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Stonewall Jackson Free Online Books |
Stonewall Jackson in Civil War |
Stonewall Jackson Biography |
Stonewall Jackson Obituary |
Stonewall Jackson's Last Words |
Stonewall Jackson Birthday |
Stonewall Jackson Quotes STONEWALL JACKSON
Chapter I WEST POINT1
Stonewall Jackson Index |
Stonewall Jackson at West Point |
Stonewall Jackson and Mexican War |
Stonewall Jackson Lexington |
Stonewall Jackson and Secession |
Stonewall Jackson and Harper's Ferry |
Stonewall Jackson at Battle of Bull Run |
Stonewall Jackson at Romney |
Stonewall Jackson at Kernstown |
Battle of McDowell |
Battle of Winchester |
Battle of Cross Keys and Port Republic |
Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign |
The Seven Days Battle |
Battle of Frayser's Farm and Malvern Hill |
Battle of Cedar Run |
Second Battle of Bull Run |
Battle of Second Bull Run Conclusion |
Battle of Harper's Ferry |
Battle of Sharpsburg |
Battle of Fredericksburg |
The Army of Northern Virginia |
Stonewall Jackson's Winter Quarters |
Battle of Chancellorsville |
Battle of Chancellorsville Conclusion
In the first quarter of the century, on the hills which stand above
the Ohio River, but in different States of the Union, were born two
children, destined, to all appearance, to lives of narrow interests
and thankless toil. They were the sons of poor parents, without
influence or expectations; their native villages, deep in the
solitudes of the West, and remote from the promise and possibilities
of great cities, offered no road to fortune. In the days before the
railway, escape from the wilderness, except for those with long
purses, was very difficult; and for those who remained, if their
means were small, the farm and the store were the only occupations.
But a farmer without capital was little better than a hired hand;
trade was confined to the petty dealings of a country market; and
although thrift and energy, even under such depressing conditions,
might eventually win a competence, the most ardent ambition could
hardly hope for more. Never was an obscure existence more
irretrievably marked out than for these children of the Ohio; and
yet, before either had grown grey, the names of
Abraham Lincoln,
President of the United States, and of Stonewall Jackson,
Lieutenant-General in the Confederate Army, were household words in
both America and Europe. Descendants of the pioneers, those hardy
borderers, half soldiers and half
1 Copyright 1897 by Longmans, Green, & Co.
WEST POINT 2
farmers, who held and reclaimed, through long years of Indian
warfare, the valleys and prairies of the West, they inherited the
best attributes of a frank and valiant race. Simple yet wise, strong
yet gentle, they were gifted with all the qualities which make
leaders of men. Actuated by the highest principles, they both
ennobled the cause for which they fought; and while the opposition
of such kindred natures adds to the dramatic interest of the Civil
War, the career of the great soldier, although a theme perhaps less
generally attractive, may be followed as profitably as that of the
great statesmen. Providence dealt with them very differently. The
one was struck down by a mortal wound before his task was well
begun; his life, to all human seeming, was given in vain, and his
name will ever be associated with the mournful memories of a lost
cause and a vanished army. The other, ere he fell beneath the
assassin’s stroke, had seen the abundant fruits of his mighty
labours; his sun set in a cloudless sky. And yet the resemblance
between them is very close. Both dared
For that sweet mother-land which gave them birth Nobly to do,
nobly to die. Their names, Graven on memorial columns, are a song
Heard in the future; . . . more than wall And rampart, their
examples reach a hand Far thro’ all years, and everywhere they
meet And kindle generous purpose, and the strength To mould it
into action pure as theirs.
Jackson, in one respect, was more fortunate than
Lincoln. Although
born to poverty, he came of a Virginia family which was neither
unknown nor undistinguished, and as showing the influences which
went to form his character, its history and traditions may be
briefly related. It is an article
of popular belief that the State of Virginia, the Old Dominion of
the British Crown, owes her fame to the blood of the English
Cavaliers. The idea, however, has small foundation in fact. Not a
few of her great names are derived from a less romantic source, and
the Confederate general, like many of his neighbours in the western
portion of the State, traced his
THE JACKSONS OF VIRGINIA 3
origin to the Lowlands of Scotland. An ingenious author of the last
century, himself born on Tweed-side, declares that those Scotch
families whose patronymics end in “son,” although numerous and
respectable, and descended, as the distinctive syllable denotes,
from the Vikings, have seldom been pre-eminent either in peace or
war. And certainly, as regards the Jacksons of bygone centuries, the
assertion seems justified. The name is almost unknown to Border
history. In neither lay nor legend has it been preserved; and even
in the “black lists” of the wardens, where the more enterprising of
the community were continually proclaimed as thieves and
malefactors, it is seldom honoured with notice. The omission might
be held as evidence that the family was of peculiar honesty, but, in
reality, it is only a proof that it was insignificant. It is not
improbable that the Jacksons were one of the landless clans, whose
only heritages were their rude “peel” towers, and who, with no
acknowledged chief of their own race, followed, as much for
protection as for plunder, the banner of some more powerful house.
