Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
mind the words of General Grant: “I would like to see truthful history
written. Such history will do full credit to the courage, endurance,
and ability of the American citizen, no matter what section he hailed
from, or in what ranks he fought.” I am very strongly of opinion that
any fair-minded man may feel equal sympathy with both Federal and
Confederate. Both were so absolutely convinced that their cause was
just, that it is impossible to conceive either Northerner or Southerner
acting otherwise than he did. If Stonewall Jackson had been a New
Englander, educated in the belief that secession was rebellion, he
would assuredly have shed the last drop of his blood in defence of the
Union; if Ulysses Grant had been a Virginian, imbibing the doctrine of
States’ rights with his mother’s milk, it is just as certain that he
would have worn the Confederate grey. It is with those Northerners who
would have allowed the Union to be broken, and with those Southerners
who would have tamely surrendered their hereditary rights, that no
Englishman would be willing to claim kinship.
[1] Referred to in the text as O.R.
[2] _Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson._ The Prentice Press, Louisville,
Kentucky.
Chapter I
WEST POINT[1]
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
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
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
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.[2]
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
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
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.