Yankee lines, ac¬
companied by a few messengers and
officers, he ran afoul one of his own
picket lines. A volley from the thickets
downed several of the general’s party.
As best it can be reconstructed,
someone shouted:
"You’re firing on your own men!”
And a drawled answer, perhaps
speaking pure Tar Heel: "That’s a
lie. boys! Pour it on ’em!”
More fire shattered the night be¬
tween the two uneasy armies, and this
time Jackson went down, wounded in
both arms. The shooting had almost
certainly come from the ranks of Gen¬
eral James Lane’s 18th North Caro¬
lina regiment, whose front lines lay
nearest to Jackson.
Lane’s Men
Jackson was carried in a litter from
the field, narrowly missing instant
death when the Union troops turned
cannon on the scene, and getting a
painful jolt when a soldier dropped
the stretcher. He went to a field hos¬
pital for amputation of an arm. and
eight days later, though he had seemed
to rally in the interim, he died of
pneumonia.
The Alamance connection with the
story is kept alive by W. Kerr Scott,
who can recall hearing stories from a
Haw-fields neighbor. Joe Bason, who
often hunted with Alamance veterans
of Lane’s regiment.
"Bason used to tell me about it at
great length," Scott says. "When he
used to hunt with Stuart Dixon and
Robert Smith, they would wind up
around the campfire at night, and talk
about the Civil War. They would get
around to the death of Jackson, and
the firing in the dark, and in the end
one of them would say. ‘But I wonder
which one of us really killed him’?"
On Scott Farm
Scott has more than a passing in¬
terest in the historical question, for
Dixon’s old home, an interesting old
double-chimneyed house, still stands
on Scott’s big Alamance farm. The
house is now occupied by one of
Scott’s tenant families, and Dixon’s
people are long gone.
The Robert Smith of the story went
forth to a successful business career;
he became a vice-president of P. Loril-
lard Co.
The confusion of the night of Jack¬
son’s wounding was so great that few
facts are certain. A sample eye witness
report was left by a private in Jack¬
son’s ranks, John Casler:
"The woods, taking fire that night
from the shells, burnt rapidly and
roasted the wounded men alive. As we
went to bury them we could see where
they had tried to keep the fire from
them by scratching the leaves away as
far as they could reach. But it availed
not; they were burnt to a crisp. The
only way we could tell to which army
they belonged was by turning them
over and examining their clothing
( Continued on page 40)
THE STATE. JUNK 19. 1954
