Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War

by G. F. R. Henderson

It was on these green uplands, where fight and foray were as frequent as once on the Scottish border, that John Jackson and his wife, a fellow passenger to America, by name Elizabeth Cummins, first pitched their camp, and here is still the home of their descendants.

January 21, 1824 In the little town of Clarksburg, now the county-seat of Harrison, but then no more than a village in the Virginia backwoods, Thomas Jonathan Jackson was born on January 21, 1824. His father was a lawyer, clever and popular, who had inherited a comfortable patrimony. The New World had been generous to the Jacksons. The emigrant of 1748 left a valuable estate, and his many sons were uniformly prosperous. Nor was their affluence the reward of energy and thrift alone, for the lands reclaimed by axe and plough were held by a charter of sword and musket. The redskin fought hard for his ancestral domains. The stockaded forts, which stood as a citadel of refuge in every settlement, were often the scene of fierce attack and weary leaguer, and the nursing mothers of the frontier families were no strangers to war and bloodshed. The last great battle with the Indians east of the Ohio was fought in 1774, but the military experience of the pioneers was not confined to the warfare of the border. John Jackson and his sons bore arms in the War of Independence, and the trained riflemen of West Virginia were welcome recruits in the colonial ranks. With the exception of the Highlanders of the ’45, who had been deported in droves to the plantations, no race had less cause to remain loyal to the Crown than the men of Ulster blood. Even after the siege of Londonderry they had been proscribed and persecuted; and in the War of Independence the fiercest enemies of King George were the descendants of the same Scotch-Irish who had held the north of Ireland for King William.

In Washington’s campaigns more than one of the Jacksons won rank and reputation; and when peace was established they married into influential families. Nor was the next generation less successful. Judges, senators, and soldiers upheld the honour of the name, and proved the worth of the ancestral stock. They were marked, it is said, by strong and characteristic features, by a warm feeling of clanship, a capacity for hard work, and a decided love of roving. Some became hunters, others explorers, and the race is now scattered from Virginia to Oregon. A passion for litigation was a general failing, and none of them could resist the fascination of machinery. Every Jackson owned a mill or factory of some sort—many of them more than one—and their ventures were not always profitable. Jackson’s father, among others, found it easier to make money than to keep it. Generous and incautious, he became deeply involved by becoming security for others; high play increased his embarrassments; and when he died in 1827 every vestige of his property was swept away. His young widow, left with three small children, two sons and a daughter, became dependent on the assistance of her kinsfolk for a livelihood, and on the charity of the Freemasons for a roof. When Thomas, her second son, was six years old, she married a Captain Woodson; but her second matrimonial venture was not more fortunate than her first. Her husband’s means were small, and necessity soon compelled her to commit her two boys to the care of their father’s relatives.

1831 Within a year the children stood round her dying bed, and at a very early age our little Virginian found himself a penniless orphan. But, as he never regretted his poverty, so he never forgot his mother. To the latest hour of his life he loved to recall her memory, and years after she had passed away her influence still remained. Her beauty, her counsels, their last parting, and her happy death, for she was a woman of deep religious feeling, made a profound impression on him. To his childhood’s fancy she was the embodiment of every grace; and so strong had been the sympathy between them, that even in the midst of his campaigns she was seldom absent from his thoughts. After her death the children found a home with their father’s half-brother, who had inherited the family estates, and was one of the largest slave-owners in the district. Their surroundings, however, could hardly be called luxurious. Life on the Ohio was very different from life on the coast. The western counties of Virginia were still practically on the frontier of the United States. The axe had thinned the interminable woods; mills were busy on each mountain stream, and the sunny valleys were rich in fruit and corn. But as yet there was little traffic. Steam had not yet come to open up the wilderness. The population was small and widely scattered; and the country was cut off as much by nature as by distance from the older civilisation of the East. The parallel ranges of the Alleghenies, with their pathless forests and great canyons, were a formidable barrier to all intercourse. The West was a world in itself. The only outlets eastward were the valleys of the Potomac and the James, the one leading to Washington, the other to Richmond; and so seldom were they used that the yeomen of the Ohio uplands were almost as much opposed, both in character and in mode of life, to the planters beyond the Blue Ridge, as the Covenanters of Bothwell Brig to the gentlemen of Dundee’s Life Guards.

