Thomas Jonathan
"Stonewall" Jackson
(January 21,[1]
1824 – May 10, 1863)
 Thomas Jonathan
"Stonewall" Jackson
was a Confederate general during the Civil War. He is most famous for
his daring Valley Campaign of 1862 and as a corps commander in the Army
of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee. His own troops
accidentally shot him at the battle of Chancellorsville and he died of
complications from an amputated arm and pneumonia several days later.
Contents
Military historians consider Jackson
to be one of the most gifted tactical commanders in United States
history. His Valley Campaign and his envelopment of the Union Army
right wing at Chancellorsville are studied worldwide even today as
examples of innovative and bold leadership. He excelled as well at
the First Battle of Bull Run (where he received his famous
nickname), Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg.
Jackson was not universally
successful as a commander, however, as displayed by his weak and
confused efforts during the Seven Days Battles around Richmond in
1862. His death was a severe setback for the Confederacy,
affecting not only its military prospects, but the morale of its
army and the general public; as Jackson lay dying, General Robert
E. Lee stated, "He has lost his left arm; I have lost my
right."
Thomas Jonathan Jackson was of
Scots-Irish descent, and the great-grandson of John Jackson and
Elizabeth Cummins.
John Jackson was born in
Coleraine, County Londonderry, in Northern Ireland. He emigrated
to the Province of Maryland in 1748 and moved to the Colony and
Dominion of Virginia in 1758. He participated in the American
Revolutionary War, fighting in the Battle of Kings Mountain on
October 7, 1780. He was a lieutenant of the Virginia Militia after
1787. Elizabeth was born in London and raised by an unwed aunt.
She was her aunt's only heir, inheriting one thousand pounds
sterling. She used this sum to immigrate to Maryland and buy 3,000
acres of land. She is said to have successfully defended her land
from attacks by Indians.
John and Elizabeth had four
children. Their second son was Edward Jackson (March 1, 1759 –
December 25, 1828), and Edward's third son was Jonathan Jackson,
Thomas' father.
Thomas Jackson was the third
child of Julia Beckwith (née Neale) Jackson (1798 – 1831) and
Jonathan Jackson (1790 – 1826), an attorney. Both of Jackson's
parents were natives of Virginia. The family already had two young
children and were living in Clarksburg, in what is now West
Virginia. This is where their third child, Thomas, was born. He
was named for his maternal grandfather.
Two years later, Jackson's father
and sister Elizabeth (age six) died of typhoid fever. Jackson's
mother gave birth to Thomas's sister Laura Ann the next day. Julia
Jackson thus was widowed at 28 and was left with much debt and
three young children (including the newborn). She sold the
family's possessions to pay the debts. She declined family charity
and moved into a small rented one-room house. Julia took in sewing
and taught school to support herself and her three young children
for about four years.
In 1830, Julia Neale Jackson
remarried. Her new husband, Blake Woodson, an attorney, did not
like his stepchildren. There were continuing financial problems.
The following year, after giving birth to Thomas's half-brother,
she died of complications, leaving her three older children
orphaned. Julia was buried in an unmarked grave in a homemade
coffin in Westlake Cemetery along the James River and Kanawha
Turnpike in Fayette County within the corporate limits of
present-day Ansted, West Virginia.
Jackson was seven years old when
his mother died. He and his sister Laura Ann were sent to live
with their paternal uncle, Cummins Jackson, who owned a grist mill
in Jackson's Mill (near present-day Weston in Lewis County in
central West Virginia). Cummins Jackson was strict with Thomas,
who looked up to Cummins as a schoolteacher. His older brother,
Warren, went to live with other relatives on his mother's side of
the family, but he later died of tuberculosis in 1841 at the age
of 20.
Jackson helped around his uncle's
farm, tending sheep with the assistance of a sheepdog, driving
teams of oxen and helping harvest the fields of wheat and corn.
Formal education was not easily obtained, but he attended school
when and where he could. Much of Jackson's education was
self-taught. He would often sit up at night reading by the
flickering light of burning pine knots. The story is told that
Thomas once made a deal with one of his uncle's slaves to provide
him with pine knots in exchange for reading lessons. This was in
violation of a law in Virginia that forbade teaching a slave to
read or write which had been enacted following the infamous and
bloody Nat Turner incident in Southampton County. Nevertheless,
Jackson secretly taught the slave to read, as he had promised. In
his later years at Jackson's Mill, Thomas was a schoolteacher.
