During the campaign that led to the Second Battle of Manassas in August 1862, a

northerner suffered a broken leg when the train he was riding on ran off the rails at

Bristol Station after some Confederate troops lifted a section of track.

Afterwards, the northern civilian was lying on a stretcher when he heard that Stonewall Jackson was nearby.

He immediately pleaded with his captors to be lifted up so he could see the famous general.

Now you have to understand that Stonewall wasn't concerned about appearances. His uniform customarily was a single-breasted thread-bear coat that he had worn in the Mexican war.

A battered forage cap that he wore with the broken visor pulled far down over his eyes and an outsized pair of flop-top boots that covered feet estimated at size 14.

The general road a runny, lesterless brown-guilding named Little Soral, as the pint-sized beasts loapt down the road, Jackson's big feet were always dangerously close to the ground.

The rider and his mount had little lightness to a champion on his charger. Even Henry Kid Douglas, Jackson's youngest staff member, admitted his chief was, quote,

the worst dressed, worst mounted, most fated, and dingy-looking general ever seen. End quote.

Accordingly, when the accommodating rebels at Bristol Station lifted up the northener to get a look at Jackson, the civilian stared and disbelieved, unable to fathom that such a raggedy person could be the famous Stonewall.

Then, with his voice tinged with disgust, he cried out, oh my god, lay me down.

The story circulated through the ranks quickly, as such stories do, and soon became a classic inside joke among the men under Jackson's command.

For from that time on, every time something happened that was distressing, unexpected, or otherwise disconfidding, a soldier was bound to cry out, oh my god, lay me down.

History doesn't record whether Jackson ever heard the joke or had a clue about its meaning, but every soldier in his core, probably in the entire army, understood it perfectly.

Hey everyone, welcome to episode 138 of our Civil War podcast, My Name is Rich, and I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Thanks for tuning into the podcast.

As we said at the end of the last show, we're going to leave the peninsula campaign for a while and head out to the Shenandoah Valley.

Only after we cover Stonewall Jackson's famous Valley campaign in its entirety, we then turn our attention back to the Richmond Front to see how Robert E. Lee saves the Confederacies' capital with the series of bloody, ferocious engagements that came to be known as the Seven Days Battles.

Before we talk about the Valley campaign though, we're going to talk about Stonewall Jackson. His 1862 campaign in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia catapulted him at that time to unrivaled fame in the Confederacy.

His accomplishments fit the model of what most southerners considered superior military leadership.

Jackson's boldness and insistence on inflicting the greatest possible damage to the enemy together with his well-known Christian piety made him the perfect soldier for the Confederate people.

The 1862 Valley campaign illustrates Jackson's impact on Southern morale. Timing and command-style meant everything in terms of why this campaign, which was modest by civil war standards, nevertheless resonated so powerfully.

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