In course of time, when the Marches grew peaceful and morals
improved, when cattle-lifting, no longer profitable, ceased to be an
honourable occupation, such humbler marauders drifted away into the
wide world, leaving no trace behind, save the grey ruins of their
grim fortalices, and the incidental mention of some probably
disreputable scion in a chapman’s ballad. Neither mark nor memory of
the Jacksons remains in Scotland. We only know that some members of
the clan, impelled probably by religious persecution, made their way
to Ulster, where a strong colony of Lowlanders had already been
established. Under a milder sky
and a less drastic government the expatriated Scots lost nothing of
their individuality. Masterful and independent from the beginning,
masterful and independent they remained, inflexible of purpose,
impatient of justice, and staunch to their ideals. Something,
perhaps, they owed to contact with the Celt. Wherever the Ulster
folk have made their home, the breath of the wholesome North has
followed them, preserving
THE JACKSONS OF VIRGINIA 4
untainted their hereditary virtues. Shrewd, practical, and thrifty,
prosperity has consistently rewarded them; and yet, in common with
the Irishmen of English stock, they have found in the trade of arms
the most congenial outlet for their energies. An abiding love of
peace can hardly be enumerated amongst their more prominent
characteristics; and it is a remarkable fact, which, unless there is
some mysterious property in the air, can only be explained by the
intermixture of races, that Ireland “within the Pale” has been
peculiarly prolific of military genius. As England has bred
admirals, so the sister isle has bred soldiers. The tenacious
courage of the Anglo-Saxon, blended with the spirit of that people
which above all others delights in war, has proved on both sides of
the Atlantic a most powerful combination of martial qualities. The
same mixed strain which gave England Wolfe and Wellington, the
Napiers and the Lawrences, has given America some of her greatest
captains; and not the least famous of her Presidents is that General
Jackson who won the battle of
New Orleans in 1814. So,
early in the century the name became known beyond the seas; but
whether the same blood ran in the veins of the Confederate general
and of the soldier President is a matter of some doubt. The former,
in almost every single respect, save his warm heart, was the exact
converse of the typical Irishman, the latter had a hot temper and a
ready wit. Both, however, were undeniably fond of fighting, and a
letter still preserved attests that their ancestors had lived in the
same parish of Londonderry.1
1748 John Jackson, the great-grandfather of our hero,
landed in America in 1748, and it was not long before he set his
face towards the wilderness. The emigrants from Ulster appear as a
rule to have moved westward. The States along the coast were already
colonised, and, despite its fertility, the country was little to
their taste. But beyond the border, in the broad Appalachian valley
which runs from the St. Lawrence to Alabama, on the
1 This letter is in the possession of Thomas Jackson Arnold,
Esquire, of Beverly, West Virginia, nephew of General “Stonewall”
Jackson. HIS BIRTH 5
banks of the great rivers, the Susquehanna, the Ohio, the
Cumberland, and the Tennessee, they found a land after their own
heart, a soil with whose properties they were familiar, the sweet
grasses and soft contours of their native hills. Here, too, there
was ample room for their communities, for the West was as yet but
sparsely tenanted. No inconsiderable number, penetrating far into
the interior, settled eventually about the headwaters of the Potomac
and the James. This highland region was the debatable ground of the
United States. So late as 1756 the State of Virginia extended no
further than the crests of the Blue Ridge. Two hundred miles
westward forts flying French colours dominated the valley of the
Ohio, and the wild and inhospitable tract, a very labyrinth of
mountains, which lay between, was held by the fierce tribes of the
“Six Nations” and the Leni-Lenape. Two years later the French had
been driven back to Canada; but it was not till near the close of
the century that the savage was finally dispossessed of his spacious
hunting grounds. It was on these
green uplands, where fight and foray were as frequent as once on the
Scottish border, that John Jackson and his wife, a fellow passenger
to America, by name Elizabeth Cummins, first pitched their camp, and
here is still the home of their descendants.
January 21, 1824 In the little town of Clarksburg, now the
county-seat of Harrison, but then no more than a village in the
Virginia backwoods, Thomas Jonathan Jackson was born on January 21,
1824. His father was a lawyer, clever and popular, who had inherited
a comfortable patrimony. The New World had been generous to the
Jacksons. The emigrant of 1748 left a valuable estate, and his many
sons were uniformly prosperous. Nor was their affluence the reward
of energy and thrift alone, for the lands reclaimed by axe and
plough were held by a charter of sword and musket. The redskin
fought hard for his ancestral domains. The stockaded forts, which
stood as a citadel of refuge in every settlement, were often the
scene of fierce attack and weary leaguer, and the nursing mothers of
the frontier families were no strangers to war and bloodshed. The
last great HIS BIRTH 6
battle with the Indians east of the Ohio was fought in 1774, but the
military experience of the pioneers was not confined to the warfare
of the border. John Jackson and his sons bore arms in the War of
Independence, and the trained riflemen of West Virginia were welcome
recruits in the colonial ranks. With the exception of the
Highlanders of the ’45, who had been deported in droves to the
plantations, no race had less cause to remain loyal to the Crown
than the men of Ulster blood. Even after the siege of Londonderry
they had been proscribed and persecuted; and in the War of
Independence the fiercest enemies of King George were the
descendants of the same Scotch-Irish who had held the north of
Ireland for King William. In
Washington’s campaigns more than one of the Jacksons won rank and
reputation; and when peace was established they married into
influential families. Nor was the next generation less successful.
