His European trip benefited him very materially in health and spirits, and on his return he, with great zeal, resumed his labors in his classes at both the Military Institute and the Sunday School.
He had started on his return trip in ample time to reach the Institute at its opening, September 1st, which he had promised to do; but storms had prevented this and he was behind time.
A lady friend, knowing what a slave he was to his word, asked him if he had not been miserable at the delay. The answer was characteristic of the man. He had done his part, Providence had intervened, and he had not worried in the least. No man ever trusted Providence more implicitly than Jackson, and when he went to God in prayer he knew that his feet would be guided in the right way.
Dr. Dabney tells us that one day, when a friend said that he could not understand how one could “pray without ceasing,” Jackson replied that he had, for some time, been in the habit of praying all through the day. “When we take our meals,” said he, “there is grace, and when I take a draught of water, I always pause to lift up my heart to God in thanks for the ‘water of life’; and when I go to my class-room and await the coming of the cadets, that is my time to pray for them. And so with every other act of the day.” Thus we see that Jackson was truly a “praying man.”
His pastor, Rev. Dr. White, once said that Major Jackson was the happiest man that he had ever known. This happiness came from his faith in the saving care of God.
We are told that a friend once said to him, “Suppose you should lose your eyesight and then, too, be very ill, and have to depend on those bound to you by no tie, would not this be too much for your faith? Do you think you could be happy then?” He thought a moment and then said, “If it were the will of God to place me on a sick bed, He would enable me to lie there in peace a hundred years.”
Such was the faith of this great man! As he grew older his spirit became more saintly until, when called upon to go up higher to meet his Lord, his end seemed more like a passing over than a death.
Major Jackson was married again, on July 15th, 1857, to Mary Anna Morrison, the daughter of Dr. R. H. Morrison, a Presbyterian minister, of North Carolina. This lady is now living, and has quite lately written a life of her husband, in which she gives beautiful glimpses of their home life in Lexington, and also extracts from his letters written to her during the Civil War, of which I must so soon tell you.
Shortly after his second marriage, Major Jackson bought a house and a few acres of land, and soon all of his spare time was spent in working in his garden and fields.
We are told that his little farm of rocky hill-land was soon well fenced and tilled, and that he used to say that the bread grown there by the labor of himself and slaves tasted sweeter than that which was bought.