In 1842, Jackson was accepted to
the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York.
Because of his inadequate schooling, he had difficulty with the
entrance examinations and began his studies at the bottom of his
class. As a student, he had to work harder than most cadets to
absorb his lessons. However, he displayed a dogged determination
that was to characterize his life and he became one of the hardest
working cadets in the academy. Thomas Jackson graduated 17th out
of 59 students in the Class of 1846. His classmates said that if
they had stayed there another year, he would have graduated first.
Jackson began his U.S. Army
career as a brevet second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Artillery
Regiment and was sent to fight in the Mexican-American War from
1846 to 1848. Again, his unusual strength of character emerged.
During the assault on Chapultepec Castle, he refused what he felt
was a "bad order" to withdraw his troops. Confronted by
his superior, he explained his rationale, claiming withdrawal was
more hazardous than continuing his overmatched artillery duel. His
judgment proved correct, and a relieving brigade was able to
exploit the advantage Jackson had broached. In contrast, he obeyed
what he also felt was a "bad order" when he raked a
civilian throng with artillery fire after the Mexican authorities
failed to surrender Mexico City at the hour demanded by the U.S.
forces.[4]
The former episode, and later aggressive action against the
retreating Mexican army, earned him field promotion to the brevet
rank of major.
He served at the Siege of Vera
Cruz and the battles of Contreras, Chapultepec, and Mexico City,
eventually earning two brevet promotions. It was in Mexico that
Jackson first met Robert E. Lee.
In the spring of 1851,[5]
Thomas Jackson accepted a newly created teaching position at the
Virginia Military Institute (VMI), in Lexington, Virginia. He
became Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and
Instructor of Artillery. Jackson's teachings are still used at VMI
today because they are military essentials that are timeless, to
wit: discipline, mobility, assessing the enemy's strength and
intentions while attempting to conceal your own, and the efficacy
of artillery combined with an infantry assault. However, despite
the quality of his work, he was not popular as a teacher. The
students mocked his apparently stern, religious nature and his
eccentric traits. In 1856, a group of alumni attempted to have
Jackson removed from his position. [6]
Little as he was known to the
white inhabitants of Lexington, Jackson was revered by many of the
African-Americans in town, both slave and free. He was
instrumental in the organization in 1855 of Sunday school classes
for blacks at the Presbyterian Church. Mary Anna Jackson taught
with Jackson, as "he preferred that my labors should be given
to the colored children, believing that it was more important and
useful to put the strong hand of the Gospel under the ignorant
African race, to lift them up." [7]
The pastor, Dr. William Spottswood White, described the
relationship between Jackson and his Sunday afternoon students:
"In their religious instruction he succeeded wonderfully. His
discipline was systematic and firm, but very kind. ... His
servants reverenced and loved him, as they would have done a
brother or father. ... He was emphatically the black man's
friend." He addressed his students by name and they in turn
referred to him affectionately as "Marse Major." White
may have been biased by his friendship with the late general. [8]
Jackson's family owned six slaves
in the late 1850s. Three (Hetty, Cyrus, and George, a mother and
two teenage sons) were received as a wedding present. Albert
requested that Jackson purchase him and allow him to work for his
freedom; he was employed as a waiter in one of the Lexington
hotels and Jackson rented him to VMI. Amy also requested that
Jackson purchase her from a public auction and she served the
family as a cook and housekeeper. The sixth, Emma, was a
four-year-old orphan with a learning disability, accepted by
Jackson from an aged widow and presented to his second wife, Anna,
as a welcome-home gift. [9]
After the war began, he appears to have hired out or sold his
slaves. Mary Anna Jackson, in her 1895 memoir, said, "our
servants . . . without the firm guidance and restraint of their
master, the excitement of the times proved so demoralizing to them
that he deemed it best for me to provide them with good homes
among the permanent residents." [10]
James Robertson wrote about Jackson's view on slavery: [11]
Jackson neither apologized for nor
spoke in favor of the practice of slavery. He probably opposed
the institution. Yet in his mind the Creator had sanctioned
slavery, and man had no moral right to challenge its existence.
