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This chapter details Stonewall Jackson's final movements on the battlefield, explaining what happened to Lee's great lieutenant in the chaotic woods west of Chancellorsville on the night of May 2. It presents a reconstruction of the general's reconnaissance along the Orange Plank Road and smaller side roads; the fateful volley from a North Carolina regiment that wreaked havoc on two parties of Confederate horsemen; and the painful injuries Jackson suffered while being carried to safety.

This chapter presents the letters written by Thomas Henry Carter to his wife Susan between January 20 and June 25, 1863. In these letters, Carter talks about how the opposing armies settled into winter quarters on opposite sides of the Rappahannock River following the Battle of Fredericksburg; the changes in Carter's King William Artillery in the first half of February, including the departure of Major General D. H. Hill to assume command of Confederate forces in North Carolina; Brigadier General William Nelson Pendleton's reorganization of the artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia; Hill's request to Carter to serve as his artillery chief, which the latter refused; the Battle of Chancellorsville on the Orange Turnpike; the confrontation between Stonewall Jackson and Major General Joseph Hooker; and Robert E. Lee's decision to invade the North for the second time.

This chapter focuses on 1862, with a particular emphasis on how Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 Valley Campaign impacted enslaved people and free blacks. Throughout the spring of 1862, enslaved people, estimated in the thousands, sought refuge with Union forces. However, as this chapter illustrates, taking sanctuary with Union troops did not mean that the Valley’s African Americans were passive participants. This chapter highlights the various ways freedom seekers supported Union operations in the Valley throughout 1862. Simultaneously, the chapter also illustrates that the desire for survival at times trumped the desire for freedom and prompted some freedom seekers to return to enslavers. Although incidents such as these have been used by advocates of the Lost Cause to perpetuate the “happy slave” myth, this chapter discusses the complexities of life for African Americans and how what some interpreted as loyalty to enslavers was in fact an enslaved person’s loyalty to themselves. Finally, this chapter examines how some Union soldiers, due to interactions with enslaved people in 1862, became more open to transforming the war to preserve the Union into one that also eradicated slavery.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered on November 19, 1863, included several biblical themes; it even sounded like the King James Bible. The opening—“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty”—recalled texts from the Bible, including the book of Revelation (Revelation 12:5). The Gettysburg Address assessed a year of unprecedented sacrifice on the battlefield. This was also a year of conflicting viewpoints of the war’s moral purpose, especially as deaths multiplied and battles continued with no end in sight. Loss cries out for meaning, and Americans sensed that in 1863. When Americans saw loss on a scale like they did that year, they turned to the Bible to give meaning to the war, much as Lincoln did at Gettysburg.

This chapter addresses the various ways in which local forces in Oregon and Washington used the news of Portland's 1912 scandal to advance their own political agendas. An assessment of how the 1912 scandal spread to the small eastern Washington town of Walla Walla and there implicated John Gibson, a locally prominent newsman and church worker, is then provided. Dana Sleeth's bitter campaign against the Portland elites had helped crystallize at the local level the notion that the homosexual was a middle- and upper-class character, lacking any roots in the working classes. Edward Stonewall Jackson McAllister was a man who emerged as a central figure in the Portland scandal. The political and legal activities of McAllister are then described. Gibson's immediate repentance and the substantial support he enjoyed from locals shielded him from the kind of public humiliation suffered by McAllister.

The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia played a key role in the military actions in the Eastern Theater of the Civil War. Recently, historical research and an archaeological survey were conducted at the Valley battlefields of the Battle of Front Royal, fought in 1862, and the Third Battle of Winchester, fought in September 1864. The first battle was part of Stonewall Jackson's infamous 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign while the second was the first of a series of Union victories in General Philip Sheridan's 1864 Valley Campaign, which resulted in the Union's control of the Shenandoah Valley. The two battlefields represent a study of contrasting expectations and findings. The archaeological imprint of a previous battle line was found in an unexpected position at Third Winchester while the remains of a poorly documented skirmish dating to 1864 was found on the 1862 Front Royal battlefield. Research domains relating to the archaeological imprints of battlefields, the proper use of historic documentation, and effective metal detector survey are considered in this article.

This chapter discusses the statue of Robert E. Lee that was donated by philanthropist Paul Goodloe McIntire to the city of Charlottesville in 1924. The statue depicted Lee riding his horse in a heroic, dignified pose. It also mentions another statue McIntire commissioned of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, who was designed by Charles Keck and set on a granite base carved with the allegorical figures of Faith and Valor. The Lee and Jackson statues embodied the “lost cause” interpretation of the Civil War, a phrase first attributed to Edward A. Pollard, a graduate of the University of Virginia (UVA) and apologist for slavery. This chapter talks about Elizabeth R. Varon, an American history professor, who describes the “lost cause” narrative as the original “false equivalency.”

This chapter recalls the approval of the resolution to create the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces by the Charlottesville City Council on May 28, 2016. It explains that the resolution will provide the council with options for telling the full story of Charlottesville's history of race and for changing the City's narrative through public spaces. It also identifies nine persons who were appointed to the Blue Ribbon Commission, which had as its principal focus the statues Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The chapter highlights protestors that favor the removal of the statues, arguing that modern society should not idolize an evil history. It analyzes the Blue Ribbon Commissions compromise to not remove the Lee and Jackson statues on the condition that their meaning is transformed, and their history is retold.

This chapter recalls Judge Moore's ruling on May 2, 2017, which guaranteed that the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson would retain their symbolic presence in the city for some time. It mentions Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler, who were not eased by the ruling over the two symbols of the Confederacy and were not about to let the City of Charlottesville off the hook. It also looks into Spencer and Kessler plan for a May rally in Charlottesville that dramatically understate the breadth of their full agenda. The chapter highlights how Charlottesville in 2017 was linked in mind and spirit to the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. It traces the history of America regarding its impulse to persecute Jews that has been inextricably intertwined with the impulse to persecute the poor, women, Catholics, Muslims, African Americans, gays, lesbians, and immigrants.

This book concludes by showing how Lee's army was regarded by the general public. In September 1862, 58-year-old Baltimorean Elizabeth Phoebe Key Howard cheered for close to five hours as men from Stonewall Jackson's old division marched past her. “The Confederate army was a sight that almost overcame me,” she admitted to her husband. “Dirty, (I must say it) bronzed by exposure—marked by hardship & suffering—badly clad from want—yet with a look of firm patient and cheerful endurance and unflinching courage and determination.” They were unlike any people Howard had ever seen. Mexican War veteran William Pitt Ballinger was not quite so wordy, but in eight words summarized these and other sentiments when he exclaimed in his diary after yet another Confederate victory, “What a glorious army that of Lee is.”

This chapter recounts the call to conscience issued by Congregate Charlottesville, Black Lives Matter, and their allies, coupled with the ugly events in Charlottesville at the Ku Klux Klan rally on July 8. It mentions the sense of personal accountability for the storm of hate speeches that occurred in Charlottesville for several months. It also points out that the Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee statues were all erected during the Jim Crow years, in brazen defiance of the dignity of blacks. The chapter explains how the Lee and Jacksons monuments are suffused with the righteousness of the South's cause during the Civil War, which was slavery. It discusses the most intense hate speech in America known as cross burning, a symbolic ritual long associated with the Ku Klux Klan.