They Called Him Stonewall

by Davis, Burke;

  He demanded that Faulkner read the papers to his staff at intervals. The reports must be simple, of verified accuracy, must evade controversy, and be subject to Jackson’s approval and revision. Jackson dictated most of them himself. It was the first outburst of paper work in Jackson’s command.

  Within a week after his Christmas dinner, Jackson caught cold and had a recurrence of his earache. On the advice of Dr. McGuire, he moved indoors to the small yard office of the plantation, a detached frame building of a story and a half which had served as the master’s library and office. It was a curious setting for Old Jack:

  Fine old books lined the walls, many in foreign languages, and learned works were scattered among Virginia law books, agricultural reports, horse and cattle registers, medical and scientific and sporting books—even ladies’ magazines. On the walls were hunting muskets and fishing tackle, and all about, on walls and floors, were skins, deer antlers, stuffed birds. Among the prints were steel engravings of famous race horses and fine cattle, gamecocks in the pit, and purebred dogs and cats. It was a setting to give Stuart great amusement. Captain Smith recalled the cavalryman’s coming:

  “Stuart’s first visit to the office was memorable. With clanking saber and spurs and waving black plume he came, and was warmly greeted at the door. Papers and work were all hastily laid aside. No sooner had Stuart entered than his attention turned to the pictures on the walls. He read aloud what was said about each noted race horse and each splendid bull. At the hearth he paused to scan with affected astonishment the horrid picture of a certain terrier that could kill so many rats a minute. He pretended to believe that they were General Jackson’s selections; with great solemnity he looked at the pictures and then at the general.

  “He paused and stepped back, and in solemn tones said he wished to express his astonishment and grief at the display of General Jackson’s low tastes. It would be a sad disappointment to the old ladies of the country, who thought that Jackson was a good man. General Jackson was delighted above measure. He blushed like a girl, and hesitated, and said nothing but to turn aside and direct that a good dinner be prepared for General Stuart.”

  Jackson was, as Kyd Douglas said without further comment, “a frequent visitor at the house socially,” but spent most of his time working in his office. The big house sent frequent offerings of food for his table.

  Jackson’s Christmas letter to Anna reflected loneliness and pessimism, overlaid with his firm self-discipline.

  Yesterday I received the baby’s letter with its beautiful lock of hair. How I do want to see that precious baby! and I do earnestly pray for peace. Oh that our country was such a Christian, God-fearing people as it should be! Then might we very speedily look for peace.…

  It is better for me to remain with my command so long as the war continues, if our gracious Heavenly Father permits. The army suffers immensely by absentees. If all our troops … were at their posts, we might, through God’s blessing, expect a more speedy termination of the war.…

  Jackson was busy in his office. Courts-martial met daily, like factories turning out their grim decisions. Deserters were punished in wholesale lots. Jackson’s ranks began to fill slowly with the return of stragglers and the small flow of reinforcements. Men settled for the winter in their huts of logs and mud, and among these poor villages rose chapels, where the revival spirit became more intense than ever. Jackson complained of intrusions upon his time, but never of those by men like the visiting Reverend Dabney and other ministers.

  Richmond’s daily papers were delivered to Jackson’s office, though they were read chiefly by the staff. The price, indicating inflation in the capital, was twenty cents per copy. Old Jack’s officers complained now of many another pinch which robbed them of their lean army pay: apples, $2 a dozen; soap, $1.25 per cake; oysters, $5 per gallon; shoe blacking, $1 per cake.

  Lafayette McLaws, one of the general officers who had performed so well at Fredericksburg, noted these troubles in biting letters to his family, and also revealed that not all was sweetness and light in the official family of Lee:

  “Everything we see sold is disposed of at ten times its actual worth … extortion is the rule of the hour.… The disposition to devour or destroy is predominant. This desire for extortion is a passion, a disease which has now seized the public mind … overriding all previous respectability and character, all pride of birth and family.”

