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The Chandlers tried to make the office that Jackson would use as his sick room a little more comfortable by setting up a bed and cheerful furnishings, including a clock on the mantle. When Jackson arrived he was in good spirits, apologizing to Dr. Chandler for being unable to shake hands with him.
The string hanging out of the porcelain bowl was intended to wick water onto Jackson’s wound to keep it cool and moist.
The bed and the clock on display today are from 1863. After the war Dr. Chandler gave Jackson’s bed to Mrs. Ann Boulware, founder and first president of the Ladies Memorial Society of Spotsylvania so that she could sell it to raise funds to remove and rebury the dead from the battlefields of Spotsylvania County. Fortunately, the money was raised without needing to sell the bed and it was preserved.
From the interpretive signs in the room:
Jackson’s Sick Room
Jackson’s wife, Mary Anna, and their infant daughter, Julia, arrived on May 7, the same day pneumonia set in. Mrs. Jackson had last seen her husband on April 29, “in the full flush of vigorous manhood. Now,” she wrote, “his fearful wounds, his mutilated arm, the scratches on his face, and, above all, the desperate pneumonia, which was flushing his cheeks, oppressing his breathing and benumbing his senses, wrung my soul….” On May 10, she asked her husband if he was willing to die that day if it was God’s will. The general whispered, “I prefer it.”
Slipping into delirium, Jackson shouted commands as if he were on the battlefield. “order A.P. Hill to prepare for action! Pass the infantry to the front rapidly! Tell Major Hawks*…” His voice fell silent, and then he smiled “a file of incredible sweetness.” Quietly he said, “Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.” Thomas Jonathan (“Stonewall”) Jackson died on this bed on Sunday, May 10, 1863. The clock on the mantle ticked away Jackson’s last moments and marked his passing at 3:15 p.m.
*A.P. Hill was one of Jackson’s division commanders, who would go on to be a corps commander before being killed at the end of the Siege of Petersburg. Major Wells Hawks was Jackson’s commissary officer, and a relative of the author of this website.