It was his own men who shot him.

On the night of May 2, 1863, Stonewall Jackson rode out from the Confederate lines at Chancellorsville to reconnoiter the Union position in the dark. He was returning through his own lines when soldiers of the 18th North Carolina Infantry heard horses moving in the woods and opened fire. Three bullets hit Jackson — two in the left arm, one in the right hand.

The surgeon who examined him recommended amputation. Jackson agreed. The arm came off.

The General

Thomas Jonathan Jackson was, by 1863, the most celebrated military figure in the Confederacy and possibly in North America. His record was extraordinary: First Bull Run, where he earned his nickname holding the position that rallied a routing Confederate army; the Valley Campaign of 1862, where he kept three Union armies occupied with a force that was outnumbered in every engagement; Second Bull Run; Antietam; Fredericksburg; and finally Chancellorsville, where his flank march against Hooker's XI Corps had come as close to destroying a Union army as the Confederacy would ever get.

He was eccentric, deeply religious, and tactically ruthless. His men sometimes hated him and always followed him. Lee said he had lost his right arm. He was not speaking metaphorically.

The Eight Days

Jackson was moved to a field hospital and then to a farmhouse to recover. Lee sent him a message: could I have directed events, I should have chosen for the good of the country to have been disabled in your stead.

Pneumonia developed in the damaged lung tissue. It progressed rapidly. On May 10, 1863, Jackson died at the Chandler plantation in Guinea Station, Virginia.

His last words, as he drifted in and out of consciousness, were reportedly: Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.

What Was Lost

Jackson was irreplaceable not because of his tactical skill alone — Lee had other capable subordinates — but because of his capacity for independent command. He could execute a complex flanking march, maintain operational security, and strike with the decisiveness that Lee's plan required, all without constant supervision.

His successors in the II Corps command — Richard Ewell and Ambrose Powell Hill — were capable officers who had fought well under Jackson's direction. Neither had his particular combination of audacity and precision. Ewell's hesitation on the first day at Gettysburg — his failure to take Cemetery Hill when it was vulnerable — is the most analyzed command failure of the war. Jackson, Gettysburg veterans later said, would not have hesitated.

The Confederacy won its greatest victory at Chancellorsville, and lost the war in the same battle.