The Stonewall Jackson Hotel

The Stonewall Jackson Hotel in 2005.

At first glance, the Stonewall Jackson Hotel in Staunton appears to embody vivid, explicit commemoration of the Confederacy. Named for one of the South's most successful Civil War generals, General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, the massive building opened in 1924. Today, it still dominates much of Staunton's skyline, an enormous, rooftop sign proclaiming the name and presence of the "STONEWALL JACKSON HOTEL." Yet a closer inspection--a review of some of the key events and decorative features housed in the hotel at one time or another--reveals approaches to Civil War history that have been restrained and surprisingly flexible in contrast to the structure's imposing physical presence.

Creating the Stonewall Jackson Hotel

In the 1920's, residents of Augusta County who commemorated the Confederacy possessed ample cause to celebrate the memory of Stonewall Jackson. During the war, Augusta County's Fifth Virginia Infantry had fought under Jackson from 1861 until his mortal wounding in 1863. During the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862, Jackson's troops shielded Staunton against Union armies, driving those from the Valley and prompting one of the town's wartime diarists to exult "the whole country is ringing with the name of Jackson." After the war, another resident of Staunton summarized the marches and combats of Jackson's men during the 35 days of events composing the core of the Valley Campaign in 1862: "a total of 245 miles, fighting in the meantime 4 desperate battles and winning them all."¹

Jackson gained renewed memorialization when A. T. Moore opened the Stonewall Jackson Hotel in Staunton in May 1924. Built of brick, the tall hotel contained 100 rooms. Sometime later in the 1920's, its management also began operating the Stonewall Jackson Golf Club, a satellite facility situated a short distance north of Staunton.²

Then and since, however, the hotel's role in Civil War commemoration was ambiguous. Moore and his associates had selected the hotel's name in an contest open to Augusta County residents that drew nominations from many individuals. Of those, only three people--a resident of Churchville and two residents of Staunton--suggested "Stonewall Jackson." The top runner-up nominations reflected either the region's scenic terrain or its historical associations outside the Civil War era: "Woodrow Wilson," "Fort Lewis," and "Appalachian."³

In this photograph taken around 1930, a portrait of Stonewall Jackson (center of balcony) overlooks the hotel's lobby.

Colorised postcards, marketed at about the same time, show four areas of the hotel's interior that its management considered most appealing to potential guests. All four areas lacked decorative features referencing either Stonewall Jackson or the Civil War.

High-profile advertisements appearing in two special, commemorative editions of the Staunton Leader, the city's principal newspaper, likewise ignored Jackson and the war. The advertisements appeared more than a decade apart yet were identical in listing the hotel's primary attributes: "Fire-Proof . . . modern in every respect" (1929) and "fireproof and modern in every respect" (1940). The advertisement published in 1940 mentioned a secondary attribute vaguely: Staunton's "central" location amid the Shenandoah Valley's internationally renowned "scenic and historical points of interest."⁴

Indeed, it was not until the late 1940s that the owners added the rooftop sign "STONEWALL JACKSON HOTEL," more than 20 years after opening.⁵

Postcard view of the hotel prior to installation of the rooftop sign.

The Gold Star Mothers and the Stonewall Jackson Hotel

In 1936, the Stonewall Jackson Hotel hosted a gathering of Gold Star Mothers, women who had each lost at least one son during World War I. On the first day of their three-day visit to Staunton, they formally organized themselves as the Gold Star Mothers of North America. Like the similarly named, preexisting American Gold Star Mothers Association, the group founded in Staunton regarded their organization as "patriotic" in nature and World War I as a noble conflict. They viewed the late President Woodrow Wilson, Staunton's most famous son, as a "hero" and their visit to his birthplace in the city as a "pilgrimage."⁶

The Gold Star Mothers of North America in Staunton, 1936. Courtesy of Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library.

In September 1937, some 150 members of the Gold Star Mothers of North America returned to Staunton for a four-day pilgrimage to Wilson's birthplace. Stauntonians again showered the Mothers with hospitality and placed a float publicizing their organization at the head of what was later described as "the longest parade in Staunton's history."⁷

The Stonewall Jackson Hotel served as the Gold Star Mothers' "headquarters," as it had in 1936, providing them with lodgings and hosting a number of their indoor events. Midway through the first full day of activities in 1937, they assembled in the hotel's ballroom to hear Virginia Congressman A. Willis Robertson deliver the keynote address.8 In his speech, Robertson equated the human cost of the Civil War with that of America's participation in World War I, in 1917-1918, and of recent fighting in China in 1937. "We know the heart-ache of pitting brother against brother, and the anguish of sending sons to a foreign battlefield," Robertson noted.9

A. Willis Robertson as a United States Senator. Courtesy of U.S. Senate Historical Office.

His concluding remarks quoted and drew authority from Stonewall Jackson's dying last-words following the Civil War battle of Chancellorsville: "Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees." Similarly, Robertson argued, the United States must show by example that "the dark rivers of fear and suspicion" that sprang from "international greed" and that "separate the nations of the world" could be crossed. World War I, according to Robertson, had fulfilled Jackson's dream of a reconciled North and South--reconciliation that needed extension across the globe in 1937--by fostering the blend of "Union blue and the Confederate gray" into the American "unity" of Wilson's well-intentioned but delusional military crusade. Yet such blending in the army that Wilson sent off to war was the only redeeming aspect that Robertson could find in the deaths of the Mothers' sons. (Robertson had served as an army officer during World War I.)¹⁰ Jackson had actually expressed little if any reconciliationist sentiment during the Civil War, but Robertson perhaps overlooked this historical silence out of eagerness to provide the Mothers with a pacific message.

At the time Robertson spoke, the reconciliation between North and South was primarily among white people. Lodgings at the Stonewall Jackson Hotel were restricted to whites in 1937; and Robertson was a segregationist who later, as a United States Senator, would join the States' Rights Democratic ("Dixiecrat") Party and its program of supporting the nation's Jim Crow laws. He would also join 95 other Southern Congressmen in signing the Southern Manifesto, which condemned the Brown v Board of Education decision by the United States Supreme Court.¹¹.

The Stonewall Jackson Hotel Today

The lobby of the hotel after its renovation in 2005.

The Stonewall Jackson Hotel today boasts characteristics altered considerably since 1924, not the least of which is its patronage by guests of all races. Unchanged, however, is the subdued connection to Jackson, which remains limited largely to the rooftop sign. During preparations, in 1995, for the hotel's renovation, planners considered an option to create a "Living History" atmosphere by giving the building prominent, "Civil War period dcor."¹² Yet this approach failed to materialize by the time the hotel reopened for business in 2005; if anything, its references to the general and the war are even scarcer now because his portrait no longer ornaments the lobby.