Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War

by G. F. R. Henderson

The Civil War was prolific of great leaders. The young American generals, inexperienced as they were in dealing with large armies, and compelled to improvise their tactics as they improvised their staff, displayed a talent for command such as soldiers more regularly trained could hardly have surpassed. Neither the deficiencies of their material nor the difficulties of the theatre of war were to be lightly overcome; and yet their methods displayed a refreshing originality. Not only in mechanical auxiliaries did the inventive genius of their race find scope. The principles which govern civilised warfare, the rules which control the employment of each arm, the technical and mechanical arts, were rapidly modified to the exigencies of the troops and of the country. Cavalry, intrenchments, the railway, the telegraph, balloons, signalling, were all used in a manner which had been hitherto unknown. Monitors and torpedoes were for the first time seen, and even the formations of infantry were made sufficiently elastic to meet the requirements of a modern battle-field. Nor was the conduct of the operations fettered by an adherence to conventional practice. From first to last the campaigns were characterised by daring and often skilful manœuvres; and if the tactics of the battle-field were often less brilliant than the preceding movements, not only are parallels to these tactics to be found in almost every campaign of history, but they would probably have escaped criticism had the opponent been less skilful. But among the galaxy of leaders, Confederate and Federal, in none had the soldiers such implicit confidence as in Stonewall Jackson, and than the Southern soldiers, highly educated as many of them were, no better judges of military capacity were ever known.

Nevertheless, the opinion of the soldiers is no convincing proof that Jackson was equal to the command of a large army, or that he could have carried through a great campaign. Had Lee been disabled, it might be asked, would Jackson have proved a sufficient substitute?

It has already been explained that military genius shows itself first in character, and, second, in the application of the grand principles of warfare, not in the mere manipulation of armed masses. It cannot well be denied that Jackson possessed every single attribute which makes for success in war. Morally and physically he was absolutely fearless. He accepted responsibility with the same equanimity that he faced the bullets of the enemy. He permitted no obstacle to turn him aside from his appointed path, and in seizing an opportunity or in following up a victory he was the very incarnation of untiring energy. He had no moments of weakness. He was not robust, and his extraordinary exertions told upon his constitution. “My health,” he wrote to his wife in January 1863, “is essentially good, but I do not think I shall be able in future to stand what I have already stood;” and yet his will invariably rose superior to bodily exhaustion. A supreme activity, both of brain and body, was a prominent characteristic of his military life. His idea of strategy was to secure the initiative, however inferior his force; to create opportunities and to utilise them; to waste no time, and to give the enemy no rest. “War,” he said, “means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end. To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war.”

That he felt to the full the fascination of war’s tremendous game we can hardly doubt. Not only did he derive, as all true soldiers must, an intense intellectual pleasure from handling his troops in battle so as to outwit and defeat his adversary, but from the day he first smelt powder in Mexico until he led that astonishing charge through the dark depths of the Wilderness his spirits never rose higher than when danger and death were rife about him. With all his gentleness there was much of the old Berserker about Stonewall Jackson, not indeed the lust for blood, but the longing to do doughtily and die bravely, as best becomes a man. His nature was essentially aggressive. He was never more to be feared than when he was retreating, and where others thought only of strong defensive positions he looked persistently for the opportunity to attack. He was endowed, like Masséna, “with that rare fortitude which seems to increase as perils thicken. When conquered he was as ready to fight again as if he had been conqueror.” “L’audace, l’audace, et toujours l’audace” was the mainspring of all his actions, and the very sights and sounds of a stricken field were dear to his soul. Nothing had such power to stir his pulses as the rebel yell. “I remember,” says a staff-officer, “one night, at tattoo, that this cry broke forth in the camp of the Stonewall Brigade, and was taken up by brigades and divisions until it rang out far over field and woods. The general came hastily and bareheaded from his tent, and leaning on a fence near by, listened in silence to the rise, the climax, and the fall of that strange serenade, raising his head to catch the sound, as it grew fainter and fainter and died away at last like an echo among the mountains. Then, turning towards his tent, he muttered in half soliloquy, ‘That was the sweetest music I ever heard.’”

