How old was Stonewall Jackson when he died?

Jackson was 39. He was born on 21 January 1824 in Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia) and died on 10 May 1863 at Fairfield, a plantation near Guinea Station, Virginia. His own soldiers had shot him at Chancellorsville eight days earlier; his left arm was amputated and he then developed pneumonia.

Where is Stonewall Jackson buried?

In Lexington, Virginia, where he had taught at the Virginia Military Institute. He was buried on 15 May 1863 in the town's Presbyterian burial ground, later called the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery. In September 2020 the Lexington city council renamed it Oak Grove Cemetery.

Did Stonewall Jackson ever lose a battle?

Yes, once. At Kernstown on 23 March 1862 he attacked a Union division of about 8,000 men with roughly 3,800, believing the enemy far weaker, and was driven off with heavier losses. The National Park Service and the American Battlefield Trust both count it as his only defeat.

What was the Valley Campaign?

It was Jackson's spring 1862 campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, where a force of no more than 17,000 men beat separate Union forces in turn, including at Winchester, Cross Keys and Port Republic. It kept Union troops away from McClellan's attack on Richmond and made Jackson famous across the North and South.

Did Stonewall Jackson own slaves?

Yes. The Jackson House museum in Lexington counts six people he owned there, and the researcher Larry Spurgeon counts at least seven before the war. Hetty and her sons Cyrus and George were a gift from his wife's father, while Jackson bought Albert, Amy and a young girl named Emma.

Stonewall Jackson: Lee's right arm

Q: How did Stonewall Jackson get his nickname?

At the First Battle of Bull Run on 21 July 1861 his Virginia brigade made a stand on Henry Hill. General Barnard Bee, rallying his own men, is said to have pointed to Jackson standing “like a stone wall.” Bee was mortally wounded that day, and the exact words survive in several versions.

Q: How did Stonewall Jackson die?

On the night of 2 May 1863, returning from a reconnaissance after his flank attack at Chancellorsville, Jackson was fired on by men of the 18th North Carolina, who took his party for Union cavalry. His left arm was amputated, pneumonia set in, and he died on 10 May 1863.

Thure de Thulstrup, restoration by Adam Cuerden, 1887, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Quick answer

Who was Stonewall Jackson?

Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (1824 to 1863) was a Confederate general in the American Civil War and one of Robert E. Lee's most trusted commanders. He won his nickname at First Bull Run in 1861, became famous for the 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign and was mortally wounded by his own troops at Chancellorsville in May 1863.

Jackson fought at First Bull Run, lost his only battle at Kernstown, captured Harpers Ferry on the eve of Antietam, held the right of Lee's line at Fredericksburg and led the flank march that won Chancellorsville. In two years he rose from colonel of Virginia volunteers to lieutenant general in command of half of Lee's army.¹

Who was Stonewall Jackson before the Civil War?

Thomas Jonathan Jackson was born on 21 January 1824 in Clarksburg, Virginia, now in West Virginia. His father, a lawyer, died of typhoid fever in 1826 and left the family in debt; his mother remarried and died in 1831. The boy grew up with his father's relatives, mainly his uncle Cummins Jackson.²

He entered West Point in 1842 poorly prepared, worked his way up and graduated seventeenth of 59 in the class of 1846. Commissioned in the 1st U.S. Artillery, he went to the war with Mexico and won brevet promotions up to the rank of major; Encyclopedia Virginia credits above all his conduct at Chapultepec in September 1847.³

In 1851 he resigned from the army to become professor of natural and experimental philosophy (roughly, physics) and instructor of artillery at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington. He was a poor classroom teacher, and VMI's own museum calls him a marginal professor of natural philosophy but an excellent instructor of artillery.⁴

He married twice. His first wife, Elinor Junkin, whom he married on 4 August 1853, died in October 1854 after giving birth to a stillborn child. On 16 July 1857 he married Mary Anna Morrison. A devout Presbyterian, he taught a Sunday school class for Black people in Lexington; a letter in the VMI archives calls him the founder of the town's “Colored Sunday School.”⁵

He was also a slaveholder. The Jackson House museum, run by VMI, counts six people he owned while living in Lexington: Albert and Amy, who had asked him to buy them; Hetty and her sons Cyrus and George, given to the couple by Anna's father; and a young girl, Emma, whom Jackson bought. The researcher Larry Spurgeon counts at least seven, adding a teenager named Ann. Jackson left no known writing that criticized slavery.⁶

Portrait of a bearded Stonewall Jackson in a Confederate uniform coat, Winchester, November 1862, in black and white — Stonewall Jackson photographed by Nathaniel Routzahn in Winchester, Virginia, in November 1862. Public domain

How did Stonewall Jackson get his nickname?