The good Christian slaveholder was one who treated his servants
fairly and humanely at all times.
—James I. Robertson, Stonewall
Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend
While an instructor at VMI, in
1853, Thomas Jackson married Elinor "Ellie" Junkin,
whose father was president of Washington College (later Washington
and Lee University) in Lexington. An addition was built onto the
president's residence for the Jacksons, and when Robert E. Lee
became president of Washington College he lived in the same home,
now known as the Lee-Jackson House. [12]
Ellie died during childbirth and the child, a son, died
immediately afterward.
After a tour of Europe, Jackson
married again, in 1857. Mary Anna Morrison was from North
Carolina, where her father was the first president of Davidson
College. They had a daughter named Mary Graham on April 30, 1858,
but the baby died less than a month later. Another daughter was
born in 1862, shortly before her father's death. The Jacksons
named her Julia Laura, after his mother and sister. Jackson
purchased the only house he ever owned while in Lexington. Built
in 1801, this brick town house at 8 East Washington St., was
purchased by Jackson in 1859 where he lived for two years before
being called to serve in the Confederacy. Jackson was never to
return home.
In November 1859, at the request
of the governor of Virginia, Major William Gilham led a contingent
of the VMI Cadet Corps to Charles Town to provide an additional
military presence at the execution by hanging on December 2, 1859
of militant abolitionist John Brown following his raid on the
federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Major Jackson was placed in
command of the artillery, consisting of two howitzers manned by 21
cadets.
In 1861, as the American Civil
War broke out, Jackson became a drill master for some of the many
new recruits in the Confederate Army. On April 27, 1861, Virginia
Governor John Letcher ordered Colonel Jackson to take command at
Harpers Ferry, where he would assemble and command the famous
"Stonewall Brigade", consisting of the 2nd, 4th, 5th,
27th, and 33rd Virginia Infantry regiments. All of these units
were from the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia. He was
promoted to brigadier general on June 17.[13]
For more details
on this topic, see First Bull Run.
Jackson rose to prominence and
earned his most famous nickname at the First Battle of Bull Run
(known by Southerners as First Manassas) in July 1861. As the
Confederate lines began to crumble under heavy Union assault,
Jackson's brigade provided crucial reinforcements on Henry House
Hill. Brig. Gen. Barnard Elliott Bee, Jr., exhorted his own troops
to re-form by shouting, "There is Jackson standing like a
stone wall. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer.
Follow me." [14]
There is some controversy over Bee's statement and intent, which
could not be clarified because he was killed almost immediately
after speaking and none of his subordinate officers wrote reports
of the battle. Major Burnett Rhett, chief of staff to General
Joseph E. Johnston, claimed that Bee was angry at Jackson's
failure to come immediately to the relief of Bee's and Bartow's
brigades while they were under heavy pressure. Those who subscribe
to this opinion believe that Bee's statement was meant to be
pejorative: "Look at Jackson standing there like a damned
stone wall!"[15]
Regardless of the controversy and the delay in relieving Bee,
Jackson's brigade, which would henceforth be known as the
Stonewall Brigade, stopped the Union assault and suffered more
casualties than any other Southern brigade that day. [16]
After the battle, Jackson was promoted to major general (October
7, 1861)[13]
and given command of the Valley District, with headquarters in
Winchester.
- For more details on this
topic, see Valley Campaign.
In the spring of 1862, Union
Major General George B. McClellan's massive Army of the Potomac
was approaching Richmond from the southeast in the Peninsula
Campaign, Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell's large corps was poised to hit
Richmond from the north, and Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks's army
was threatening the Shenandoah Valley. Jackson was ordered by
Richmond to operate in the Valley to defeat Banks's threat and
prevent McDowell's troops from reinforcing McClellan.
Jackson possessed the attributes
to succeed against his poorly coordinated and sometimes timid
opponents: a combination of great audacity, excellent knowledge
and shrewd use of the terrain, and the ability to inspire his
troops to great feats of marching and fighting.
