They Called Him Stonewall

by Davis, Burke;

  There was less reserve here than in any letter Jackson wrote concerning the women of his life, and yet there was not enough to convince Laura or other readers that he was involved with a Mexican woman. He was to say much less, in his coy fashion, when it came to announcement of his actual marriage; but of the Mexican romance there remains only conjecture, based on the mild hint. Whatever the fact, some deep experience impressed him in this period, and its impact seems to speak from his letters.

  In these pages to Laura, he, for the last time, gave an unstudied and natural image of himself in relations with women. The opposite sex was, for him, shortly to be merged in the powerful whirlpool of God-ambition-war-sacrifice, which appeared to grow within him.

  Jackson studied in these months, but even so, thought, “I pass my time more agreeably than the greater portion of the officers,” because of his Mexican friendships. He reported to Laura that his health was good. He read Humboldt’s history of Mexico when the rainy season interrupted his schedule of social calls. He suggested to Laura that the American army was destroying the superstitious nature of the natives, except in one respect: “The natives still, with uncovered heads, drop on their knees at the approach of the Archbishop’s carriage, which is recognized by its being drawn by two spotted mules.”

  Jackson was strongly attracted to the colorful figure of the clergyman. In a manner he did not explain, he became friendly with a number of priests in Mexico City, and probably tried to improve his Spanish among them. He was on such terms with these men that he spent some time in their quarters. He was as deeply impressed by the luxury of their lives as he had been by the obeisance of the church’s worshipers, and wrote in obvious awe of the servants who waited upon the priests, and the rich foods of their table.

  Through these friends he got an audience with the archbishop, to investigate the Catholic Church for himself; but though he saw the cleric several times, their talks passed without written record. For some reason, Jackson seemed to find the church lacking in appeal. He may—or may not—have been impelled to investigate the church by the prospect of marrying in Mexico.

  He was now abruptly transferred back to the United States, and the impression left upon him by the months in Mexico was to be revealed only in the most casual and widely separated references. Beyond the use of Spanish terms of endearment to his future wife, the Mexican life seemed not to endure.

  The army had ordered Jackson to a vastly different scene: a dull artillery post on Long Island, Fort Hamilton. He gave every indication that he had forgotten his experiences in the south. There remained from that war only the uniform.

  Jackson’s concern with religion grew. At Fort Hamilton, his commanding officer was Colonel Frank Taylor, a devout churchman who had been his superior in the First Artillery during the war. Taylor led Jackson into baptism.

  Major Jackson had frequent talks with the colonel over his religious status. It seemed to trouble him that he could not ascertain whether he had been baptized as an infant. He went to a near-by chapel—it happened to have been Episcopal—and was baptized. He was careful to specify that the act merely welcomed him into the Christian fold, without binding him to become a member of any particular sect.

  The Major settled into a new routine. He went on a long tour of court-martial duty: Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; Fort Ontario, New York; West Point. He vacationed for a few days in upper New York State, to take a water cure. This was the first of a series of visits to hydropathic establishments, which he thought improved his health. He was forever writing Laura of his infirmities. Once his eyes failed for a few days, and light in his face was so painful that he was forced to mask even his mirror.

  Jackson’s doctor introduced him to a Spartan diet of stale bread and unseasoned meat, and the soldier wrote as if he gloried in this addition to his rigid code of self-denial: “The other evening I tasted a piece of bread with butter on it, and then the bread without it, and rather gave my preference to the unbuttered bread; and hence I may never taste any more of this once much relished seasoning.”

  He offered domineering advice to Laura on diet: “The yolk of one or two eggs—the white is hardly worth the eating as it requires digestion and affords but little nutrition. For dinner the same kind of bread and meat, one vegetable only, say peas, beans, or this year’s potatoes, and for drink, plain water.”

  He warned her in a command which may have revealed more than he intended: “Taste nothing of which you are fond—except such things as I have mentioned. If you commence on this diet, remember that it is like a man joining the temperance society; if he afterwards tastes liquor he is gone.”

  Jackson seemed admirably suited by temperament to the new field of dieting. He confessed, honestly enough, that his various ailments could probably be traced to dyspepsia. His health improved. His weight rose from 133 to 166 pounds, and after two years at Fort Hamilton he was heavier than he had ever been. He sounded almost boastful: “My muscles have become quite solid. My exercises are of a violent character, when the chilblains on my feet do not prevent it.”

  Near the end of his stay at this post, he wrote to Laura in words which made the course of his religious development unmistakable:

  “Yes, my dear sister, rather than wilfully violate the known will of God, I would forfeit my life; it may seem strange to you, yet nevertheless such a resolution I have taken, and I will by it abide. My daily prayers are for your salvation.”

  He was now, as abruptly as before, transferred to a new post—this time southward, to Fort Meade, Florida, where he was to spend brief and unhappy months, complaining that his scouting expeditions brought him no contact with the hostile Indians. He wrote more often of his religion and of war:

  My opinion is that every one should honestly and carefully investigate the Bible, and then if he can believe it to be the word of God, to follow its teachings.… It is doubtful whether I shall ever relinquish the military profession, as I am very partial to it.