Yet least of all was Jackson a mere fighting soldier, trusting to his lucky star and resolute blows to pull him through. He was not, indeed, one of those generals who seek to win victories without shedding blood. He never spared his men, either in marching or fighting, when a great result was to be achieved, and he was content with nothing less than the complete annihilation of the enemy. “Had we taken ten sail,” said Nelson, “and allowed the eleventh to escape, when it had been possible to have got at her, I could never have called it well done.” Jackson was of the same mind. “With God’s blessing,” he said before the Valley campaign, “let us make thorough work of it.” When once he had joined battle, no loss, no suffering was permitted to stay his hand. He never dreamed of retreat until he had put in his last reserve. Yet his victories were won rather by sweat than blood, by skilful manœuvring rather than sheer hard fighting. Solicitous as he was of the comfort of his men, he had no hesitation, when his opportunity was ripe, of taxing their powers of endurance to the uttermost. But the marches which strewed the wayside with the footsore and the weaklings won his battles. The enemy, surprised and outnumbered, was practically beaten before a shot was fired, and success was attained at a trifling cost.

Yet, despite his energy, Jackson was eminently patient. He knew when to refuse battle, just as well as he knew when to deliver it. He was never induced to fight except on his own terms, that is, on his own ground, and at his own time, save at Kernstown only, and there the strategical situation forced his hand. And he was eminently cautious. Before he committed himself to movement he deliberated long, and he never attacked until he had ample information. He ran risks, and great ones, but in war the nettle danger must be boldly grasped, and in Jackson’s case the dangers were generally more apparent than real. Under his orders the cavalry became an admirable instrument of reconnaissance. He showed a marked sagacity for selecting scouts, both officers and privates, and his system for obtaining intelligence was well-nigh perfect. He had the rare faculty, which would appear instinctive, but which is the fruit of concentrated thought allied to a wide knowledge of war, of divining the intention of his adversary and the state of his moral. His power of drawing inferences, often from seemingly unimportant trifles, was akin to that of the hunter of his native backwoods, to whom the rustle of a twig, the note of a bird, a track upon the sand, speak more clearly than written characters. His estimate of the demoralisation of the Federal army after Bull Run, and of the ease with which Washington might have been captured, was absolutely correct. In the middle of May, 1862, both Lee and Johnston, notwithstanding Jackson’s victory over Milroy, anticipated that Banks would leave the Valley. Jackson thought otherwise, and Jackson was right. After the bloody repulse at Malvern Hill, when his generals reported the terrible confusion in the Confederate ranks, he simply stated his opinion that the enemy was retreating, and went to sleep again. A week later he suggested that the whole army should move against Pope, for McClellan, he said, would never dare to march on Richmond. At Sharpsburg, as the shells cut the trees to pieces in the West Wood, and the heavy masses of Federal infantry filled the fields in front, he told his medical director that McClellan had done his worst. At Fredericksburg, after the first day’s battle, he believed that the enemy was already defeated, and, anticipating their escape under cover of the darkness, he advised a night attack with the bayonet. His knowledge of his adversary’s character, derived, in great degree, from his close observation of every movement, enabled him to predict with astonishing accuracy exactly how he would act under given circumstances.