The campaign started with a
tactical defeat at Kernstown on March 23, 1862, when faulty
intelligence led him to believe he was attacking a much smaller
force than was actually present, but it was a strategic victory
for the Confederacy, forcing President Abraham Lincoln to keep
Banks's forces in the Valley and McDowell's 30,000-man corps near
Fredericksburg, subtracting about 50,000 soldiers from McClellan's
invasion force. In addition, it was Jackson's only defeat in the
Valley.
By adding Maj. Gen. Richard S.
Ewell's large division and Maj. Gen. Edward "Allegheny"
Johnson's small division, Jackson increased his army to 17,000
men. He was still significantly outnumbered, but attacked portions
of his divided enemy individually at McDowell, defeating both
Brig. Gens. Robert H. Milroy and Robert C. Schenck. He defeated
Banks at Front Royal and Winchester, ejecting him from the Valley.
Lincoln decided that the defeat of Jackson was an immediate
priority (even though Jackson's orders were solely to keep Union
forces occupied away from Richmond). They ordered Irvin McDowell
to send 20,000 men to Front Royal and Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont
to move to Harrisonburg. If both forces could converge at
Strasburg, Jackson's only escape route up the Valley would be cut.
After a series of maneuvers,
Jackson defeated Frémont at Cross Keys and Brig. Gen. James
Shields at Port Republic on June 8 and June 9. Union forces were
withdrawn from the Valley.
It had been a classic military
campaign of surprise and maneuver. Jackson pressed his army to
travel 646 miles in 48 days of marching and won five significant
victories with a force of about 17,000 against a combined force of
60,000. Stonewall Jackson's reputation for moving his troops so
rapidly earned them the oxymoronic nickname "foot
cavalry". He became the most celebrated soldier in the
Confederacy (until he was eventually eclipsed by Lee) and lifted
the morale of the Southern public.
McClellan's Peninsula Campaign
toward Richmond stalled at the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31 and
June 1. After the Valley Campaign ended in mid-June, Jackson and
his troops were called to join Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern
Virginia in defense of the capital. By utilizing a railroad tunnel
under the Blue Ridge Mountains and then transporting troops to
Hanover County on the Virginia Central Railroad, Jackson and his
forces made a surprise appearance in front of McClellan at
Mechanicsville. Reports had last placed Jackson's forces in the
Shenandoah Valley; their presence near Richmond added greatly to
the Union commander's overestimation of the strength and numbers
of the forces before him. This proved a crucial factor in
McClellan's decision to re-establish his base at a point many
miles downstream from Richmond on the James River at Harrison's
Landing, essentially a retreat that ended the Peninsula Campaign
and prolonged the war almost three more years.
Jackson's troops served well
under Lee in the series of battles known as the Seven Days
Battles, but Jackson's own performance in those battles is
generally considered to be poor. He arrived late at Mechanicsville
and inexplicably ordered his men to bivouac for the night within
clear earshot of the battle. He was late and disoriented at
Gaines' Mill. He was late again at Savage's Station, and at White
Oak Swamp, he failed to employ fording places to cross White Oak
Swamp Creek, attempting for hours to rebuild a bridge, which
limited his involvement to an ineffectual artillery duel and a
missed opportunity. At Malvern Hill, Jackson participated in the
futile, piecemeal frontal assaults against entrenched Union
infantry and massed artillery and suffered heavy casualties, but
this was a problem for all of Lee's army in that ill-considered
battle. The reasons for Jackson's sluggish and poorly coordinated
actions during the Seven Days are disputed, although a severe lack
of sleep after the grueling march and railroad trip from the
Shenandoah Valley was probably a significant factor. Both Jackson
and his troops were completely exhausted.
Jackson was now a corps commander
under Lee. At the Second Battle of Bull Run (or the Second Battle
of Manassas in the South), he made an aggressive flanking march
that seized a supply depot in the Union rear, provoking an attack
from Maj. Gen. John Pope. Pope's army was defeated and retreated
to Washington, another Union defeat on the same ground as in 1861.
When Lee decided to invade the
North in the Maryland Campaign, Jackson took Harpers Ferry, then
hastened to join the rest of the army at Sharpsburg, Maryland,
where they fought McClellan in the Battle of Antietam. The
Confederate forces held their position, but the battle was
extremely bloody for both sides, and Lee withdrew the Army of
Northern Virginia back across the Potomac River, ending the
invasion. After the Invasion, Jackson was promoted to lieutenant
general and made commander of the Second Corps. Before the armies
camped for winter, Jackson's Second Corps held off a strong Union
assault against the right flank of the Confederate line at the
Battle of Fredericksburg in what became a decisive Confederate
victory.