Judges, senators, and soldiers upheld the honour of the name, and
proved the worth of the ancestral stock. They were marked, it is
said, by strong and characteristic features, by a warm feeling of
clanship, a capacity for hard work, and a decided love of roving.
Some became hunters, others explorers, and the race is now scattered
from Virginia to Oregon. A passion for litigation was a general
failing, and none of them could resist the fascination of machinery.
Every Jackson owned a mill or factory of some sort—many of them more
than one—and their ventures were not always profitable. Jackson’s
father, among others, found it easier to make money than to keep it.
Generous and incautious, he became deeply involved by becoming
security for others; high play increased his embarrassments; and
when he died in 1827 every vestige of his property was swept away.
His young widow, left with three small children, two sons and a
daughter, became dependent on the assistance of her kinsfolk for a
livelihood, and on the charity of the Freemasons for a roof. When
Thomas, her second son, was six years old, she married a Captain
Woodson; but her second matrimonial venture was not more fortunate
than her first. Her husband's means were small, and necessity
WEST VIRGINIA 7
soon compelled her to commit her two boys to the care of their
father’s relatives.
1831 Within a year the children stood round her dying bed,
and at a very early age our little Virginian found himself a
penniless orphan. But, as he never regretted his poverty, so he
never forgot his mother. To the latest hour of his life he loved to
recall her memory, and years after she had passed away her influence
still remained. Her beauty, her counsels, their last parting, and
her happy death, for she was a woman of deep religious feeling, made
a profound impression on him. To his childhood’s fancy she was the
embodiment of every grace; and so strong had been the sympathy
between them, that even in the midst of his campaigns she was seldom
absent from his thoughts. After her death the children found a home
with their father’s half-brother, who had inherited the family
estates, and was one of the largest slave-owners in the district.
Their surroundings, however, could hardly be called luxurious. Life
on the Ohio was very different from life on the coast. The western
counties of Virginia were still practically on the frontier of the
United States. The axe had thinned the interminable woods; mills
were busy on each mountain stream, and the sunny valleys were rich
in fruit and corn. But as yet there was little traffic. Steam had
not yet come to open up the wilderness. The population was small and
widely scattered; and the country was cut off as much by nature as
by distance from the older civilisation of the East. The parallel
ranges of the Alleghenies, with their pathless forests and great
canyons, were a formidable barrier to all intercourse. The West was
a world in itself. The only outlets eastward were the valleys of the
Potomac and the James, the one leading to Washington, the other to
Richmond; and so seldom were they used that the yeomen of the Ohio
uplands were almost as much opposed, both in character and in mode
of life, to the planters beyond the Blue Ridge, as the Covenanters
of Bothwell Brig to the gentlemen of Dundee’s Life Guards.
Although the sturdy independence and simple habits of
WEST VIRGINIA 8
the borderers were not affected by contact with wealthier
communities, isolation was not in every way a blessing. Served by
throngs of slaves, the great landowners of East Virginia found
leisure to cultivate the arts which make life more pleasant. The
rambling houses on the banks of the James, the Rappahannock, and the
Potomac, built on the model of English manors, had their libraries
and picture-galleries. A classical academy was the boast of every
town, and a university training was considered as essential to the
son of a planter as to the heir of an English squire. A true
aristocracy, in habit and in lineage, the gentlemen of Virginia long
swayed the councils of the nation, and among them were many who were
intimate with the best representatives of European culture. Beyond
the Alleghenies there were no facilities for education; and even had
opportunities offered few would have had the leisure to enjoy them.
Labour was scarce, either slave or hired. The owners of farms were
their own managers and overseers, and young men had to serve a
practical apprenticeship to lumbering and agriculture. To this rule,
despite his uncle’s wealth, Jackson was no exception. He had to
fight his own battle, to rub shoulders with all sorts and conditions
of men, and to hold his own as best he could.