  He then turned to the generals of his acquaintance:

  “Do you know there is a strong feeling growing up among the Southern troops against Virginia, caused by the jealousy of her own people for those from every other state? No matter who it is may perform a glorious act, Virginia papers give but grudging praise unless the actor is a Virginian. No matter how trifling the deed may be which a Virginian performs, it is heralded at once as the most glorious of modern times.”

  McLaws then got down to cases:

  “Stuart carries around with him a banjo player and a special correspondent. This claptrap is noticed and lauded as a peculiarity of genius, when, in fact, it is nothing else but the act of a buffoon to get attention.” (This was in strong contrast to the testimony of the Federal General Sedgwick: “Stuart is the best cavalry officer ever foaled in America.”)

  McLaws attacked other Virginians: “Another general gets a friend to write a ridiculously eulogistic article in a foreign paper and has it copied in the Virginia papers.”

  He then came to Jackson—undoubtedly Jackson:

  “Another panders to the religious zeal of a puritanical church and has numerous scribes writing fancy anecdotes of his peculiarities which never existed.”

  While this unsuspected criticism was being penned, Jackson was busy with the further reorganization of the army, whose improvement in the seven months of Lee’s command was remarkable. The fighting had brought forty-eight thousand Confederate and seventy thousand Union casualties, even this a ratio the South could not bear. But the troops were now well-armed, mostly with captured Federal rifles and muskets. And, most striking of all, the graycoats had 155 captive cannon, and had lost but eight themselves. Excepting only Sharpsburg, the rebels had driven the Federals from every field where the armies had clashed since Lee had led them.

  The troops seemed to show no optimism for the future, however, despite Fredericksburg. Except for moments of exuberant celebration, of drinking and snowballing and gambling, it was a sober encampment.

  Lee himself had been less than optimistic in speaking of the victory on the Rappahannock:

  The war is not yet ended. The enemy is still numerous and strong, and the country demands of the army a renewal of its heroic efforts in her behalf. Nobly has it responded … in the past, and she will never appeal in vain to its courage and patriotism. The signal manifestations of Divine mercy that have distinguished the eventful and glorious campaign of the year just closing give assurance of hope that, under the guidance of the same Almighty hand, the coming year will be no less fruitful … and add new lustre to the already imperishable name of the Army of Northern Virginia.

  In this galloping rhetoric was the rise of a new Confederate legend: the invincibility of Lee’s army in its present form, with the cumbersome old divisions replaced by two corps, and with Longstreet and Jackson at hand to carry out the orders of their chief.

  The enemy was little heard from in these weeks, though the Federals were in sight over the Rappahannock and once caused a stir by trying to move toward the river’s fords during a siege of rain and snow—a futile attempt, to be known as “The Mud March.”

  Lee sent Stuart on several raids which brought loot and prisoners, but little information. Lee sent D. H. Hill to Richmond, and two brigades to meet a Federal threat in North Carolina. He finally sent Longstreet and his men below Richmond, to defend against a threatened Federal invasion of the Tidewater country.

  In these days, Lee lived less ostentatiously than Jackson, in a tent near Hamilton’s Crossing, with only a cot, a folding desk and camp stove inside;
though beneath his cot a pet hen laid an egg for him each day. Lee and Jackson and other officers rode out one day to visit Hayfield, a near-by mansion owned by one of Lee’s cousins, Mrs. W. P. Taylor. Lee spent most of the visit teasing Jackson.

  “I have brought my great generals for the young ladies to see,” Lee told Mrs. Taylor. And as Jackson flushed he added, “Jackson is one of the most cruel men I have known. I had all I could do at Fredericksburg, to keep him from having his men drive all those people into the river.”

  Jackson was further embarrassed by Mrs. Taylor’s defense of him as “a good Christian man,” and even more by the request of a small girl for a kiss.

  Lee and Jackson once sat together on a log to hear one of the revival services in camp, a sermon by Jackson’s chief chaplain, the Reverend B. T. Lacy. Captain Smith watched them with affection as the generals wept, tears streaming into their beards, staring at Lacy as he dramatically described the peaceful homes from which the Confederate soldiers had been taken by the war.

