I have only to add that should anything in these pages wound the susceptibilities of any one of those splendid soldiers and gallant gentlemen who took part in the Civil War, whether he be Northerner or Southerner, I here tender him my humblest apologies; assuring him, at the same time, that while compiling these pages I have always borne in mind the words of General Grant: “I would like to see truthful history written. Such history will do full credit to the courage, endurance, and ability of the American citizen, no matter what section he hailed from, or in what ranks he fought.” I am very strongly of opinion that any fair-minded man may feel equal sympathy with both Federal and Confederate. Both were so absolutely convinced that their cause was just, that it is impossible to conceive either Northerner or Southerner acting otherwise than he did. If Stonewall Jackson had been a New Englander, educated in the belief that secession was rebellion, he would assuredly have shed the last drop of his blood in defence of the Union; if Ulysses Grant had been a Virginian, imbibing the doctrine of States’ rights with his mother’s milk, it is just as certain that he would have worn the Confederate grey. It is with those Northerners who would have allowed the Union to be broken, and with those Southerners who would have tamely surrendered their hereditary rights, that no Englishman would be willing to claim kinship.
[1] Referred to in the text as O.R.
[2] Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson. The Prentice Press, Louisville, Kentucky.
Chapter I
WEST POINT[[1]]
In the first quarter of the century, on the hills which stand above the Ohio River, but in different States of the Union, were born two children, destined, to all appearance, to lives of narrow interests and thankless toil. They were the sons of poor parents, without influence or expectations; their native villages, deep in the solitudes of the West, and remote from the promise and possibilities of great cities, offered no road to fortune. In the days before the railway, escape from the wilderness, except for those with long purses, was very difficult; and for those who remained, if their means were small, the farm and the store were the only occupations. But a farmer without capital was little better than a hired hand; trade was confined to the petty dealings of a country market; and although thrift and energy, even under such depressing conditions, might eventually win a competence, the most ardent ambition could hardly hope for more. Never was an obscure existence more irretrievably marked out than for these children of the Ohio; and yet, before either had grown grey, the names of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, and of Stonewall Jackson, Lieutenant-General in the Confederate Army, were household words in both America and Europe. Descendants of the pioneers, those hardy borderers, half soldiers and half farmers, who held and reclaimed, through long years of Indian warfare, the valleys and prairies of the West, they inherited the best attributes of a frank and valiant race. Simple yet wise, strong yet gentle, they were gifted with all the qualities which make leaders of men. Actuated by the highest principles, they both ennobled the cause for which they fought; and while the opposition of such kindred natures adds to the dramatic interest of the Civil War, the career of the great soldier, although a theme perhaps less generally attractive, may be followed as profitably as that of the great statesmen. Providence dealt with them very differently. The one was struck down by a mortal wound before his task was well begun; his life, to all human seeming, was given in vain, and his name will ever be associated with the mournful memories of a lost cause and a vanished army. The other, ere he fell beneath the assassin’s stroke, had seen the abundant fruits of his mighty labours; his sun set in a cloudless sky. And yet the resemblance between them is very close. Both dared
For that sweet mother-land which gave them birth
Nobly to do, nobly to die. Their names,
Graven on memorial columns, are a song
Heard in the future; . . . more than wall
And rampart, their examples reach a hand
Far thro’ all years, and everywhere they meet
And kindle generous purpose, and the strength
To mould it into action pure as theirs.
Jackson, in one respect, was more fortunate than Lincoln. Although born to poverty, he came of a Virginia family which was neither unknown nor undistinguished, and as showing the influences which went to form his character, its history and traditions may be briefly related.