It was a hard school, then, in which he grew to manhood. But for
that very reason it was a good school for the future soldier. For a
man who has to push his own way in the world, more especially if he
has to carve it with his sword, a boyhood passed amidst surroundings
which boast of no luxury and demand much endurance, is the best
probation. Von Moltke has recorded that the comfortless routine of
the Military Academy at Copenhagen inured him to privation, and
Jackson learned the great lesson of self-reliance in the rough life
of his uncle's homestead. The
story of his early years is soon told. As a blue-eyed child, with
long fair hair, he was curiously thoughtful and exceedingly
affectionate. His temper was generous and cheerful. His truthfulness
was proverbial, and his little sister found in him the kindest of
playmates HIS BOYHOOD 9
and the sturdiest of protectors. He was distinguished, too, for his
politeness, although good manners were by no means rare in the
rustic West. The manly courtesy of the true American is no exotic
product; nor is the universal deference to woman peculiar to any
single class. The farmer of the backwoods might be ignorant of the
conventionalities, but the simplicity and unselfishness which are
the root of all good breeding could be learned in West Virginia as
readily as in Richmond. Once,
tempted by his brother, the boy left his adopted home, and the two
children, for the elder was no more than twelve, wandered down the
Ohio to the Mississippi, and spent the summer on a lonely and
malarious island, cutting wood for passing steamers. No one opposed
their going, and it seems to have been considered quite natural in
that independent community that the veriest urchins should be
allowed to seek their fortunes for themselves. Returning, ragged and
fever-stricken, the little adventurers submitted once more to the
routine of the farm and to the intermittent studies of a country
school. After his failure as a man of business, our small hero
showed no further inclination to seek his fortunes far afield. He
was fond of his home. His uncle, attracted by his steadiness and
good sense, treated him more as a companion than a child; and in
everything connected with the farm, as well as in the sports of the
country side, the boy took the keenest interest. Delicate by nature,
with a tendency to consumption inherited from his mother, his
physique and constitution benefited by a life of constant exercise
and wholesome toil. At school he was a leader in every game, and his
proficiency in the saddle proved him a true Virginian. Fox-hunting
and horse-racing were popular amusements, and his uncle not only
kept a stable of well-bred horses, but had a four-mile race-course
on his own grounds. As a light-weight jockey the future general was
a useful member of the household, and it was the opinion of the
neighbourhood that “if a horse had any winning qualities whatever in
him, young Jackson never failed to bring them out.”
In the management of the estate he learned early to put
HIS BOYHOOD 10
his shoulder to the wheel. Transporting timber from the forest to
the saw-mill was one of his most frequent tasks, and tradition
records that if a tree were to be moved from ground of unusual
difficulty, or if there were one more gigantic than the rest, the
party of labourers was put under his control, and the work was sure
to be effected. One who knew him
well has described his character. “He was a youth of exemplary
habits, of indomitable will and undoubted courage. He was not what
is nowadays termed brilliant, but he was one of those untiring,
matter-of-fact persons who would never give up an undertaking until
he accomplished his object. He learned slowly, but what he got into
his head he never forgot. He was not quick to decide, except when
excited, and then, when he made up his mind to do a thing, he did it
on short notice and in quick time. Once, while on his way to school,
an overgrown rustic behaved rudely to one of the school-girls.
Jackson fired up, and told him he must apologise at once or he would
thrash him. The big fellow, supposing that he was more than a match
for him, refused, whereupon Jackson pitched into him, and gave him a
severe pounding.” His
surroundings, then, although neither refined nor elevating, were not
unwholesome; but of the moral influences to which he was subjected,
so much cannot be said, while the stock of piety that the original
settlers brought with them had not entirely vanished. There was much
irregularity of life; few men gave any thought to religion, and
young Jackson drifted with the tide. Yet there was something that
preserved him from contamination. His uncle, kindest of guardians,
though irreligious and a sportsman, was scrupulously exacting in
matters of integrity and veracity. His associates included the most
respectable, yet the morals of the sporting fraternity of a frontier
settlement are not likely to have been edifying. That his nephew, as
he himself declares, was an ardent frequenter of races,
“house-raisings,”1 and country dances is hardly
surprising, and it is assuredly no ground whatever for reproach. Nor
is it strange that, amid much laxity, he should have retained
1 Anglice, “house-warmings.”
HIS BOYHOOD 11
his integrity, that his regard for truth should have remained
untarnished, and that he should have consistently held aloof from
all that was mean and vile. His mother was no mere memory to that
affectionate nature. His good
qualities, however, would scarcely of themselves have done more than
raise him to a respectable rank amongst the farmers of West
Virginia. A spur was wanting to urge him beyond the limits of so
contracted an existence, and that spur was supplied by an honourable
ambition. Penniless and dependent as he was, he still remembered
that his ancestors had been distinguished beyond the confines of
their native county, and this legitimate pride in his own people, a
far-off reflection, perhaps, of the traditional Scottish attitude
towards name and pedigree, exercised a marked influence on his whole
career. “To prove himself worthy of his forefathers was the purpose
of his early manhood. It gives us a key to many of the singularities
of his character; to his hunger for self-improvement; to his
punctilious observance, from a boy, of the essentials of gentlemanly
bearing, and to the uniform assertion of his self-respect.”1
1841 It was his openly expressed wish for larger advantages
than those offered by a country school that brought about his
opportunity. In 1841, at the age of seventeen, he became a constable
of the county. A sort of minor sheriff, he had to execute the
decrees of the justices, to serve their warrants, to collect small
debts, and to summon witnesses. It was a curious office for a boy,
but a year or two before he had been seized with some obscure form
of dyspepsia, and the idea that a life on horseback, which his
duties necessitated, might restore his health, had induced his
relatives to obtain the post for him. Jackson himself seems to have
been influenced by the hope that his salary would help towards his
education, and by the wish to become independent of his uncle’s
bounty. His new duties were uncongenial, but, despite his youth, he
faced his responsibilities with a determination which men of maturer
years might well have envied. In everything
1 Dabney, vol. i, p. 29.
THE CADET 12
he was scrupulously exact. His accounts were accurately kept; he was
punctuality itself, and his patience was inexhaustible. For two
years he submitted cheerfully to the drudgery of his position,
re-establishing his health, but without advancing a single step
towards the goal of his ambition. But before he was nineteen his
hopes were unexpectedly realised.