At the Battle of Chancellorsville,
the Army of Northern Virginia was faced with a serious threat by
the Army of the Potomac and its new commanding general, Major
General Joseph Hooker. General Lee decided to employ a risky
tactic to take the initiative and offensive away from Hooker's new
southern thrust - he decided to divide his forces. Jackson and his
entire corps were sent on an aggressive flanking maneuver to the
right of the Union lines. This flanking movement would be one of
the most successful and dramatic of the war. While riding with his
infantry in a wide berth well south and west of the Federal line
of battle, Jackson employed Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry to
provide for better reconnaissance in regards to the exact location
of the Union right and rear. The results were far better than even
Jackson could have hoped. Lee found the entire right side of the
Federal lines in the middle of open field, guarded merely by two
guns that faced westward, as well as the supplies and rear
encampments. The men were eating and playing games in carefree
fashion, completely unaware that an entire Confederate corps was
less than a mile away. What happened next is given in Lee's own
words:
So impressed was I with my
discovery, that I rode rapidly back to the point on the Plank
road where I had left my cavalry, and back down the road Jackson
was moving, until I met "Stonewall" himself.
"General," said I, "if you will ride with me,
halting your column here, out of sight, I will show you the
enemy's right, and you will perceive the great advantage of
attacking down the Old turnpike instead of the Plank road, the
enemy's lines being taken in reverse. Bring only one courier, as
you will be in view from the top of the hill." Jackson
assented, and I rapidly conducted him to the point of
observation. There had been no change in the picture.
I only knew Jackson slightly. I
watched him closely as he gazed upon Howard's troops. It was
then about 2 P.M. His eyes burned with a brilliant glow,
lighting up a sad face. His expression was one of intense
interest, his face was colored slightly with the paint of
approaching battle, and radiant at the success of his flank
movement. To the remarks made to him while the unconscious line
of blue was pointed out, he did not reply once during the five
minutes he was on the hill, and yet his lips were moving. From
what I have read and heard of Jackson since that day, I know now
what he was doing then. Oh! "beware of rashness,"
General Hooker. Stonewall Jackson is praying in full view and in
rear of your right flank! While talking to the Great God of
Battles, how could he hear what a poor cavalryman was saying.
"Tell General Rodes," said he, suddenly whirling his
horse towards the courier, "to move across the Old plank
road; halt when he gets to the Old turnpike, and I will join him
there." One more look upon the Federal lines, and then he
rode rapidly down the hill, his arms flapping to the motion of
his horse, over whose head it seemed, good rider as he was, he
would certainly go. I expected to be told I had made a valuable
personal reconnaissance—saving the lives of many soldiers, and
that Jackson was indebted to me to that amount at least. Perhaps
I might have been a little chagrined at Jackson's silence, and
hence commented inwardly and adversely upon his horsemanship.
Alas! I had looked upon him for the last time.
—Fitzhugh Lee, address
to the Association of the Army of Northern Virginia, 1879
Jackson immediately returned to
his corps and arranged his divisions into a line of battle to
charge directly into the oblivious Federal right. The Confederates
marched silently until they were merely several hundred feet from
the Union position, then released a bloodthirsty cry and full
charge. Many of the Federals were captured without a shot fired,
the rest were driven into a full rout. Jackson pursued
relentlessly back toward the center of the Federal line until
dusk.
Darkness ended the assault. As
Jackson and his staff were returning to camp on May 2, they were
mistaken for a Union cavalry force by a Confederate North Carolina
regiment who shouted, "Halt, who goes there?," but fired
before evaluating the reply. Jackson was hit by three bullets, two
in the left arm and one in the right hand. Several other men in
his staff were killed in addition to many horses. Darkness and
confusion prevented Jackson getting immediate care. He was dropped
from his stretcher while being evacuated because of incoming
artillery rounds. Because of his injuries, Jackson's left arm had
to be amputated by Dr. Hunter McGuire. Jackson was moved to Thomas
C. Chandler's 740-acre plantation named "Fairfield." He
was offered Chandler's home for recovery, but Jackson refused and
suggested using Chandler's plantation office building instead. He
was thought to be out of harm's way, but unknown to the doctors,
he already had classic symptoms of pneumonia, complaining of a
sore chest. This soreness was mistakenly thought to be the result
of his rough handling in the battlefield evacuation. Jackson died
of complications of pneumonia on May 10. In his delirium, his
dying words were, "Let us cross over the river and rest in
the shade of the trees." His body was moved to the Governor's
Mansion in Richmond for the public to mourn, and he was then moved
to be buried in the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery,
Lexington, Virginia. However, the arm that was amputated on May 2
was buried separately by Jackson's chaplain, at the J. Horace Lacy
house, "Ellwood", in the Wilderness of Spotsylvania
County, near the field hospital.
Upon hearing of Jackson's death,
Robert E. Lee mourned the loss of both a friend and a trusted
commander. The night Lee learned of Jackson's death, he told his
cook, "William, I have lost my right arm" (deliberately
in contrast to Jackson's left arm) and "I'm bleeding at the
heart."
Jackson is considered one of the
great characters of the Civil War. He was profoundly religious, a
deacon in the Presbyterian Church. He disliked fighting on Sunday,
though that did not stop him from doing so. He loved his wife very
much and sent her tender letters.
Jackson often wore old, worn-out
clothes rather than a fancy uniform, and often looked more like a
moth-eaten private than a corps commander. In direct contrast to
Lee, Jackson was not a striking figure, particularly since he was
not a good horseman and, therefore, rode a staid, dependable
horse, rather than a spirited stallion.
A recurring story concerns his
love of lemons, which he allegedly gnawed whole to alleviate
symptoms of dyspepsia. However, recent research [17]
has found that none of his contemporaries recorded any unusual
lemon habits and Jackson thought of a lemon as a "rare treat
... enjoyed greatly whenever it could obtained from the enemy's
camp". He was fond of all fruits, particularly peaches. He
held a lifelong belief that one of his arms was longer than the
other, and thus usually held the "longer" arm up to
equalize his circulation. He was described as a "champion
sleeper", even falling asleep with food in his mouth
occasionally. He also became noted throughout the Confederate Army
for leading his troops in complete circles. It has often been
hypothesized that Jackson had Asperger syndrome, for which he is a
prime example. [18]
In command, Jackson was extremely
secretive about his plans and extremely punctilious about military
discipline. This secretive nature did not stand him in good stead
with his subordinates, who were often not aware of his overall
operational intentions and complained of being left out of key
decisions. [19]
The South mourned his death; he
was greatly admired there. A poem penned by one of his soldiers
soon became a very popular song, "Stonewall Jackson's
Way." Many theorists through the years have postulated that
if Jackson had lived, Lee might have prevailed at Gettysburg. [20]
Certainly Jackson's iron discipline and brilliant tactical sense
were sorely missed, and might well have carried an extremely
close-fought battle. He is buried at Lexington, Virginia, near VMI,
in the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery. He is memorialized on
Georgia's Stone Mountain, in Richmond on historic Monument Avenue,
and in many other places.
Lee could trust Jackson with
deliberately non-detailed orders that conveyed Lee's overall
objectives, what modern doctrine calls the "end state."
This was because Jackson had a talent for understanding Lee's
sometimes unstated goals and Lee trusted Jackson with the ability
to take whatever actions were necessary to implement his end state
requirements. Many of Lee's subsequent corps commanders did not
have this disposition.
At Gettysburg, this resulted in
lost opportunities. Thus, after the Federals retreated to the
heights south of town, Lee sent one of his new corps commanders,
Richard S. Ewell, discretionary orders that the heights (Cemetery
Hill and Culp's Hill) be taken "if practicable." Without
Jackson's intuitive grasp of Lee's orders and the intuition to
take advantage of sudden tactical opportunities, Ewell chose not
to attempt the assault, and this failure is considered by
historians to be the greatest missed opportunity of the battle. [21]
After the war, Jackson's wife and
young daughter Julia moved from Lexington to North Carolina. Mary
Anna Jackson wrote two books about her husband's life, including
some of his letters. She never remarried, and was known as the
"Widow of the Confederacy", living until 1915. His
daughter Julia married, and bore children, but she died of typhoid
fever at the age of 26 years.
A former Confederate soldier who
admired Jackson, Captain Thomas R. Ranson of Staunton, Virginia,
also remembered the tragic life of Jackson's mother. Years after
the War, he went to the tiny mountain hamlet of Ansted in Fayette
County, West Virginia, and had a marble marker placed over the
unmarked grave of Julia Neale Jackson in Westlake Cemetery, to
make sure that the site was not lost forever.
West Virginia's Stonewall Jackson
State Park is named in his honor. Nearby, at Stonewall Jackson's
historical childhood home, his Uncle's grist mill is the
centerpiece of a historical site at the Jackson's Mill Center for
Lifelong Learning and State 4-H Camp. The facility, located near
Weston, serves as a special campus for West Virginia University
and the WVU Extension Service.
The United States Navy submarine
U.S.S. Stonewall Jackson (SSBN 634), commissioned in 1964,
was named for him. The words "Strength—Mobility" are
emblazoned on the ship's banner, words taken from letters written
by General Jackson. It was the third U.S. Navy ship named for him.
The submarine was decommissioned in 1995. During World War II, the
Navy named a Liberty ship the SS T.J. Jackson in his honor.
The state of Virginia honors
Jackson's birthday on Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday observed as
such since 1904. It is currently observed on the Friday preceding
the third Monday in January.
Stonewall Jackson appears on the
CSA $500 bill (7th Issue, February 17, 1864).
- Alexander, Bevin, Lost
Victories: The Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson,
Hippocrene Books, 2004, ISBN 0-7818-1036-1.
- Bryson, Bill, A Walk in the
Woods, Broadway, 1998, ISBN 0-7679-0251-3.
- Burns, Ken, The Civil War,
PBS television series, 1990.
- Eicher, John H., and Eicher,
David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University
Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
- Freeman, Douglas S., Lee's
Lieutenants: A Study in Command (3 volumes), Scribners,
1946, ISBN 0-684-85979-3.
- McPherson, James M., Battle
Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford History of the
United States), Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN
0-19-503863-0.
- Robertson, James I., Jr., Stonewall
Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend, MacMillan
Publishing, 1997, ISBN 0-02-864685-1.
- Sears, Stephen W., Gettysburg,
Houghton Mifflin, 2003, ISBN 0-395-86761-4.
- This article incorporates text
from the
Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now
in the public domain.
1
Eicher, p. 316; Robertson, p. 7. The physician, Dr. James McCally,
recalls delivering baby Thomas just before midnight on January 20,
but the family has insisted since then that he was born in the
first minutes of January 21. The later date is the one generally
acknowledged in biographies.
2
Robertson, p. 8.
3
Robertson, p. 10.
4
Robertson, p. 69.
5
Robinson, pp. 108-10. He left the Army on March 21, 1851, but
stayed on the rolls, officially on furlough, for nine months. His
resignation took effect formally on February 29, 1852, and he
joined the VMI faculty in August 1851.
6
Virginia Military Institute Archives: Stonewall Jackson FAQ
7
Mary Anna Jackson, Memoir of Stonewall Jackson, (Louisville,
Kentucky, 1895),78.
8
Robertson, p. 169.
9
Robertson, pp. 191-92.
10
Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, by His Widow
(Louisville, Ky, 1895), 152.
11
Robertson, p. 191.
12
Archibald Alexander travelogue of Lexington.
13 Eicher, p. 316.
14
Freeman, vol 1, p. 82; Robertson, p. 264. McPherson, p. 342,
reports the quotation after "stone wall" as being
"Rally around the Virginians!"
15
See, for instance, Goldfield, David, et al, The American
Journey: A History of the United States, Prentice Hall, 1999,
ISBN 0-13-088243-7. There are additional controversies about what
Bee said and whether he said anything at all. See Freeman, vol. 1,
pp. 733-34.
16
McPherson, p. 342.
17
Robertson, p. xi.
18
Fitzgerald, Michael, Society of Clinical Psychologists paper.
19
Robertson, p. xiv.
20
See, for instance, Sears, Gettysburg, pp. 233-34.
Alternative theories about Gettysburg are prominent ideas in the
literature about the Lost Cause.
21
Battle of Gettysburg.
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