This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[142]
“If silence be golden, he was a bonanza.”
It was said of him at that time that he sucked lemons, ate hardtack and drank water-and praying and fighting appeared to him to be the whole duty of man. General Ewell, it is related, once said he admired Jackson's genius, but he never “saw one of his couriers approach him without expecting an order to assault the North Pole.”
From a humble professor in the Virginia Military Institute he rapidly grew into a giant of war. He believed in a short, sharp, decisive contest.
When first appointed a professor he occupied a room on one of the upper floors of barracks.
Some of the cadets, in a mischievous spirit, took away a portion of the steps below his room during the night.
The next morning, having an appointment to fill, he came out at an early hour, and, seeing what had been done, without a moment's hesitation seized one of the supporting posts and lowered himself hand over hand.
“In civil war,” said he, in 1860, “when the swords are drawn the scabbards should be thrown away” ; and he would have fought under the “black flag” with as pleasant a smile as his countenance could assume.
Earnestly and conscientiously believing the South was right, in the spring of 1861 he was strongly inclined to war.
In some respects he resembled Blucher; like him he was bold, bluff, and energetic, and, as with Blucher, his loyalty to the cause he adopted was a passion.
The grim old soldier whom Wellington welcomed at Waterloo smoked, swore, and drank at seventy, and just there the resemblance ceased.
Above others, on either side, Jackson understood the great value of celerity in military movements, and his infantry was termed “foot cavalry.”
To be under heavy fire, he said, filled him with a “delicious excitement.”
His death afterward, at Chancellorsville, lost the South Gettysburg; for General Lee has said, “Had I Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg I would have won a great victory.”
He was a blazing meteor of battle; his enterprising and aggressive spirit sought relief in motion-always motion.
To such a commander the defense of the beautiful Valley of Virginia was intrusted.
After his return from Romney he was at Winchester,
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.