Civil War Lecture at Liberty University

African-American Troops in the Civil War: United States Colored Troops & Black Confederates @ Liberty University, 7:00 PM, Thursday, February 15, DeMoss Hall 1090, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia.

Speaker: Kenny Rowlette, Associat Professor of English, Director, the National Civil War Chaplains Museum and Research Foundation. Free and open to the public. For more information, please call 434-582-2087.

(Pictured here is Jefferson Shields, of Lexington, Virginia.)

"One of Shields’s claims, among others, was that he was the first member of Jackson’s Sunday-school class: 'I was General Jackson’s first scholar. Somebody ought to write a history of Jackson’s Christian life, for he was the greatest Christian that ever lived. Jackson had a class of boys, about eighteen. Jackson kept me from swearing, and I had to go to the Presbyterian Church because I admired him so much.' " from Stonewall Jackson – The Black Man’s Friend, page 120)

Shields also claimed to have cooked for Stonewall Jackson, though no record exists to support that claim. He was, however, a Private in Company H , Rockbridge Rifles, 27th Virginia Infantry Stonewall Brigade, and was a persnal body servant of Colonel James Kerr Edmonson of Lexington, Virginia. Edmonson was Commander of the 27th Virginia. Shields was often the honored guest at Confederate Veterans' reunions. It would be easy to speculate that the veterans exploited Shields’s desire for fame, but one could also conclude that it was Shields who actually gained the upper hand from this relationship, because his fame “assured him a comfortable income to the end of his earthly pilgrimage.” So comfortable, in fact, that he purchased a lot on what is now Davidson Street in Lexington and built a handsome brick home that still stands. Shields lived there with his wife, the former Mary McNutt, until his death in 1918 at the age of eighty-nine. The two were married by Stonewall Jackson's pastor, Dr. William S. White. Today, Shields and his wife rest in Evergreen Cemetery in Lexington.