Entrance to the Virginia Military Institute Grounds.
Reared in adverse circumstances, which prevented him in early youth from receiving the benefits of a good common-school education, by his own efforts, mainly, he fitted himself to enter the United States Military Academy at West Point. His first year’s course would have discouraged him in prosecuting his studies had he not been conscious that there was that within, which, if properly nurtured, would lead to ultimate success. In his second year, he raised his general standing from 51 to 30; in the third, from 30 to 20, and in the fourth, his graduating year, from 20 to 17. His upward progress attracted attention, and one of his associates remarked: “Had Jackson remained at West Point upon a course of four years’ longer study, he would have reached the head of his class.”
His advancement in the Mexican war, rising rapidly from brevet second lieutenant of artillery to brevet major, was no less marked than that at the academy, and his gallant and meritorious services had been heralded to the world through the official reports of his superiors.
General Francis H. Smith, superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, in “Institute Memorial,” writes:
“It is not surprising that, when the Board of Visitors of the Virginia Military Institute were looking about for a suitable person to fill the chair of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Artillery, the associates of this young and brave major of artillery should have pointed him out as worthy to receive so distinguished an honor. Other names had been submitted to the Board of Visitors by the Faculty of West Point, all of men distinguished for high scholarship and for gallant services in Mexico. McClellan, Reno, Rosecrans, afterward generals in the Northern army, and G. W. Smith, who afterward became a general in the Confederate army, were thus named. But the peculiar fitness of young Jackson, the high testimonials to his personal character, and his nativity as a Virginian, satisfied the Board that they might safely select him for the vacant chair without seeking candidates from other States. He was, therefore, unanimously elected to the professorship on the 28th of March, 1851, and entered upon the duties of his chair on the 1st of September following.
“The professorial career of Major Jackson was marked by great faithfulness, and by an unobtrusive, yet earnest spirit. With high mental endowments, teaching was a new profession to him, and demanded, in the important department of instruction assigned to him, an amount of labor which, from the state of his health, and especially from the weakness of his eyes, he rendered at great sacrifice.
“Conscientious fidelity to duty marked every step of his life here, and when called to active duty in the field he had made considerable progress in the preparation of an elementary work on optics, which he proposed to publish for the benefit of his classes.
Virginia Military Institute Barracks (fore-shortened)
“Strict, and at times stern, in his discipline, though ever polite and kind, he was not always a popular professor; but no professor ever possessed to a higher degree the confidence and respect of the cadets for his unbending integrity and fearlessness in the discharge of his duty. If he was exact in his demands upon them, they knew he was no less so in his own respect for and submission to authority; and, thus, it became a proverb among them, that it was useless to write an excuse for a report made by Major Jackson. His great principle of government was, that a general rule should not be violated for any particular good; and his animating rule of action was, that a man could always accomplish what he willed to perform.