Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War

by G. F. R. Henderson

This power of abstraction and of application is well worth noting, for not only was it remarkable in a boy, but, as we shall see hereafter, it had much to do with the making of the soldier.

At West Point Jackson was troubled with the return of the obscure complaint which had already threatened him, and he there began that rigid observance of the laws of health which afterwards developed to almost an eccentricity. His peculiar attitude when studying was due to the fear that if he bent over his work the compression of his internal organs might increase their tendency to disease.

And not only did he lay down rules for his physical regimen. A book of maxims which he drew up at West Point has been preserved, and we learn that his scrupulous exactness, his punctilious courtesy, and his choice of companions were the outcome of much deliberation.

Nothing in this curious volume occurs to show that his thoughts had yet been turned to religion. It is as free from all reference to the teachings of Christianity as the maxims of Marcus Aurelius.

Every line there written shows that at this period of Jackson’s life devotion to duty was his guiding rule; and, notwithstanding his remarkable freedom from egotism, the traces of an engrossing ambition and of absolute self-dependence are everywhere apparent. Many of the sentiments he would have repudiated in after-life as inconsistent with humility; but there can be no question that it was a strong and fearless hand that penned on a conspicuous page the sentence: “You can be what you resolve to be.”

Jackson was already a man in years when he passed his final examination, and here the record of his boyhood may fitly close. He had made no particular mark at the Academy.

1846 His memory, in the minds of his comrades, was associated with his gravity, his silence, his kind heart, and his awkward movements. No one suspected him of nobler qualities than dogged perseverance and a strict regard for truth. The officers and sergeants of the cadet battalion were supplied by the cadets themselves; but Jackson was never promoted. In the mimic warfare of the playground at Brienne Napoleon was master of the revels. His capacity for command had already been detected; but neither comrade nor teacher saw beneath the unpromising exterior of the West Point student a trace of aught save what was commonplace.

And yet there is much in the boyhood of Stonewall Jackson that resembles the boyhood of Napoleon, of all great soldiers the most original. Both were affectionate. Napoleon lived on bread and water that he might educate his brothers; Jackson saved his cadet’s pay to give his sister a silk dress. Both were indefatigable students, impressed with the conviction that the world was to be conquered by force of intellect. Jackson, burning his lessons into his brain, is but the counterpart of the young officer who lodged with a professor of mathematics that he might attend his classes, and who would wait to explain the lectures to those who had not clearly understood them. Both were provincial, neither was prepossessing. If the West Point cadets laughed at Jackson’s large hands and feet, was not Napoleon, with his thin legs thrust into enormous boots, saluted by his friend’s children, on his first appearance in uniform, with the nickname of Le Chat Botté? It is hard to say which was the more laughable: the spare and bony figure of the cadet, sitting bolt upright like a graven image in a tight uniform, with his eyes glued to the ceiling of his barrack-room, or the young man, with gaunt features, round shoulders, and uncombed hair, who wandered alone about the streets of Paris in 1795.

They had the same love of method and of order. The accounts of the Virginian constable was not more scrupulously kept than the ledgers of Napoleon’s household, nor could they show a greater regard for economy than the tailor’s bill, still extant, on which the future Emperor gained a reduction of four sous. But it was not on such trivial lines alone that they run parallel. An inflexibility of purpose, an absolute disregard of popular opinion, and an unswerving belief in their own capacity, were predominant in both. They could say “No.” Neither sought sympathy, and both felt that they were masters of their own fate. “You can be whatever you resolve to be” may be well placed alongside the speech of the brigadier of five-and-twenty: “Have patience. I will command in Paris presently. What should I do there now?”

But here the parallel ends. In Jackson, even as a cadet, self was subordinate to duty. Pride was foreign to his nature. He was incapable of pretence, and his simplicity was inspired by that disdain of all meanness which had been his characteristic from a child. His brain was disturbed by no wild visions; no intemperate ambition confused his sense of right and wrong. “The essence of his mind,” as has been said of another of like mould, “was clearness, healthy purity, incompatibility with fraud in any of its forms.” It was his instinct to be true and straightforward as it was Napoleon’s to be false and subtle. And, if, as a youth, he showed no trace of marked intellectual power; if his instructors saw no sign of masterful resolution and a genius for command, it was because at West Point, as elsewhere, his great qualities lay dormant, awaiting the emergency that should call them forth.