Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/111

Rh how to replace him, but God's will be done. I trust He will raise up some one in his place."

To his son Custis he wrote:

"You will have heard the death of General Jackson. It is a terrible loss. I do not know how to replace him. Any victory would be dear at such a cost. But God's will be done."

I have confined myself to speaking of "Jackson, the Soldier," and have not spoken of him as the humble, active Christian, whose life in Lexington and in the army was "a living epistle and read of all men."

I cannot go into that now, except to say the negro Sunday school, which he taught with such devotion, exerted an influence on the negroes of Lexington which is felt to this day among the negroes of that whole region.

The first contribution made to the fund which has placed at his grave the beautiful statue, which is the work of Edward Valentine, and is a veritable Stonewall Jackson in bronze, was made by the negro Baptist Church at Lexington, Va., whose pastor had been a pupil at the negro Sunday school.

And there has been placed recently a beautiful Stonewall Jackson memorial window in the new negro Presbyterian Church in the city of Roanoke, through the influence of the negro pastor, who was a member of Jackson's Sunday school.

After a prayer there followed the other exercises an able oration on Jackson, by General Fitzhugh Lee, an eloquent eulogy by ex-President Jefferson Davis, who was unquestionably one of the greatest orators of this land of orators; the unveiling of the monument by little Julia Jackson, the only child of the great soldier; the firing of artillery and small arms, and the enthusiastic cheers of the vast crowd. Father Hubert being now called on to pronounce the benediction uttered a few sentences of eloquent eulogy on Confederate soldiers in general and, Jackson in particular, and made this his climax: 'Thou knowest, O Lord, that Stonewall Jackson was the greatest