When Virginia seceded in April 1861, Jackson was commissioned a colonel of Virginia forces and sent to Harpers Ferry, his first command of the war, where he took charge of the Virginia volunteers gathering there. Promoted brigadier general, he served under Joseph E. Johnston in the Shenandoah Valley.⁷

On 21 July 1861, at the First Battle of Bull Run, Jackson's Virginia brigade made a stand on Henry Hill. General Barnard Bee, trying to rally his own broken brigade, is said to have pointed to it and cried “There stands Jackson like a stone wall!” The name stuck to Jackson and to his brigade.⁸ › First Battle of Bull Run, 1861

The exact words are uncertain. Bee was mortally wounded that day, the line survives in several versions (the National Park Service quotes two on one page), and Encyclopedia Virginia notes that a few contemporary accounts suggest the comparison was not meant as praise. In the autumn of 1861 Jackson was promoted major general and sent to command in the Shenandoah Valley.⁹

Military map of First Bull Run with blue Union columns and red Confederate brigades north of the Warrenton Turnpike — First Bull Run at 10:30 to 11:00 on 21 July 1861: McDowell's flanking column runs into the Confederate brigades of Evans, Bee and Bartow north of the Warrenton Turnpike; Jackson's brigade came up behind them on Henry Hill. US Army Center of Military History map. Public domain (US government work). US Army Center of Military History, via Wikimedia Commons.

What was Stonewall Jackson famous for?

Above all for the Valley Campaign of spring 1862, fought to keep Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley from joining George B. McClellan's drive on Richmond. It opened with a defeat. On 23 March, acting on a faulty cavalry report that only a small Union force remained near Winchester, Jackson attacked at Kernstown with about 3,700 to 3,800 men and ran into James Shields's division of 8,000 to 8,500. He was beaten and lost more men than the enemy: about 720 to 740 against some 575 to 590.¹⁰ › First Battle of Kernstown, 1862

Yet Kernstown worked. Believing Jackson stronger than he was, Lincoln sent troops back to the Valley, which was just what Jackson had been ordered to achieve. The National Park Service and the American Battlefield Trust both count the battle as the only defeat of his career.¹¹

Joined by Richard S. Ewell's division, which brought him to about 17,000 men, Jackson then struck the separated Union forces one at a time. He overran the garrison at Front Royal, and on 25 May he drove Nathaniel P. Banks out of Winchester and back across the Potomac. Caught between two converging Union columns, he slipped away up the Valley and beat them separately at Cross Keys on 8 June and Port Republic on 9 June.¹²

The historian James I. Robertson Jr. stresses how small that army was: with no more than 17,000 ill-equipped men, Jackson defeated three separate Union armies. William Garrett Piston, in Encyclopedia Virginia, judges that the campaign diverted Union troops from Richmond at a critical moment and fed Lincoln's fear for Washington for the rest of the war.¹³

Nineteenth-century map of the Shenandoah Valley with its mountain ridges drawn in hachures — Map of the Shenandoah Valley by Jedediah Hotchkiss, Jackson's own mapmaker, the base map for William Allan's 1880 history of the 1862 Valley Campaign (Library of Congress). Public domain

Stonewall Jackson's greatest victories

The Seven Days and Second Manassas, summer 1862. Lee then brought Jackson's men to Richmond for the Seven Days Battles. There Jackson was slow, and Piston notes that contemporaries and many historians have judged his performance tardy or lethargic, though exhaustion, poor maps and unclear orders all played a part; McClellan was driven back from Richmond all the same. In August Jackson beat Banks at Cedar Mountain on 9 August, marched around John Pope's army to capture its supply depot at Manassas Junction, and held off Pope's attacks on 29 and 30 August until Lee's counterattack won the Second Battle of Bull Run.¹⁴

Harpers Ferry and Antietam, September 1862. When Lee invaded Maryland he sent Jackson to take Harpers Ferry. Between 13 and 15 September Jackson seized the heights around the town and trapped the garrison, which surrendered on 15 September: about 12,500 men, the largest capitulation of Union forces in the war. Jackson then hurried to Sharpsburg, where his men arrived in time for the Battle of Antietam on 17 September.¹⁵ › Battle of Antietam, 1862

