Jackson was indeed Lee's "right arm" and his place among the great captains of the world is well indicated by the fact that a study of his campaign is to-day part of the education of all English and American officers. Nevertheless, it was unquestionably Lee's genius that enabled his great Lieutenant to accomplish what he did, and this Jackson himself fully realized. "Better that ten Jacksons should fall than one Lee," was his response to his commander's generous words.
But though Lee had won an international reputation, anyone seeing him in the field among his soldiers might well have imagined that he was wholly unaware that the world was ringing with his fame. He steadily declined all offers to provide comfortable quarters for his accommodation, preferring to live in a simple tent and share with his men the discomforts of the field. Indeed, his thoughts were constantly of others, never of himself, and when gifts of fruit and other dainties for his table were tendered him, he thanked the givers but suggested that they were needed for the sick and wounded in the hospitals, where they would be gratefully received.
"...I should certainly have endeavored to throw the enemy north of the Potomac," he wrote his wife, "but thousands of our men were barefooted, thousands with fragments of shoes, and all without overcoats, blankets or warm clothing. I could not bear to expose them to certain suffering.... I am glad you have some socks for the army. Send them to me.... Tell the girls to send all they can. I wish they could make some shoes, too."
Even the hardships of the dumb animals moved him to a ready sympathy, and he was constantly planning to spare them in every possible way.
"Our horses and mules suffer most," he wrote one of his daughters. "They have to bear the cold and rain, tug through the mud and suffer all the time with hunger."
And again on another occasion he wrote his wife:
"This morning the whole country is covered with a mantle of snow, fully a foot deep.... Our poor horses were enveloped. We have dug them out...but it will be terrible.... I fear our short rations for man and horse will have to be curtailed."
The whole army realized the great-hearted nature of its Chief, and its confidence in his thought and care is well illustrated by a letter which a private addressed to him, asking him if he knew upon what short rations the men were living. If he did, the writer stated, their privations were doubtless necessary and everyone would cheerfully accept them, knowing that he had the comfort of his men continually in mind.
War had no illusions for this simple, God-fearing man. He regarded it as a terrible punishment for the shortcomings of mankind. For him it had no glory.
"The country here looks very green and pretty, notwithstanding the ravages of war," he wrote his wife. "What a beautiful world God, in His loving kindness to His creatures, has given us! What a shame that men endowed with reason and knowledge of right should mar His gifts."