‘He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm’

On this day in 1863: Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, the Confederacy’s master tactician, dies of pneumonia, eight days after being mistakenly shot by troops from the 18th N.C. regiment.

He was shot at nightfall while scouting ahead of the line near Chancellorsville, Va. His men mistook him for the enemy. As he lay wounded, doctors amputated his maimed arm. “He has lost his left arm,” says Robert E. Lee, “but I have lost my right arm.”

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One thought on “‘He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm’”

  1. Incorrect—he laid wounded for quite a while until reached by A.P. Hill who stopped the bleeding, and who then tried to get him out of the line of fire.

    They removed him from the scene and placed him in an ambulance and in which he was taken a few miles behind the lines to a surgical tent (hours later), where he was medicated and his arm was then amputated.

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