  He wrote fondly of the Florida landscape and its vast stretches of pineland wilderness, with rides of “more than one hundred miles without seeing a house.” Then, without warning, in the midst of recounting to Laura the high cost of groceries on the army post, he mentioned a letter he had received from the superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, advising him of a vacancy on the staff, the chair of Natural and Experimental Philosophy. He had expressed interest, he said, but there was formidable competition: George B. McClellan, W. S. Rosecrans, and G. W. Smith, all comrades of Mexico. With this affair in the wind, Jackson revealed a new facet: “Philosophy is my favorite subject,” he wrote.

  In Lexington, Virginia, while Jackson waited and fought Florida fevers, his acquaintance, D. H. Hill, who now taught mathematics at Washington College in the little Virginia town, was telling the people of the Institute of Jackson’s talents. He couldn’t be sure about the philosophy, but Jackson was a crack gunner who behaved as if he had invented artillery. Not only had he shone in Mexico, but had been a determined cadet at West Point, who, if the term had been a year longer, would likely have led his class.

  On March 28, 1851, Jackson was appointed: “Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy—and Artillery Tactics.” He made a miraculous recovery from his fevers and packed for home. He wrote Laura:

  “I expect to leave for home next week … my health is better than it has been for years, except my eyes, which are still weak.”

  8

  THE PROFESSOR

  It was spring of 1851 when Jackson arrived at Lexington in the Virginia hills. He was twenty-seven and already set in his ways, some of them quickly noted as curious by the natives. The life of the town was centered about two schools: ancient Washington College, and the twelve-year-old Institute, the latter a Southern replica of West Point, adapted to training young men for civilian life.

  Before entering the classroom, Jackson had business with the hydropaths; and spent July and August on Lake Ontario, taking the baths. He reported that he “rec
ruited very rapidly.” He then went to Warm Springs, Virginia, to take over some of the cadet corps in summer encampment; and he found time to visit other spas, which then abounded in the country. He bathed at Rockbridge Alum Springs and Bath Alum Springs, and perhaps others.

  He picked up an interest in science, as well, and began a collection of fossils and shells—neither of which he continued. He did not forget his Lord. In November, he joined the First Presbyterian Church, but only after attending for several Sundays and conferring with the minister, then a leading Lexington divine, Dr. William S. White. He began extended exercises in Christian logic under his pastor’s direction, with results like this passage from a family letter:

  The best plan that I can conceive for an unbeliever in God … is to first consider things with reference merely to expediency … let us examine whether it is safer to be a Christian or an infidel.

  Suppose two persons, one a Christian and the other an infidel, to be closing their earthly existences. And suppose the infidel is right, and the Christian wrong; they will then after death be upon an equality.

  But instead of the infidel being-right, suppose him to be wrong, and the Christian right; then will the state of the latter after death be inestimably superior.…

  He had begun the practice of tithing and was evidently thrifty. He acquired over these years a few of the tokens of moderately substantial position, including a couple of slaves and half a dozen shares of stock in the Bank of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

  God began to dominate his thoughts now. He could scarcely separate religion from his artillery courses, which included optics and astronomy, fields in which the cadets found him dull. Some of the brighter students left complaints: Jackson was thorough, but slow and narrow-minded. He would allow pupils to reach conclusions only through his orthodox methods, and would accept no variants, however brilliant. There were deep-seated reasons for his uncompromising nature.

  He gave more than a hint of this in a reply to a friend who wondered how Jackson dared accept the faculty post despite poor health, and who asked if the Major were not presumptuous. “Not in the least,” Jackson said. “The appointment came unsought, and was therefore providential; and I knew that if Providence set me a task, He would give me the power to perform it. So I resolved to get well, and you see I have. What I willed to do, I could do.”

  This iron will could not keep him awake in church, however. He had a “predisposition to drowsiness” which often overcame him. Margaret Junkin Preston, a poet who knew him intimately in Lexington, wrote:

  “Especially in church would this infirmity beset him.… Still he could not be persuaded to relax his perfectly erect posture.… When playfully pleaded with to lean back in the pew, for the reason that he could be less conspicuous, and the cadets opposite him in the gallery would be in less danger of being injured by his example … his constant reply to our badinage was,

  “‘I will do nothing to superinduce sleep by putting myself at ease, or making myself more comfortable; if, however, in spite of my resistance I yield to my infirmity, then I deserve to be laughed at, and accept as punishment the mortification I feel.’”

  He approached his church duties with a singleness of mind that passed in some quarters as fanatic zeal. Once he said to a fellow deacon who was absent from a meeting of church officers: “I don’t see how, at this hour, we can possibly lack time for this meeting, or can have time for anything else, seeing it is set apart for this business.”

  He made regular reports to Dr. White on his own progress in piety. He sometimes managed to sound like a minister at work in letters to Laura:

  We are all children of suffering and sorrow in this world. Whilst it has many pleasures, it is not nor will not be divested of its cares. Amid affliction let us hope for happiness.… No earthly calamity can shake my hope in the future so long as God is my friend.

