Margaret Junkin Preston of Lexington, Virginia was the older sister of Elinor “Ellie” Junkin, who was at one time engaged to Major Thomas J. Jackson, a professor a nearby Virginia Military Institute.
Because she was so close to her younger sister, Maggie (as she was called) disapproved of her sister’s betrothment as she could not stand the idea of anyone coming between her and Ellie.
Her disapproval was so strong that the engagement was at one point called off before a chastened Maggie wrote a letter to Ellie with a poem that read:
“Forgive these eyes so dim!
I must – must love whom you have loved
So I will turn to him –
And clasping with a silent – touch
Whose tenderness endears
Your hand and his between my own
I bless them with my tears”
Ellie and Jackson were soon married, but she died shortly thereafter while giving birth to a stillborn son.
Jackson was bereft and told his sister Laura that his only hope was that he could die too in order to join them in heaven.
In December of the year Ellie died, Jackson received a letter from his old adversary, who was bereft at the loss of her beloved sister and was reaching out to the one person who loved her as well as she did. This began an unusual letter writing friendship, that led to Jackson staying in Maggie’s home – the same home in which he stayed after marrying Ellie.
According to a historian, “[by] the summer of 1856, Maggie and the major were almost certainly in love and thus faced a very serious problem. The constitution of the Presbyterian Church prohibited a man from marrying his dead wife’s sister. In the eyes of the Church, Maggie and Thomas were, by virtue of his marriage to, forever brother and sister.”
When both Maggie and Jackson realized they were never going to be together, both went their separate ways, though Maggie thereafter held Jackson in the highest esteem, eventually marrying John Thomas Lewis Preston, a fellow professor at VMI, friend of Jackson’s, and later Jackson’s aide-de-camp.
When Jackson (who had by then earned the sobriquet “Stonewall” for his stout defense of Henry Hill during the First Battle of Manassas) was mortally wounded by his own North Carolina troops during the Battle of Chancellorsville, his dying words were reputed to be, “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.”
Jackson, Maggie, and Ellie are all buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Lexington, Virginia.
THE SHADE OF THE TREES by Margaret Junkin Preston (1820-1897) "What are the thoughts that are stirring his breast? What is the mystical vision he sees? - 'Let us pass over the river, and rest Under the shade of the trees.' Has he grown sick of his toils and his tasks? Sighs the worn spirit for respite or ease? Is it a moment's cool halt that he asks 'Under the shade of the trees.' Is it the gurgle of waters whose flow Oftime has come to him, borne on the breeze, Memory listens to, lapsing so low, Under the shade of the trees? Nay - though the rasp of the flesh was so sore, Faith, that had yearnings far keener than these, Saw the soft sheen of the Thitherward Shore Under the shade of the trees. Caught the high psalms of ecstatic delight-- Heard the harps harping, like soundings of seas-- Watched earth's assoiled ones, walking in white Under the shade of the trees. Oh, was it strange he should pine for release, Touched to the soul with such transports as these, - He who so needed the balsam of peace, Under the shade of the trees? Yea, it was noblest for him - it was best (Questioning naught of our Father's decrees), There to pass over the river and rest Under the shade of the trees!"
Song Of Ajax 