1842 The Military Academy at West Point not only provided,
at the expense of the nation, a sound and liberal education, but
offered an opening to an honourable career. Nominations to
cadetships were made by the Secretary of War, on the recommendation
of members of Congress, and in 1842 a vacancy occurred which was to
be filled by a youth from the Congressional District in which
Clarksburg was included. Jackson, informed of the chance by a
friendly blacksmith, eagerly embraced it, and left no stone unturned
to attain his object. Every possible influence that could be brought
to bear on the member for the district was immediately enlisted. To
those who objected that his education was too imperfect to enable
him even to enter the Academy, he replied that he had the necessary
application, that he hoped he had the capacity, and that he was at
least determined to try. His earnestness and courage won upon all.
His application was strongly backed by those who had learned to
value his integrity and exactness, and Mr. Hays, the member for the
district, wrote that he would do all in his power to secure the
appointment. No sooner had the letter been read than Jackson
determined to go at once to Washington, in order that he might be
ready to proceed to West Point without a moment’s delay. Packing a
few clothes into a pair of saddlebags, he mounted his horse, and
accompanied by a servant, who was to bring the animal home, rode off
to catch the coach at Clarksburg. It had already passed, but
galloping on, he overtook it at the next stage, and on his arrival
at Washington, Mr. Hays at once introduced him to the Secretary of
War. On presenting him, he explained the disadvantages of his
education, but begged indulgence for him on account of his pluck and
determination. The Secretary plied him with questions,
THE CADET 13
but Jackson was not to be diverted from his purpose; and so good was
the impression which he made that he then and there received his
warrant, accompanied by some excellent advice. “Sir,” said the
Secretary, “you have a good name. Go to West Point, and the first
man who insults you, knock him down, and have it charged to my
account!” Mr. Hays proposed that
the new-fledged cadet should stay with him for a few days in order
to see the sights of Washington. But as the Academy was already in
session, Jackson, with a strong appreciation of the value of time,
begged to decline. He was content to ascend to the roof of the
Capitol, then still building, and
look once on the magnificent panorama of which it is the centre.
At his feet lay the city, with its busy streets and imposing
edifices. To the south ran the Potomac, bearing on its ample tide
the snowy sails of many merchantmen, and spanned by a bridge more
than a mile in length. Over against the Capitol, looking down on
that wide-watered shore, stood the white porch of Arlington, once
the property of Washington, and now the home of a young officer of
the United States army, Robert Edward Lee. Beyond Arlington lay
Virginia, Jackson’s native State, stretching back in leafy hills and
verdant pastures, and far and low upon the western horizon his own
mountains loomed faintly through the summer haze. It was a strange
freak of fortune that placed him at the very outset of his career
within sight of the theatre of his most famous victories. It was a
still stranger caprice that was to make the name of the simple
country youth, ill-educated and penniless, as terrible in Washington
as the name of the Black Douglas was once in Durham and Carlisle.
1842 It was in July 1842 that one of America's greatest
soldiers first answered to his name on the parade-ground at West
Point. Shy and silent, clad in Virginia homespun, with the whole of
his personal effects carried in a pair of weather-stained saddle
bags, the impression that he made on his future comrades, as the
Secretary of War appears to have anticipated, was by no means
favourable. The West Point cadets were then, as now, remarkable
THE CADET 14
for their upright carriage, the neatness of their appointments, and
their soldierly bearing towards their officers and towards each
other. The grey coatee, decorated with bright buttons and broad gold
lace, the shako with tall plumes, the spotless white trousers, set
off the trim young figures to the best advantage; and the full-dress
parade of the cadet battalion, marked by discipline and precision in
every movement, is still one of the most attractive of military
spectacles. These natty young
gentlemen were not slow to detect the superficial deficiencies of
the newcomer. A system of practical joking, carried to extremes, had
long been a feature of West Point life. Jackson, with the rusticity
of the backwoods apparent at every turn, promised the highest sport.
And here it may be written, once for all, that however nearly in
point of character the intended victim reached the heroic standard,
his outward graces were few. His features were well cut, his
forehead high, his mouth small and firm, and his complexion fresh.
Yet the ensemble was not striking, nor was it redeemed by grave eyes
and a heavy jaw, a strong but angular frame, a certain awkwardness
of movement, and large hands and feet. His would-be tormentors,
however, soon found they had mistaken their man. The homespun jacket
covered a natural shrewdness which had been sharpened by
responsibility. The readiness of resource which had characterised
the whilom constable was more than a match for their most ingenious
schemes; and baffled by a temper which they were powerless to
disturb, their attempts at persecution, apparently more productive
of amusement to their victim than to themselves, were soon
abandoned. Rough as was the life
of the Virginia border, it had done something to fit this
unpromising recruit for the give and take of his new existence.