Fredericksburg, December 1862. In the autumn Jackson was promoted lieutenant general, and when Lee reorganized his army into two corps he took command of the Second Corps, half of the Army of Northern Virginia. At Fredericksburg on 13 December he held the southern end of Lee's line. The main Union assault broke into his position at first but was driven back, and the battle ended in a major Confederate victory.¹⁶

Hand-colored 1898 map of the Fredericksburg battlefield with the Rappahannock River, the town, blue bars for the Union armies on the plain and red bars for the Confederate line on the hills from Marye's Heights to Hamilton's Crossing — The field of Fredericksburg on the morning of 13 December 1862: the Union armies (blue) in the town and on the plain along the Rappahannock face Longstreet on Marye's Heights and Jackson on the wooded ridge down to Hamilton's Crossing (red). Map XIII from John Codman Ropes, The Story of the Civil War, 1898. Public domain. John Codman Ropes, drawn by Geo. W. Stadly & Co., 1898, Library of Virginia and Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons.

Chancellorsville, May 1863. At the end of April Joseph Hooker crossed the Rappahannock to turn Lee's position. Lee divided his outnumbered army: on 2 May Jackson led about 30,000 men on a long, hidden march across the Union front and around its right flank, while Lee held Hooker in front with the rest. Late in the afternoon Jackson's men burst out of the woods and routed the Union Eleventh Corps.¹⁷ › Battle of Chancellorsville, 1863

What kind of commander was Stonewall Jackson?

Robertson describes a general who did not fight by the manual: convinced that a weaker force could beat a stronger one only by attacks that were unexpected, swift and relentless, he relied on speed, surprise and men who proudly called themselves his “foot cavalry.” Piston adds that as an independent commander he could be superb.¹⁸

Stonewall Jackson in uniform looking straight ahead, 26 April 1863, days before Chancellorsville — Stonewall Jackson photographed on 26 April 1863 in Spotsylvania County, six days before he was mortally wounded at Chancellorsville. Public domain

His weaknesses were just as real. Piston describes him as demanding, inflexible and so secretive that his officers sometimes struggled to carry out his orders. After Kernstown he brought charges against Richard B. Garnett for retreating without orders, although the National Park Service judges that the retreat was the right decision.¹⁹

How did Stonewall Jackson die?

On the night of 2 May, after the attack, Jackson rode out in front of his lines with members of his staff to scout the Union position for a night attack. As the party came back in the dark, men of the 18th North Carolina took it for Union cavalry and opened fire. Jackson was badly wounded, and early on 3 May his surgeon, Hunter McGuire, amputated his left arm at a field hospital near Wilderness Tavern.²⁰

On 4 May he was moved to Fairfield, Thomas Chandler's plantation near Guinea Station, about 30 miles from the battlefield, and lodged in its small office building. At first he seemed to be recovering, but on 7 May McGuire diagnosed pneumonia. Jackson died there at about 3:15 p.m. on 10 May 1863, aged 39. His last words are recorded as “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees” (Encyclopedia Virginia gives “in the shade”).²¹

He was buried in Lexington on 15 May 1863, in the Presbyterian burial ground that was later named the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery. In September 2020 the Lexington city council renamed it Oak Grove Cemetery.²²

Color print of a battle in a smoky wood with mounted Confederate officers in the center — The Battle of Chancellorsville, a chromolithograph published by Kurz and Allison in 1889, which shows Jackson mortally wounded. Public domain

“He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right.” Robert E. Lee

Why did Stonewall Jackson's death matter?

When Lee heard of the amputation he sent word that Jackson had lost his left arm but he, Lee, had lost his right. The words vary between accounts. In Piston's judgment no later corps commander filled Jackson's place and Chancellorsville was the last decisive victory of the Army of Northern Virginia; two months later Lee's army marched north to Gettysburg.²³ › Robert E. Lee

After the war Jackson became a central figure of the Lost Cause, the postwar mythology of the Confederacy, which made him a martyr; the National Park Service now presents the building where he died as part of that history too. The researcher Larry Spurgeon and the staff of Jackson's house in Lexington, now a museum, have traced Hetty, George and Emma, three of the people he held in slavery, to Lincoln County, North Carolina, where they lived after the war under the surname Jackson.²⁴

Read about the battles where he earned his fame, from First Bull Run and Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville, what happened on 21 July, or meet the other commanders of the American Civil War.