Nor can he be charged in any single instance with neglect of precautions by which the risks of war are diminished. He appears to have thought out and to have foreseen—and here his imaginative power aided him—every combination that could be made against him, and to have provided for every possible emergency. He was never surprised, never disconcerted, never betrayed into a false manœuvre. Although on some occasions his success fell short of his expectations, the fault was not his; his strategy was always admirable, but fortune, in one guise or another—the indiscipline of the cavalry, the inefficiency of subordinates, the difficulties of the country—interfered with the full accomplishment of his designs. But whatever could be done to render fortune powerless that Jackson did. By means of his cavalry, by forced marches, by the careful selection of his line of march, of his camps, of his positions, of his magazines, and lastly, by his consistent reticence, he effectually concealed from the Federals both his troops and his designs. Never surprised himself, he seldom failed to surprise his enemies, if not tactically—that is, while they were resting in their camps—at least strategically. Kernstown came as a surprise to Banks, McDowell to Frémont. Banks believed Jackson to be at Harrisonburg when he had already defeated the detachment at Front Royal. At Cross Keys and Port Republic neither Frémont nor Shields expected that their flying foe would suddenly turn at bay. Pope was unable to support Banks at Cedar Run till the battle had been decided. When McClellan on the Chickahominy was informed that the Valley army had joined Lee it was too late to alter his dispositions, and no surprise was ever more complete than Chancellorsville.

And the mystery that always involved Jackson’s movements was undoubtedly the result of calculation, He knew the effect his sudden appearances and disappearances would have on the moral of the Federal generals, and he relied as much on upsetting the mental equilibrium of his opponents as on concentrating against them superior numbers. Nor was his view confined to the field of battle and his immediate adversary. It embraced the whole theatre of war. The motive power which ruled the enemy’s politics as well as his armies was always his real objective. From the very first he recognised the weakness of the Federal position—the anxiety with which the President and the people regarded Washington—and on this anxiety he traded. Every blow struck in the Valley campaign, from Kernstown to Cross Keys, was struck at Lincoln and his Cabinet; every movement, including the advance against Pope on Cedar Run, was calculated with reference to the effect it would produce in the Federal councils; and if he consistently advocated invasion, it was not because Virginia would be relieved of the enemy’s presence, but because treaties of peace are only signed within sight of the hostile capital.

It has been urged that the generals whom Jackson defeated were men of inferior stamp, and that his capacity for command was consequently never fairly tested. Had Grant or Sheridan, it is said, been pitted against him in the Valley, or Sherman or Thomas on the Rappahannock, his laurels would never have been won. The contention is fair. Generals of such calibre as Banks and Frémont, Shields and Pope, committed blunders which the more skilful leaders would undoubtedly have avoided; and again, had he been pitted against a worthy antagonist, Jackson would probably have acted with less audacity and greater caution. It is difficult to conceive, however, that the fact would either have disturbed his brain or weakened his resolution. Few generals, apparently, have been caught in worse predicaments than he was; first, when his army was near Harper’s Ferry, and Frémont and Shields were converging on his rear; second, when he lay in the woods near Groveton, with no news from Longstreet, and Pope’s army all around him; third, when he was marching by the Brock road to strike Hooker’s right, and Sickles’ column struck in between himself and Lee. But it was at such junctures as these that his self-possession was most complete and his skill most marked. The greater the peril, the more fixed became his purpose. The capacity of the opponent, moreover, cannot be accepted as the true touchstone of generalship. “The greatest general,” said Napoleon, “is he who makes the fewest mistakes,” i.e. he who neither neglects an opportunity nor offers one.

Thus tested Jackson has few superiors. During the whole of the two years he held command he never committed a single error. At Mechanicsville, and again at Frayser’s Farm, the failure to establish some method of intercommunication left his column isolated; this, however, was a failure in staff duties, for which the Confederate headquarters was more to blame than himself. And further, how sure and swift was the retribution which followed a mistake committed within his sphere of action! What opportunity did Jackson miss? His penetration was unerring; and when, after he had marked his prey, did he ever hesitate to swoop? “What seemed reckless audacity,” it has been well said by one of the greatest of Southern soldiers, “was the essence of prudence. His eye had caught at a glance the entire situation, and his genius, with marvellous celerity and accuracy, had weighed all the chances of success or failure. While, therefore, others were slowly feeling their way, or employing in detail insufficient forces, Jackson, without for one moment doubting his success, hurled his army like a thunderbolt against the opposing lines, and thus ended the battle at a single blow.”[^[6]]