Culture might be lacking in the distant West, but the air men
breathed was at least the blessed breath of independence. Each was
what he made himself. A man’s standing depended on his success in
life, and success was within the reach of all. There, like his
neighbours, Jackson had learned to take his
THE WEST POINT TRAINING 15
own part; like them he acknowledged no superiority save that of
actual merit, and believing that the richest prize might be won by
energy and perseverance, without diffidence or misgiving he faced
his future. He knew nothing of the life of the great nation of which
he was so insignificant an atom, of the duties of the army, of the
manners of its officers. He knew only that even as regards education
he had an uphill task before him. He was indeed on the threshold of
a new world, with his own way to make, and apparently no single
advantage in his favour. But he came of a fighting race; he had his
own inflexible resolution to support him, and his determination
expressed itself in his very bearing. Four cadets, three of whom
were afterwards Confederate generals,1 were standing
together when he first entered the gates of the Academy. “There was
about him,” says one of them, “so sturdy an expression of purpose
that I remarked, ‘That fellow looks as if he had come to stay.’ ”
Jackson’s educational deficiencies were more difficult of conquest
than the goodwill of his comrades. His want of previous training
placed him at a great disadvantage. He commenced his career amongst
“the Immortals” (the last section of the class), and it was only by
the most strenuous efforts that he maintained his place. His
struggles at the blackboard were often painful to witness. In the
struggle to solve a problem he invariably covered both his face and
uniform with chalk, and he perspired so freely, even in the coldest
weather, that the cadets, with boyish exaggeration, declared that
whenever “the General,” as he had at once been dubbed in honour of
his namesake, the victor of New Orleans, got a difficult proposition
he was certain to flood the classroom. It was all he could do to
pass his first examination.2
"We were studying," writes a classmate, "algebra and analytical
geometry that winter, and Jackson was very low in his class. Just
before the signal lights out he would pile up his grate with
anthracite coal, and lying prone before it on the floor, would work
away at his lessons by
1 A. P. Hill, G. E. Pickett, and D. H. Maury. 2
Communicated by General John Gibbon, U.S.A.
THE WEST POINT TRAINING 16
the glare of the fire, which scorched his very brain, till a late
hour of the night. This evident determination to succeed not only
aided his own efforts directly, but impressed his instructors in his
favour. If he could not master the portion of the text-book assigned
for the day, he would not pass it over, but continued to work at it
till he understood it. Thus it often happened that when he was
called out to repeat his task, he had to reply that he had not yet
reached the lesson of the day, but was employed upon the previous
one. There was then no alternative but to mark him as unprepared, a
proceeding which did not in the least affect his resolution.”
Despite all drawbacks, his four years at the Academy were years of
steady progress. “The Immortals” were soon left far behind. At the
end of the first twelve months he stood fifty-first in a class of
seventy-two, but when he entered the first class, and commenced the
study of logic, that bugbear to the majority, he shot from near the
foot of the class to the top. In the final examination he came out
seventeenth, notwithstanding that the less successful years were
taken into account, and it was a frequent remark amongst his brother
cadets that if the course had been a year longer he would have come
out first. His own satisfaction was complete. Not only was his
perseverance rewarded by a place sufficiently high to give him a
commission in the artillery, but his cravings for knowledge had been
fully gratified. West Point was much more than a military school. It
was a university, and a university under the very strictest
discipline, where the science of the soldier formed only a portion
of the course. Subjects which are now considered essential to a
military education were not taught at all. The art of war gave place
to ethics and engineering; and mathematics and chemistry were
considered of far more importance than topography and fortification.
Yet with French, history, and drawing, it will be admitted that the
course was sufficiently comprehensive. No cadet was permitted to
graduate unless he had reached a high standard of proficiency.
Failures were numerous. In the four years the classes grew gradually
THE WEST POINT TRAINING 17
smaller, and the survival of the fittest was a principle of
administration which was rigidly observed.
The fact, then, that a man had passed the final examination at West
Point was a sufficient certificate that he had received a thorough
education, that his mental faculties had been strengthened by four
years of hard work, and that he was well equipped to take his place
amongst his fellow men. And it was more than this. Four years of the
strictest discipline, for the cadets were allowed only one vacation
during their whole course, were sufficient to break in even the most
careless and the most slovenly to neatness, obedience, and
punctuality. Such habits are not easily unlearned, and the West
Point certificate was thus a guarantee of qualities that are
everywhere useful. It did not necessarily follow that because a
cadet won a commission he remained a soldier. Many went to civil
life, and the Academy was an excellent school for men who intended
to find a career as surveyors or engineers. The great railway system
of the United States was then in its infancy; its development
offered endless possibilities, and the work of extending
civilisation in a vast and rapidly improving country had perhaps
more attraction for the ambitious than the career of arms. The
training and discipline of West Point were not, then, concentrated
in one profession, but were disseminated throughout the States; and
it was with this purpose that the institution of the Academy had
been approved by Congress. In the
wars with England the militia of the different States had furnished
the means both of resistance and aggression, but their grave
shortcomings, owing principally to the lack of competent officers,
had been painfully conspicuous. After 1814, the principle that the
militia was the first line of defence was still adhered to, and the
standing army was merely maintained as a school for generals and a
frontier guard. It was expected, however, that in case of war the
West Point graduates would supply the national forces with a large
number of officers who, despite their civil avocations, would at
least be familiar with drill and discipline. This fact is to be
borne in mind THE WEST
POINT TRAINING 18
in view of the Civil War. The demands of the enormous armies then
put into the field were utterly unprecedented, and the supply of
West Pointers was altogether inadequate to meet them; but the
influence of the Military Academy was conspicuous throughout. Not a
few of the most able generals were little more than boys; and yet,
as a rule, they were far superior to those who came from the militia
or volunteers. Four years of strict routine, of constant drill, and
implicit subordination, at the most impressionable period of life,
proved a far better training for command than the desultory and
intermittent service of a citizen army.