  Lee’s kindliness and Jackson’s stern sense of duty once came into conflict. Lee ordered Jackson to come to his headquarters one night, and Jackson told Captain Smith to be ready to make the journey. There was a snowstorm in the night, and Smith, already in bed, concluded that Jackson would not go out on his ride in view of the weather. He was rudely shaken, an hour or so later, and taken out into the storm.

  Lee, “surprised and quite indignant,” Smith said, emerged bareheaded into the snow when the two had finished their fourteen-mile ride.

  “You know I did not wish you to come in such a storm,” Lee said. “It was a matter of little importance; I am so sorry that you have had this ride.”

  Jackson replied, “I received your note, General Lee!”

  Men in ranks learned much about their commanders in the winter camp but did not materially change their estimates of Lee and Jackson. One who wrote home expressed a general feeling: “You need have no apprehension that this army will ever meet with defeat while commanded by General Lee. General Jackson is a strict Presbyterian, but he is rather too much of a Napoleon Bonaparte in my estimation. Lee is the man, I assure you.”

  Old Jack did not neglect his work. On most days he dictated from morning until late afternoon in his office, and then went into the woods for a ride or a walk, often alone. He would return to his chores at night. Smith saw him late at his desk: “In the evening great stacks of papers, prepared by his own direction, were brought for his signature, and he signed his name until sometimes he would fall asleep over his table; he often wrote T. J. Jakson in his haste and weariness.”

  Jackson’s correspondence with Richmond assumed vast proportions as he sought guns, clothing, food, harnesses and horses; but despite all, thousands of his men remained inadequately clothed, and Lee was forced to write that the troops were scarcely fed at all.

  One memorable day brought a visit from a group of Englishmen, including Francis Lawler of the London Times, Frank Vizetelly of the Illustrated News, and several British officers, among them the young Marquis of Hartington and a Colonel Leslie, chairman of the military committee of the House of Commons. There was also a man who was to become commander of the British army, Colonel Garnet Wolsely.

  Captain Blackford took these men to visit Jackson, warning them of Old Jack’s peculiarities in advance. He described Jackson’s amusing habit of taking the hats of all who came to his office, though there was no place to hang them, so that in the end the General would stare around in confusion and place the hats in a pile on the floor. The visitors could hardly contain their laughter when Jackson went through the routine described by Blackford.

  Lawler, who closeted himself with Jackson, tried to get from him some dramatic remarks on his campaigns, but came out in chagrin. Jackson, he said, talked learnedly of many things but could not be brought to talk of the war. He was deucedly interesting on English cathedrals he had inspected, but on the Valley campaign he was mute. Lawler ended a week with Jackson with the statement that Old Jack was the “best informed military man he had met in America,” and “as perfect a gentleman as I have ever seen.” But he got no reminiscences of the war for his readers.

  Now and again Jackson’s humor flashed, as on a unique occasion when spring was drawing near. He rose from his paper work and stretched on his cot, eyes closed, listening to the heated argument between Colonel Faulkner and Dr. Hunter McGuire, who held a learned discussion on the merits of the wines of France and Italy. To the astonishment of his young officers, Jackson asked if there was not some wine in his supply wagons. When Jim brought it out in glasses, Faulkner and McGuire and others sipped at it, nodding and exclaiming, as Jackson asked them to tell him which European vineyards had produced it. Old Jack buried his face in a pillow, giggling, as the officers debated. He at last told them, with almost uncontrollable glee, that it was a wine of the country, made by a friend in Front Royal, in the Shenandoah Valley.

  As usual, however, his humor was far from brilliant, and he was prone to burst into laughter over the simplest of jokes. One day when he expected company, he asked Major Hawks, the commissary officer, to send him some chickens for lunch. Hawks replied, “We have no chickens. The hawks have eaten them up.” The pun rocked Jackson with laughter, from which he suffered recurrences several hours afterward.

  He seemed to be devising a defense against the constant teasing of Stuart and his henchmen, however. One day when he visited in a plantation house, two young women besieged him, asking for souvenirs. When they asked for some locks of his hair, Jackson bantered with them.

  “You have so much more hair than I do.”

  And:

  “My hair is gray, and your friends would think me an old man. Why, don’t you know the boys call me ‘Old Jack’?”

  His strongest attachment of the winter was for little Janie Corbin, the six-year-old daughter of the household. Janie was free to break in upon his work at almost any hour, and she played day after day on his hearth as he droned his reports to Faulkner. When his work was done, he took Janie into his lap; he usually had an apple for her. One day, lacking a gift, he tore from his new cap the broad band of gilt which had caught the eye of Anna. Jackson tied the golden strand about the hair of the child and watched fondly as she ran to the big house. More than once, officers recalled, the General stopped his work to cut paper dolls for Janie, usually folding paper to fashion a long line of figures holding hands. The men of the Stonewall Brigade, he told Janie.

  He could turn from these moments to grim duty. He once sentenced to death four soldiers of his command found guilty of desertion. Shortly before the time of their execution, a chaplain came to Jackson’s office to plead that the men be released. Jackson paced back and forth, apparently disturbed, but he heard the chaplain’s story. Old Jack remained quiet when the minister had finished his appeal.

  “General, consider your responsibility before the Lord,” the chaplain said. “You are sending these men’s souls to hell.”

  An officer recalled that Jackson uncharacteristically strode forward and gripped the minister’s shoulders, saying, “That, sir, is my business! You attend to yours.”

  Jackson never forgot Anna and home. One morning he was forcibly reminded of Lexington when he caught sight of a Negro boy from that town who had come to serve Captain Smith. Jackson peered closely at the Negro and said, “Why, John, is that you?” To the surprised Smith, John explained, “Oh, I know the Major; the Major made me get the catechism.” The servant had been trained in Jackson’s strict Sunday school.

  The cold months passed. There was a grand review of Stuart’s cavalry, attended by Lee and Jackson with a huge cluster of staff officers; there were numerous elaborate dinners. For the troops there was almost constant work, for Lee was developing a bristling line of earthworks south of the Rappahannock, twenty-five miles long.

  There were continuing troubles of command, and feuds smouldered between officers. Few of them involved Jackson, but when he entered controversy, as ever he w
as implacable. His old friend, General E. F. Paxton, protested Jackson’s decision that six deserters from his brigade be punished and three of them be shot. Paxton suggested that one man only be shot, and that he be chosen by lot. Jackson replied in severe language: “With the exception of this application, General Paxton’s management of his brigade has given me great satisfaction. One great difficulty in the army results from over lenient courts, and it appears to me that when a court-martial faithfully discharges its duty that its decisions should be sustained.”

  Similarly, when General W. R. Jones was charged with cowardice in action, Jackson was inflexible in his determination to see him brought to trial, though Jones had been one of his own candidates for promotion. Speaking to the Reverend Lacy of this, Old Jack said, “I have almost lost my confidence in man. When I thought I had found just such a man as I needed, and was about to rest satisfied in him, I found something lacking in him. But I suppose it is to teach me to put my trust only in God.”

  While Jackson busied himself with such affairs, an important change was made north of the Rappahannock. General Burnside went out rather abruptly, and General Joseph Hooker came in. The move drew limited attention from the Confederates.

  Jackson was still deep in his old feud with A. P. Hill, which neither officer seemed willing to give up. Hill continued to demand a hearing on Jackson’s charges against him, and Jackson prepared by collecting eyewitnesses to Hill’s alleged neglect of duty. The squabble was never to reach a decision.

  At the middle of March, Jackson moved his headquarters from the Corbin home to a tent near Hamilton’s Crossing, some ten miles nearer to Fredericksburg. He was settling down there when he learned of the death of Janie Corbin, stricken by scarlet fever. He wept like a child, Smith said.