- Joined
- Feb 23, 2013
- Location
- East Texas
Lord of the Valley by Dan Nance depicts a favorite subject, Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of Spring, 1862.
This is as of this writing a brand new forum here at CivilWarTalk, and though there are already two pages of posts they have been assembled from other already-existing threads. Of course 2013 marks the Sesquicentennial of Jackson's untimely death following the Battle of Chancellorsville, but I hope we will focus not only on that sad event but on his entire life and military career. I do not presume to put myself forward as any kind of ultimate authority on General Thomas Jonathan Jackson, but rather someone who has enjoyed studying and reading about his life and career now for the past half-century.
My first significant exposure to the subject was probably in the memorable summer of 1961, The Civil War Centennial, when my long-suffering but unbelievably supportive mother drove the two of us all the way to see my very first reenactment, that of First Bull Run, staged actually ON Henry House Hill! All the way there and back in the almost unbearable heat and humidity of late July, with NO car air conditioning ( ! ) and before completion of the then-new Interstate Highway System we traveled roads all the way from Texas to Gettysburg and back. That long ago it was positively "cool" to revel in our Confederate heritage, unlike our now more enlightened ( read "politically correct" ) times. I especially remember visiting all the Jackson-related sites in the Shennandoah Valley, from his grave and home in Lexington to his office in Winchester, and of course the major NPS Jackson-related sites like Antietam, Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville.
I hope that you will forgive me if in the past fifty-two years my memory of certain particulars has gotten a bit rusty; I look forward to the help of other members of the forum, and especially Donna, whose apparently encyclopedic knowledge of personal minutia regarding the general is truly impressive! Below, July, 1961 and my first visit to Jackson's Winchester headquarters, as photographed by my mother.
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