During his stay at West Point Jackson’s development was not all in
one direction. He gained in health and strength. When he joined he
had not yet attained his full height, which fell short of six feet
by two inches. The constant drilling developed his frame. He grew
rapidly, and soon acquired the erect bearing of the soldier; but
notwithstanding the incessant practice in riding, fencing and
marching, his anatomical peculiarities still asserted themselves. It
was with great difficulty that he mastered the elementary process of
keeping step, and despite his youthful proficiency as a jockey, the
regulation seat of the dragoon, to be acquired on the back of a
rough cavalry trooper, was an accomplishment which he never
mastered. If it be added that his shyness never thawed, that he was
habitually silent, it is hardly surprising to find that he had few
intimates at the Academy. Caring nothing for the opinion of others,
and tolerant of association rather than seeking it, his
self-contained nature asked neither sympathy nor affection. His
studious habits never left him. His only recreation was a rapid walk
in the intervals of the classes. His whole thoughts and his whole
energy were centred on doing his duty, and passing into the army
with all the credit he could possibly attain. Although he was
thoroughly happy at West Point, life to him, even at that early age,
was a serious business, and most seriously he set about it.
Still, unsociable and irresponsive as he was, there were those in
whose company he found pleasure, cadets who had
HIS INDEPENDENCE 19
studied subjects not included in the West Point course, and from
whom there was something to be learned. It was an unwritten law of
the Academy that those of the senior year should not make companions
of their juniors. But Jackson paid no heed to the traditionary code
of etiquette. His acquaintances were chosen regardless of standing,
as often from the class below him as his own; and in yet another
fashion his strength of character was displayed. Towards those who
were guilty of dishonourable conduct he was merciless almost to
vindictiveness. He had his own code of right and wrong, and from one
who infringed it he would accept neither apology nor excuse. His
musket, which was always scrupulously clean, was one day replaced by
another in most slovenly order. He called the attention of his
captain to his loss, and described the private mark by which it was
to be identified. That evening, at the inspection of arms, it was
found in the hands of another cadet, who, when taxed with his
offence, endeavoured to shield himself by falsehood. Jackson’s anger
was unbounded, and for the moment his habitual shyness completely
disappeared. He declared that such a creature should not continue a
member of the Academy, and demanded that he should be tried by
court-martial and expelled. It was only by means of the most
persevering remonstrances on the part of his comrades and his
officers that he could be induced to waive his right of pressing the
charge. His regard for duty, too, was no less marked than his
respect for truth. During one half-year his room-mate was
orderly-sergeant of his company, and this good-natured if
perfunctory young gentleman often told Jackson that he need not
attend the réveille roll-call, at which every cadet was
supposed to answer to his name. Not once, however, did he avail
himself of the privilege.1
At the same time he was not altogether so uncompromising as at first
sight he appeared. At West Point, as in after years, those who saw
him interested or excited noticed that his smile was singularly
sweet, and the cadets knew that it revealed a warm heart within.
Whenever, from sickness or misfortune, a comrade stood in need of
1 Communicated by Colonel P. T. Turnley.
HIS INDEPENDENCE 20
sympathy, Jackson was the first to offer it, and he would devote
himself to his help with a tenderness so womanly that it sometimes
excited ridicule. Sensitive he was not, for of vanity he had not the
slightest taint; but of tact and sensibility he possessed more than
his share. If he was careless of what others thought of him, he
thought much of them. Though no one made more light of pain on his
own account, no one could have more carefully avoided giving pain to
others, except when duty demanded it; and one of his classmates1
testifies that he went through the trying ordeal of four years at
West Point without ever having a hard word or bad feeling from cadet
or professor. Nor did his comrades
fail to remember that when he was unjustly blamed he chose to bear
the imputation silently rather than expose those who were really at
fault. And so, even in that lighthearted battalion, his sterling
worth compelled respect. All honoured his efforts and wished him
God-speed. “While there were many,” says Colonel Turnley, “who
seemed to surpass him in intellect, in geniality, and in
good-fellowship, there was no one of our class who more absolutely
possessed the respect and confidence of all; and in the end Old
Jack, as he was always called, with his desperate earnestness, his
unflinching straightforwardness, and his high sense of honour, came
to be regarded by his comrades with something very like affection.”
One peculiarity cannot be passed by.
