War brought profound changes to the Chandler family, Fairfield, and the enslaved people who labored on the plantation. Three of Thomas Chandler’s sons enlisted in the Confederate army. When the Union army occupied Fredericksburg in 1862, many of Chandler’s slaves seized freedom, leaving the family without its customary workforce. In December 1862, the Confederates established a major supply depot at Guinea Station, just a few hundred yards from Fairfield, and camps spread across the plantation. Stonewall Jackson camped there for a week, declining the Chandlers’ offer to stay in the house and pitching a tent nearby instead. By 1863, Chandler sold Fairfield, but before the family could move away, Jackson returned there to die. His death at Fairfield brought the plantation a fame it had never known. When Jackson arrived for the last time on May 4, 1863, the plantation had become a vast camp crowded with thousands of Union prisoners and Confederate wounded.