It is an article of popular belief that the State of Virginia, the Old Dominion of the British Crown, owes her fame to the blood of the English Cavaliers. The idea, however, has small foundation in fact. Not a few of her great names are derived from a less romantic source, and the Confederate general, like many of his neighbours in the western portion of the State, traced his origin to the Lowlands of Scotland. An ingenious author of the last century, himself born on Tweed-side, declares that those Scotch families whose patronymics end in “son,” although numerous and respectable, and descended, as the distinctive syllable denotes, from the Vikings, have seldom been pre-eminent either in peace or war. And certainly, as regards the Jacksons of bygone centuries, the assertion seems justified. The name is almost unknown to Border history. In neither lay nor legend has it been preserved; and even in the “black lists” of the wardens, where the more enterprising of the community were continually proclaimed as thieves and malefactors, it is seldom honoured with notice. The omission might be held as evidence that the family was of peculiar honesty, but, in reality, it is only a proof that it was insignificant. It is not improbable that the Jacksons were one of the landless clans, whose only heritages were their rude “peel” towers, and who, with no acknowledged chief of their own race, followed, as much for protection as for plunder, the banner of some more powerful house. In course of time, when the Marches grew peaceful and morals improved, when cattle-lifting, no longer profitable, ceased to be an honourable occupation, such humbler marauders drifted away into the wide world, leaving no trace behind, save the grey ruins of their grim fortalices, and the incidental mention of some probably disreputable scion in a chapman’s ballad. Neither mark nor memory of the Jacksons remains in Scotland. We only know that some members of the clan, impelled probably by religious persecution, made their way to Ulster, where a strong colony of Lowlanders had already been established.
Under a milder sky and a less drastic government the expatriated Scots lost nothing of their individuality. Masterful and independent from the beginning, masterful and independent they remained, inflexible of purpose, impatient of justice, and staunch to their ideals. Something, perhaps, they owed to contact with the Celt. Wherever the Ulster folk have made their home, the breath of the wholesome North has followed them, preserving untainted their hereditary virtues. Shrewd, practical, and thrifty, prosperity has consistently rewarded them; and yet, in common with the Irishmen of English stock, they have found in the trade of arms the most congenial outlet for their energies. An abiding love of peace can hardly be enumerated amongst their more prominent characteristics; and it is a remarkable fact, which, unless there is some mysterious property in the air, can only be explained by the intermixture of races, that Ireland “within the Pale” has been peculiarly prolific of military genius. As England has bred admirals, so the sister isle has bred soldiers. The tenacious courage of the Anglo-Saxon, blended with the spirit of that people which above all others delights in war, has proved on both sides of the Atlantic a most powerful combination of martial qualities. The same mixed strain which gave England Wolfe and Wellington, the Napiers and the Lawrences, has given America some of her greatest captains; and not the least famous of her Presidents is that General Jackson who won the battle of New Orleans in 1814. So, early in the century the name became known beyond the seas; but whether the same blood ran in the veins of the Confederate general and of the soldier President is a matter of some doubt. The former, in almost every single respect, save his warm heart, was the exact converse of the typical Irishman, the latter had a hot temper and a ready wit. Both, however, were undeniably fond of fighting, and a letter still preserved attests that their ancestors had lived in the same parish of Londonderry.[[2]]
1748 John Jackson, the great-grandfather of our hero, landed in America in 1748, and it was not long before he set his face towards the wilderness. The emigrants from Ulster appear as a rule to have moved westward. The States along the coast were already colonised, and, despite its fertility, the country was little to their taste. But beyond the border, in the broad Appalachian valley which runs from the St. Lawrence to Alabama, on the banks of the great rivers, the Susquehanna, the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee, they found a land after their own heart, a soil with whose properties they were familiar, the sweet grasses and soft contours of their native hills. Here, too, there was ample room for their communities, for the West was as yet but sparsely tenanted. No inconsiderable number, penetrating far into the interior, settled eventually about the headwaters of the Potomac and the James. This highland region was the debatable ground of the United States. So late as 1756 the State of Virginia extended no further than the crests of the Blue Ridge. Two hundred miles westward forts flying French colours dominated the valley of the Ohio, and the wild and inhospitable tract, a very labyrinth of mountains, which lay between, was held by the fierce tribes of the “Six Nations” and the Leni-Lenape. Two years later the French had been driven back to Canada; but it was not till near the close of the century that the savage was finally dispossessed of his spacious hunting grounds.