When at study he always sat bolt upright at his table with his book
open before him, and when he was not using pencil and paper to solve
a problem, he would often keep his eyes fixed on the wall or ceiling
in the most profound abstraction. “No one I have ever known,” says a
cadet who shared his barrack-room, “could so perfectly withdraw his
mind from surrounding objects or influences, and so thoroughly
involve his whole being in the subject under consideration. His
lessons were uppermost in his mind, and to thoroughly understand
them was always his
1 Colonel Turnley.
Stonewall Jackson MAXIMS 21
determined effort. To make the author’s knowledge his own was ever
the point at which he aimed. This intense application of mind was
naturally strengthened by constant exercise, and month by month, and
year by year, his faculties of perception developed rapidly, until
he grasped with unerring quickness the inceptive points of all
ethical and mathematical problems.”
This power of abstraction and of application is well worth noting,
for not only was it remarkable in a boy, but, as we shall see
hereafter, it had much to do with the making of the soldier.
At West Point Jackson was troubled with the return of the obscure
complaint which had already threatened him, and he there began that
rigid observance of the laws of health which afterwards developed to
almost an eccentricity. His peculiar attitude when studying was due
to the fear that if he bent over his work the compression of his
internal organs might increase their tendency to disease.
And not only did he lay down rules for his physical regimen. A book
of maxims which he drew up at West Point has been preserved, and we
learn that his scrupulous exactness, his punctilious courtesy, and
his choice of companions were the outcome of much deliberation.
Nothing in this curious volume occurs to show that his thoughts had
yet been turned to religion. It is as free from all reference to the
teachings of Christianity as the maxims of Marcus Aurelius.
Every line there written shows that at this period of Jackson’s life
devotion to duty was his guiding rule; and, notwithstanding his
remarkable freedom from egotism, the traces of an engrossing
ambition and of absolute self-dependence are everywhere apparent.
Many of the sentiments he would have repudiated in after-life as
inconsistent with humility; but there can be no question that it was
a strong and fearless hand that penned on a conspicuous page the
sentence: “You can be what you resolve to be.”
Jackson was already a man in years when he passed his final
examination, and here the record of his boyhood
COMPARED WITH NAPOLEON 22
may fitly close. He had made no particular mark at the Academy.
1846 His memory, in the minds of his comrades, was
associated with his gravity, his silence, his kind heart, and his
awkward movements. No one suspected him of nobler qualities than
dogged perseverance and a strict regard for truth. The officers and
sergeants of the cadet battalion were supplied by the cadets
themselves; but Jackson was never promoted. In the mimic warfare of
the playground at Brienne Napoleon was master of the revels. His
capacity for command had already been detected; but neither comrade
nor teacher saw beneath the unpromising exterior of the West Point
student a trace of aught save what was commonplace.
And yet there is much in the boyhood of Stonewall Jackson that
resembles the boyhood of Napoleon, of all great soldiers the most
original. Both were affectionate. Napoleon lived on bread and water
that he might educate his brothers; Jackson saved his cadet’s pay to
give his sister a silk dress. Both were indefatigable students,
impressed with the conviction that the world was to be conquered by
force of intellect. Jackson, burning his lessons into his brain, is
but the counterpart of the young officer who lodged with a professor
of mathematics that he might attend his classes, and who would wait
to explain the lectures to those who had not clearly understood
them. Both were provincial, neither was prepossessing. If the West
Point cadets laughed at Jackson’s large hands and feet, was not
Napoleon, with his thin legs thrust into enormous boots, saluted by
his friend’s children, on his first appearance in uniform, with the
nickname of Le Chat Botté? It is hard to say which was the
more laughable: the spare and bony figure of the cadet, sitting bolt
upright like a graven image in a tight uniform, with his eyes glued
to the ceiling of his barrack-room, or the young man, with gaunt
features, round shoulders, and uncombed hair, who wandered alone
about the streets of Paris in 1795.
They had the same love of method and of order. The accounts of the
Virginian constable was not more scrupulously kept than the ledgers
of Napoleon’s household, nor
COMPARED WITH NAPOLEON 23
could they show a greater regard for economy than the tailor’s bill,
still extant, on which the future Emperor gained a reduction of four
sous. But it was not on such trivial lines alone that they run
parallel. An inflexibility of purpose, an absolute disregard of
popular opinion, and an unswerving belief in their own capacity,
were predominant in both. They could say “No.” Neither sought
sympathy, and both felt that they were masters of their own fate.
“You can be whatever you resolve to be” may be well placed alongside
the speech of the brigadier of five-and-twenty: “Have patience. I
will command in Paris presently. What should I do there now?”
But here the parallel ends. In Jackson, even as a cadet, self was
subordinate to duty. Pride was foreign to his nature. He was
incapable of pretence, and his simplicity was inspired by that
disdain of all meanness which had been his characteristic from a
child. His brain was disturbed by no wild visions; no intemperate
ambition confused his sense of right and wrong. “The essence of his
mind,” as has been said of another of like mould, “was clearness,
healthy purity, incompatibility with fraud in any of its forms.” It
was his instinct to be true and straightforward as it was Napoleon’s
to be false and subtle. And, if, as a youth, he showed no trace of
marked intellectual power; if his instructors saw no sign of
masterful resolution and a genius for command, it was because at
West Point, as elsewhere, his great qualities lay dormant, awaiting
the emergency that should call them forth. |