Although the sturdy independence and simple habits of the borderers were not affected by contact with wealthier communities, isolation was not in every way a blessing. Served by throngs of slaves, the great landowners of East Virginia found leisure to cultivate the arts which make life more pleasant. The rambling houses on the banks of the James, the Rappahannock, and the Potomac, built on the model of English manors, had their libraries and picture-galleries. A classical academy was the boast of every town, and a university training was considered as essential to the son of a planter as to the heir of an English squire. A true aristocracy, in habit and in lineage, the gentlemen of Virginia long swayed the councils of the nation, and among them were many who were intimate with the best representatives of European culture. Beyond the Alleghenies there were no facilities for education; and even had opportunities offered few would have had the leisure to enjoy them. Labour was scarce, either slave or hired. The owners of farms were their own managers and overseers, and young men had to serve a practical apprenticeship to lumbering and agriculture. To this rule, despite his uncle’s wealth, Jackson was no exception. He had to fight his own battle, to rub shoulders with all sorts and conditions of men, and to hold his own as best he could.

It was a hard school, then, in which he grew to manhood. But for that very reason it was a good school for the future soldier. For a man who has to push his own way in the world, more especially if he has to carve it with his sword, a boyhood passed amidst surroundings which boast of no luxury and demand much endurance, is the best probation. Von Moltke has recorded that the comfortless routine of the Military Academy at Copenhagen inured him to privation, and Jackson learned the great lesson of self-reliance in the rough life of his uncle’s homestead.

The story of his early years is soon told. As a blue-eyed child, with long fair hair, he was curiously thoughtful and exceedingly affectionate. His temper was generous and cheerful. His truthfulness was proverbial, and his little sister found in him the kindest of playmates and the sturdiest of protectors. He was distinguished, too, for his politeness, although good manners were by no means rare in the rustic West. The manly courtesy of the true American is no exotic product; nor is the universal deference to woman peculiar to any single class. The farmer of the backwoods might be ignorant of the conventionalities, but the simplicity and unselfishness which are the root of all good breeding could be learned in West Virginia as readily as in Richmond.

Once, tempted by his brother, the boy left his adopted home, and the two children, for the elder was no more than twelve, wandered down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and spent the summer on a lonely and malarious island, cutting wood for passing steamers. No one opposed their going, and it seems to have been considered quite natural in that independent community that the veriest urchins should be allowed to seek their fortunes for themselves. Returning, ragged and fever-stricken, the little adventurers submitted once more to the routine of the farm and to the intermittent studies of a country school. After his failure as a man of business, our small hero showed no further inclination to seek his fortunes far afield. He was fond of his home. His uncle, attracted by his steadiness and good sense, treated him more as a companion than a child; and in everything connected with the farm, as well as in the sports of the country side, the boy took the keenest interest. Delicate by nature, with a tendency to consumption inherited from his mother, his physique and constitution benefited by a life of constant exercise and wholesome toil. At school he was a leader in every game, and his proficiency in the saddle proved him a true Virginian. Fox-hunting and horse-racing were popular amusements, and his uncle not only kept a stable of well-bred horses, but had a four-mile race-course on his own grounds. As a light-weight jockey the future general was a useful member of the household, and it was the opinion of the neighbourhood that “if a horse had any winning qualities whatever in him, young Jackson never failed to bring them out.”

In the management of the estate he learned early to put his shoulder to the wheel. Transporting timber from the forest to the saw-mill was one of his most frequent tasks, and tradition records that if a tree were to be moved from ground of unusual difficulty, or if there were one more gigantic than the rest, the party of labourers was put under his control, and the work was sure to be effected.

One who knew him well has described his character. “He was a youth of exemplary habits, of indomitable will and undoubted courage. He was not what is nowadays termed brilliant, but he was one of those untiring, matter-of-fact persons who would never give up an undertaking until he accomplished his object. He learned slowly, but what he got into his head he never forgot. He was not quick to decide, except when excited, and then, when he made up his mind to do a thing, he did it on short notice and in quick time. Once, while on his way to school, an overgrown rustic behaved rudely to one of the school-girls. Jackson fired up, and told him he must apologise at once or he would thrash him. The big fellow, supposing that he was more than a match for him, refused, whereupon Jackson pitched into him, and gave him a severe pounding.”