side of the road. He was placed a third time upon the litter and carried to the rear, until he met the ambulance Dr. McGuire had provided for him; and in this he was carried to the hospital, along with his Chief of Artillery, Colonel Crutchfield, who had been painfully wounded during the engagement. Dr. Hunter McGuire, General Jackson's Medical Director, has furnished a full account of the incidents occurring from the time he met the General on his way to the rear until his death,[1] and it may be relied on as entirely authentic, as may anything which Lieutenant (afterwards Captain) James P. Smith, the General's devoted aide and friend, may have stated or may state in regard to what he witnessed.
The interview between General Lee and Captain Wilbourn, when the latter communicated the sad intelligence, is presented by his own unvarnished statement in a far more touching light than it has ever before appeared in, whatever of the ornaments of rhetoric may have been employed; and the deep feeling which stirred the great heart of the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia on the occasion, was as strikingly manifested in the anxious care exhibited for the comfort of him who had been with his great lieutenant in his terrible calamity, and who had so faithfully and devotedly ministered to him in the trying scenes of the night, as in any other circumstance.
- ↑ ''Battle of Chancellorsville'', by Hotchkiss and Allan. Published by Van Nostrand, New York, 1867.
