Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/309

 The Litb'dt-H Raid and Its Effects. 301

that they were not Yankees, and when they dismounted and came into the house it proved to be Colonel William L. Jackson, Major William P. Thompson and their colored servant man. This was a great surprise to us, as these gentlemen had been connected with the Eastern army for more than a year, and we then thought of them as a part of General Lee's army, and coming this way in the dead hours of the night was very significant. It was my first meeting with Colonel William L. Jackson, and I will now try to describe him as he appeared to me then a seven-teen-year-old boy and to this day I still re- tain a perfect mental photograph of his appearance. I was in- troduced to Colonel Jackson in my father's family room. He had on a beautiful uniform of new Confederate gray cloth, with three stars on the collar, that told he held the rank of colonel. General Jackson would have weighed fully two hundred pounds and was at least six feet in height. He had unusually fine shoulders, head and face, and the most animated man that I had ever seen in conversation.

His hair and whiskers were the deepest red that I had ever seen on the head and face of any man. In reply to a question from my father, he stated that he was forty-two years old. I gathered from the conversation that he had known my father very well indeed before the war began. He seemed to be per- fectly informed of all matters, both civil and military, relating to the Confederacy. A good dead of the time that night, dur- ing the conversation, he walked the floor, although he had made a long horseback ride the day he reached my father's. Colonel Jackson's mission to my father's house was to see Col- onel Fontaine brought to the parlor, where they were introduced to each other.

Cclonel Jackson told Colonel Fontaine, in the presence of Major Thompson, my father and myself, that he (Jackson) was iust from Richmond, where he had seen Mr. Davis and had come by General Lee's headquarters on the Rappahannock River, and that General Lee's army was hard up for "meat rations," and the plan had been made up to raid Northwest Virginia and capture and drive South every kind of cattle in that part of the country that would make beef then and 'the next summer. This, Colonel Jackson said had been determined