Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 11.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[145]

Stonewall Jackson.

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A lecture delivered in Baltimore in November, 1872, by Rev. Dr. R. L. Dabney. paper no. 2. (Conclusion.)

This plan, then, is clear even to the civic apprehension, as offering fewest risks and largest promise—in a word, the perfection of sagacity; and with so many men in gray as might match two-fold numbers of enemies (odds rather favorable, if not light and trivial, compared with the customary), it seems to promise safely. Perhaps some may even say that these reasonings are clear and just, even too much so to imply peculiar genius in Jackson. Remember, friend, Columbus and his egg. Jackson's performance hath illustrated this problem for you, made it all plain, which to him was all novel, urgent, and to have its right solution by him alone invented, then and there, under pressure of dire responsibility and penalty of portentious ruin and manifold destruction. These, friend, thou wouldst not have found propitious or helpful for clear meditation and judgment