He was now twenty-two years old, with the brevet rank of second lieutenant of artillery. Our country had already declared war against Mexico, and when his whole class was ordered to the front, Jackson went to New Orleans from whence he sailed to Mexico. General Winfield Scott was there, and Jackson joined his army at Vera Cruz. From this time on, fortune placed him in the centre of the stage. He took part in nearly all the great battles of this war. He was many times mentioned for bravery. At the storming of the Castle of Chapultepec, Captain Magruder recommended him for promotion in the following words: “I beg leave to call the attention of the Major General commanding, to the conduct of Lieutenant Jackson of the First Artillery. If devotion, industry, talent and gallantry are the highest qualities of a soldier, then is he entitled to the distinction which their possession confers.” At once he was brevetted a captain, and a little later made major. It is said “no other officer in the whole army in Mexico was promoted so often for meritorious conduct or made so great a stride in rank.”
On September 14, the American Army occupied the city of Mexico. A garrison was finally left to guard the city, and Jackson spent pleasant days in this life of ease among the Mexican people. He learned their language, and took part in some of their pastimes. It was here that religion grew upon him. He began the study of the differing forms of creeds and service taught by soldier chaplains, Mexican priests, and citizen ministers. The Archbishop of Mexico explained to him the system of the Church of Rome, but Jackson was quite undecided when he had listened to them all, and left his selection to a later day.
In 1848 the army vacated the city. Major Jackson was sent to Fort Hamilton, on Long Island, where two uneventful years quickly passed. He was next ordered to Fort Meade, near Tampa Bay, Florida, where he stayed for six months. A pleasant change awaited him, for he was elected professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Artillery Tactics at the Virginia Military Institute, where he went in March, 1851.
It was at Lexington, where the Shenandoah flows through the “Valley of Virginia,” that Jackson spent the next ten years, teaching the cadets, and very interesting work he found it. He loved every inch of the beautiful grounds, and enjoyed every hour of those days. It was here that he met Doctor White, a Presbyterian minister, in whom he found a congenial “spiritual commanding officer.” After examination of all the creeds, Jackson was baptized “a member of Doctor White’s congregation,” and began straightaway, with a zeal that was all his might, the business of leading a veritable “religious life,” and this life he lived to the letter, as far as it is possible for man to live it in this world. “Every act, it seemed to him, was fit occasion for a prayer,—prayer before he drank a glass of water, in the class-room, a blessing on his scholars, on mailing a letter, an appeal for the person to whom it was sent,—silent prayers in most cases; for there appeared little of the Roundhead in this simple man, who could speak out when he thought it necessary, but shrank from uncalled for show.”
In 1853 Jackson was married to Elinor, daughter of President Junkin, of Washington College. Less than one happy year were they together, for she died in childbirth, and Jackson sank in despair.
There have been many descriptions of this Major Jackson. He is described as being “tall, erect, muscular, with uncommonly large hands and feet, and with a diffident manner of meeting people that was exaggerated by his habitually awkward movements. He walked, it is said, like a dismounted horseman; in the saddle sat loosely, in a kind of slovenly ease, unless, as later, in battle, he was moved by excitement, when his whole body became rigid with martial lines, and he rode with a distinction as imposing, almost, as that of ‘the man on the horse himself.’ The heavy (bearded) jaw, however, was not square, but oval, and Jackson’s eyes, which were large and blue, had a trace of soft light in them not accounted for in this picture of an iron warrior.”
In 1856 Major Jackson visited Europe. He scanned every inch of the “beaten path,” and in gratifying his curiosity went to the Battlefield of Waterloo. While he felt that Napoleon was the greatest of commanders, he was sure that he made an error in choosing the Chateau of Hugomont as the vital point of attack on the British line; it should have been the village of Mont St. Jean.
In this far away land, his thoughts wandered back to the country of his birth, and to a dear little girl he had known before his marriage. He made her his wife a year after his return. They led a plain, simple, Christian life.
Jackson, a keen observer, saw at last the dark clouds of rebellion on the horizon. These signs meant much to him, and, like many another, he was greatly concerned.
Though Jackson took no active part in the secession arguments, he nevertheless came to the definite conclusion that the northern states were using the power of the Washington government for the private advantage of their section, and were seeking to oppress the south. He believed that the Lord had ordained slavery, but apart from this he stood for “the right of the sovereign state.” Said he: “The South ought to take its stand on the outer verge of its just rights, and then resist aggression, if necessary, by the sword,” and when the war came at last, there was no question in his mind on which side he was to fight. He thought of the days under the “Old Flag,” and what those days had been to him; yet after all, he felt that the “act of his state” absolved him,—Virginia was with the Confederacy.