Image Size: 14" x 18"
250 Signed and Numbered Giclée Limited Edition Prints (VMI Edition)
100 Signed and Numbered Canvas Edition Prints
250 UDC Edition

This print can be purchased here or at the VMI Museum Store located on the VMI campus in Lexington, VA. A special UDC Edition of 250 which includes the Virginia Division UDC seal is available for purchase through the Virginia Division UDC.

Throughout history, few other man-and-his-horse duos have been more fittingly coupled than Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and Little Sorrel.

Both were mocked for their gaits and postures, each said to be ungainly. Neither bore a striking pose, the General frequently described as crumpled and unkempt while clad in an often-dirty uniform, and Little Sorrel with an undistinguished neck and a broad girth hardly worthy of his earlier name "Fancy." Jackson was slouching, Little Sorrel, scrubby.

Both man and beast, however, defined their maligners and proved their strength and endurance during the most trying times of America’s past. Although Gen. Jackson owned four other horses, Little Sorrel was his most frequent choice, riding the steed in almost all battles of the Valley Campaign.

While both early on might have been determined to be less than noteworthy, history rescripted that rigid interpretation during and certainly following the Civil War.

Little Sorrel and his master were quiet and intelligent and were blessed with a calm demeanor, traits that repeatedly ushered them through hail of gunfire and the explosions of cannons. They were leaders who became heroes.

Almost 140 years after the end of the war, Little Sorrel is about to gain a new habitat, a tribute the Virginia Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy believes is merited.

Partnering with renowned artist Gary Casteel, the chapter is raising money for a new climate-controlled container for the horse that has stood at the Virginia Military Institute since the last 1940s as a tribute to his dedication to Jackson and, of course, to the venerated general.

Casteel, a painter and sculptor of near Lexington, Virginia where VMI is located and where both Gen. and Mrs. (Mary Anna) Jackson are buried, has donated a painting featuring VMI cadets and Little Sorrel. In Casteel’s dry brush watercolor production, “Love Makes Memory Eternal,” the five young uniformed men and the celebrated horse are standing in front of the Washington Arch on the Institute’s campus. The Blue Ridge Mountains form the background. The setting is the early 1880s. Little Sorrel died in 1886 at the age of 36.