Friday, December 21, 2012

Stonewall Jackson: "War is the greatest of evils"

T.J. Stonewall Jackson, 1862
“War is the greatest of evils.” --- Stonewall Jackson to Jedediah Hotchkiss about December 21, 1862. 

Hotchkiss later wrote, “At night had a [long] talk with the General [Stonewall Jackson], at his quarters, especially about the war. He lamented the calamities it had brought upon Fredericksburg; said: ‘War is the greatest of evils.’ 

"He asked if I thought the troops could endure the cold weather, encamped as they now are and most of them without tents. Said he was much disappointed in the weather here; it was not as warm as he expected it would be. 

"He spoke of railroad accidents, one having happened today; said they presented the most horrid sights he had ever seen. 

"We talked of the [state] of religion in the North and in the South, and how Providence had blessed us, and how our strength had increased during the continuance of the war and up to this time.”

 Source: Jedidiah Hotchkiss, Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson's Topographer (Southern Methodist University Press, 1973), 102.

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