  He wrote to his aunt, Mrs. Alfred Neale, in Parkersburg, Virginia, suggesting that he might hear the call to the pulpit himself.

  The subject of becoming a herald of the cross has often seriously engaged my attention, and I regard it as the most noble of all professions.… I should not be surprised were I to die upon a foreign field, clad in ministerial armor, fighting under the banner of Jesus.

  He ended this letter, however, with the thought that he believed he could best serve the Lord in Lexington, and he wrote with evident fervor:

  Within the last few days I have felt an unusual religious joy. I do rejoice to walk in the love of God.… My Heavenly Father has condescended to use me as an instrument for setting up a large Sabbath-school for the Negroes here.

  Jackson’s interest in the Negro Sunday school grew, and his own slaves were ordered to attend it with regularity. His stern code also governed here, and any late-comer to the services found the door locked, which the sponsor thought severe punishment.

  Jackson seemed determined that he would not shed the uniform he had worn to fame in Mexico. Throughout his time in the village, he wore the garments of that war, topped by the cadet’s cap which endured almost to the end of his life. He developed a rigid routine, too, and watches could be set in Lexington by his appearance. He left home at a precise moment for his stiff-limbed walk to the Institute campus. He returned by the identical route, with the same regularity. His meals were eaten at the exact same moment each day, and always opened with prayer—a schedule which never varied, and no one could interrupt.

  Jackson was acutely embarrassed in a public role, but his will drove him to lead church meetings. Dr. White urged his flock to this service, and Jackson called upon the minister to ask if he, too, should attempt it. Encouraged, he made the effort when White called on him for a few words at prayer meeting.

  Jackson stuttered some inanities, remaining stubbornly on his feet through long moments of silence, paining himself and the audience as well. White did not call him again until the Major, yet determined, insisted that he be given another chance. This time the prayers were said more smoothly, and he eventually became an accomplished prayer-leader. “My comfort or discomfort is not the question,” he told White. “If it is my duty to lead in prayer, then I must persevere.”

  He carried this war against himself to the point of joining a village debating society—“The Franklin”—and belabored its members with awkward efforts in his screeching voice; even here he made improvement.

  The Institute began to circulate similar tales of the inflexible purpose of this man, which seemed to rule every moment of his life. The cadets thought of him as a multiplication table in breeches.

  One of the stories described the Institute superintendent’s trials with Jackson. The commandant, Colonel Francis H. Smith, called Jackson into his office one afternoon and asked him to be seated in an anteroom while he attended to another matter. Smith then forgot Jackson entirely, left the building by another way, and went to his home for the night, with Jackson still seated in the foyer. It was there that the superintendent, to his eternal astonishment, found Jackson the next morning—with the explanation: “It never occurred to me to leave the spot of duty, where my superior told me to stay.”

  Relations with cadets were in this vein. One winter night, V.M.I. tradition has it, Jackson was unable to sleep because he had strongly scolded a cadet during the day for giving what Old Jack thought to be a false answer to a problem. Jackson tossed in bed, thinking of the incident, when it occurred to him that the cadet had been right, after all. The Major rose and dressed, walked through the cold night over the Institute grounds to a dormitory, where he had the wondering cadet called from sleep to accept an apology.

  He is also pictured as rising another night, to walk more than a mile through a rainstorm, only to knock at the door of a friend with another explanation, this time that Jackson had made a misstatement in some minor detail of conversation during the day. The friends and cadets did not forget. Jackson’s common name on the campus became “Tom Fool.”

  He had a wide acquaintance in the state, however,
despite his piquancies and his inability to accept ordinary society. He was seldom invited to village parties, and when he did appear, and was confronted with food or drink, he refused with the cryptic reply: “I have no genius for seeming.”

  His reputation as an eccentric grew steadily, though within his church and school he was respected by leaders as a man of principle and talent. Yet there were touches of the exotic to puzzle the village.

  There was once a lively report that a cadet whom he had helped to expel from the Institute had sworn to kill Jackson, and that he was the wild sort of boy who might well make an attempt on the Major’s life. Jackson is said to have met this enraged cadet on the campus, and as the young man glared at him from his hiding place, Jackson only turned on him a calm stare—which was enough to make the cadet flee the place of contemplated murder. Lexington, to the last man, woman and child, began to know Jackson.

  His reputation had a deceptive simplicity, however, for in his correspondence he revealed a certain sensitivity. He wrote an aquaintance:

  The kind of friends to whom I am most attached are those with whom I feel at home, and to whom I can go at all proper times, and informally tell them the object of my call … without the marred pleasure from a conviction that afterwards all my conduct must undergo a judicial investigation before ‘Judge Etiquette’, and that for every violation of his code I must be censured, if not socially ostracized.

  Jackson was unfailingly polite, particularly to women. One woman observer left her impression: “There was a peculiarity about him which at once attracted your attention. Dignified and rather stiff, as military men are apt to be, he was as frank and unassuming as possible, and was perfectly natural and unaffected. He always sat bolt upright in his chair, never lounged, never crossed his legs, or made an unnecessary movement.”

  He was still a faithful correspondent with Laura, and wrote of such diverse matters as these: