Jackson, Thomas Jonathan

Jackson, Thomas Jonathan, an American general, better known as 'Stonewall Jackson,' was born at Clarksburg, West Virginia, 21st January 1824, graduated at West Point in 1846, entered the artillery, and gained two brevets in the war with Mexico. He retired from the army in 1851, and became professor in the Virginia Military Institute, where he was more noted for his conscientiousness and religious earnestness than for his success as a teacher. He took command of the Confederate troops at Harper's Ferry on the secession of Virginia, and commanded a brigade at Bull Run, where his firm stand gained him his nom de guerre of 'Stonewall.' Promoted to major-general, in the spring of 1862, in the campaign of the Shenandoah valley, he out-generalled McDowell, Banks, and Fremont, and eventually drove back upon the Lower Shenandoah these three Federal armies, two of them of superior strength to his own. Then, hastening by forced marches to Richmond, he turned the scale at Gaines's Mills (27th June), and, the Confederate capital relieved, returned to defeat Banks at Cedar Run in August. He then seized Pope's depot at Manassas, and his corps bore the brunt of the fighting in the victorious second battle there on 30th August. On 15th September he captured Harper's Ferry with 13,000 prisoners and 70 cannon, and the next day, after a trying night march, arrived at Sharpsburg, where his presence, in the battle of Antietam, saved Lee from utter disaster. Advanced to lieutenant-general, he commanded the right wing at Fredericksburg (13th December), and at Chancellorsville on 1st May 1863 drove Hooker back within the Wilderness. All next day Jackson was on the march, moving round the flank of the National army; at nightfall he fell upon its right and drove it back on Chancellorsville. Returning from a reconnaissance, his party was fired on by some of his own command, and Jackson received three wounds. His left arm was amputated; but pneumonia set in on the 7th, and on the 10th May he died. Jackson was the idol of his troops; and his power over his men was justified as much by his soundness of judgment as by his personal fearlessness. No single death was so severe a blow to either side. See Lives by Dabney (1866), Cooke (1866), his wife (1892), Parton (1893), and G. F. Henderson (1898).