Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/63

Rh at this point called the Plank road. A hundred and fifty yards to the east of us and where the forest begins, the road forks, the turnpike keeping the straight course, and the Plank road bending to the south, the two coming together again at Tabernacle Church, about four and a half miles distant. Where they first diverge they are intersected by the road from Ely's ford on which the old corduroys laid by the army are still to be seen. A half mile back of us the Ely's ford road is intersected at Chandler's house by a road called the Mineral Spring road running northerly to the River road at a point below the United States ford. From Chandler's house a woods road also communicates with the Plank road west of Chancellor's house. These roads give Chancellorsville a strategic importance which otherwise it would not possess. Going west the Plank road diverges again to the south from the turnpike at Dowdall's Tavern about two miles distant, following the line of the watershed between the Rapidan and the Mattapony. On the north side of the turnpike beyond Dowdall's is a little chapel called Wilderness Church, and some miles beyond that is the Wilderness Tavern. The road from Germanna ford crosses the turnpike and runs to the Plank road, the two being a mile and a half apart at that point. Beyond the Germanna road running southerly from the turnpike to Todd's tavern is a well known road called the Brock road. Most interesting by far however, of all these localities is the sequestered spot about three-quarters of a mile westerly just beyond the ravine in front of Fairview, and a little to the north side of the road, where a modest pedestal and block of stone mark the spot where Jackson fell. Illustrious shade! No one can approach the spot without being awed by the consciousness that here the very genius of war fell a merciless victim to fate, and that the very passion which made him glorious and great proved his own destruction. All nature seems to stand by in mute reverence. Not a sound escapes through all the wide forest. Not the note of a bird, or the whisper of an insect; the very atmosphere itself seems laden with its heaviness, and the silence of death is all pervading.

When General Mahone learned that his outposts at