Beyond the Battlefield: The Life of Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson

This is Lee Hibibe, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people, coming to you from the city where the West begins, Fort Worth, Texas. Tom Stonewall Jackson is a legendary Confederate general whose story has been narrowly reduced to fault-finding and his Civil War experience. What we are about to do is take a holistic look at the man dubbed ‘Stonewall’ with the help of an array of Jackson experts. Let’s take a listen.

The father and Tom’s oldest sister died when he was two.

He still had siblings.

And his mother, left pennelists, was Catholic by the community. She soon married again, and the second husband brought children to their wedding, but not a lot of assets.

And so, at the age of…

Seven, Tom Jackson underwent the trauma, being given away. His mother simply couldn’t care for him and his sister, and he was given to an uncle to live.

And he never forgot the sight.

And the pain of being taken from his mother’s arms, being put on the horse, riding away, looking back, and she’s standing in the load with her arms extended, wailing. And it was a vision he never forgot, and it would affect him the rest of his life.

One of the legacies of Stonewall Jackson is the legacy of a good man arising in terrible times and demonstrating by character and courage the ability of right to prevail in the midst of many wrongs. For me, that’s the great story of Stonewall. He was then whose goodness caused him to rise.

Missus Jackson and her new husband and the family had moved to the southern end of what is now West Virginia, and they had a little community called ‘Instead,’ and she died of tuberculosis. We think about six or eight months after she gave him away.

Stonewall Jackson was brought to his mother’s bedside. One of the things she made him promise as she’d near death was that he would take part in Christian faith and join a church.

He goes to live with an uncle who so many previous…

Biographers have said was wise and sagacious and calling.

I didn’t find that at all with coming Jackson.

I found him gruff, unfeeling, uncolling, irreligious, greedy. I don’t think he gave Tom Jackson love. Jackson later thought he did, but Jackson didn’t know what love was. Jackson spent his youth in solitude and loneliness.

He put his hand to the plow, literally, for his uncle, with lots of physical labor and many hours spent at hard work. I think that’s where his contemplative nature probably came from, as well as maybe his reflections on the losses that he had suffered.

Jackson was exposed to the faith of the family slaves. His uncle was one of the largest slave owners in Lewis County, West Virginia, so he was exposed of their faith and their prayer life.

He also had slaves that would tend to them as young children. I’m sure, as all children do, they become very…

close to the people that spend the most time with them.

He was a quiet young man. He did like to play. His playmates liked to put him in charge of things, and when he was at the head, his team was usually victorious.

Jackson’s boy who took a distinct turn when he befriended Joe Lightburn, who years later would become a distinguished general in the Union Army.

More than anyone else, Joe Lightburn influenced Tom Jackson to accept the Gospel.

They were kindred spirits, teenage boys together out here in the frontier, living together.

It was a wonderful friendship for Jackson because it was the Lightven family who introduced Jackson for the Bible. He never seeing the Bible, and it wouldn’t see it Jackson’s meal. So the Lfvens introduced in for the Bible. He attended Baptist church services with them, and his first love of religion, I think, came from them, along with his friend Joe Lightmann.

The Lifeburns had books, and that was wonderful. And Tom loved books, and so he would go to their home. And actually, mister Lightburn spent a lot of time with Tom and with his own son, Joe, with the books. They loved the Revolutionary War soldier, the swamp Foll. Then they read all about him, and I can just imagine they’re out there playing Revolutionary War soldiers as boys would do. And he kind of found a spiritual soul and Joe Lightburn, and they stayed that way and right up until the end.

Lightburn challenged Jackson to Christian excellence in many areas of life. He once told Jackson that slaves ought to be taught to read so that they could read the Bible.

He knew that West Point offered him the one opportunity to improve himself. If he failed that, he was condemned to go back to Jackson’s meal.

He spent all of his time studying, unlike some of his comrades there who spent their time in levity and partying.

He was very, very adamant about finishing something.

You never hear of him, you never see him, because the poor kid was studying around the clock. He permanently damaged his eyes. He wore spectacles in private after. But he did nothing for four years, which I had to graduate. And then that famous class for forty-six, which gave twenty-one jenerals to the armies of fifty-nine cadets. In that class, he stood seventeenth, and…

They said, had he been on one more year, he would have graduated number one in his class.

And it was determination to me.

That is the one word that characterizes this man from beginning to end.

Determination.

And you’ve been listening to an assortment of Stonewall Jackson experts telling the story of the young Tom Stonewall Jackson and the influences that made him who he was. And my goodness, that memory of that separation from his mother, the searing nature of that, the long-lasting nature of that, but also the profound upside: it introduced him to people he would unlikely not have met and influenced his faith journey, his Christian walk, and his seriousness. Is he young man, knowing in the end that hard work, determination, could get him to West Point, and that West Point could change the arc of his life. When we come back, more of the life story of Tom Stonewall Jackson, the rest of this story here on our American Stories. This is Lee Hibibe, and this is our American Stories. And all of our history stories are brought to us by our generous sponsors, including Hillsdale College, where students go to learn all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that matter in life. If you can’t get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu. That’s Hillsdale dot edu. And we continue with our American Stories and with the life of legendary Confederate General Tom Stonewall Jackson.

Let’s pick up where we last left…

Off, the Mexican War came, and it came right at the end of his senior year, and he knew that he would be in it. He was a sign of the artillery, which he expected and desired, and was sent to Mexico.

It just so happened.

The commanding officer of his artillery battalion was a devoted and mature Christian, Captain Taylor, later Major, later Colonel. They became good friends, and on top of that, his commanding officer challenged him to define his faith, to learn the Scriptures, to have an act of Christian testimony.

It’s Taylor who Lee introduces him to the Bible. It’s Taylor who, at Fort Hamilton and elsewhere at Jacksonville Station, introduced him to the various religious denominations. Taylor had deep spiritual feelings, and he imparted them to a hungry Jackson. The Mexican experience is important for two reasons. One, Jackson found that he liked the military. He liked the structured regiment of army life. He liked the stepping-stone processes and whatnot. And then he suddenly discovered, I believe, he was in battle.

He was brave to a fault, he was fearless, he was a hero. In one of the battles, one of the last battles of the war, he stood in the middle of the road, being shelled by the Mexicans. His men were falling all around, and the cannon shot went between his legs, and he continued manning the gun until help arrived.

He was utterly fearless.

He was brevetted three times for gallanty in the field. There were a few others who got three buvets; none got more. So Jackson comes out of that war one of the two heroes. He goes to Mexico one year as a buvet second lieutenanty; he comes home with avet Major. So Jackson found his niche with the military in the Mexican War, and he discovered, perhaps to his supplies, he was quite good at it.

He is, in a way, mesmerized by the Roman Catholic Church that he sees in Mexico, and he embarks on a mission to discover the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church. He converses with the bishop in Mexico City and other Catholic priests. The devotion of the people is what had caught his attention. In the end, he rejected the Roman Catholic Church as not conforming to the Scriptures as he understood it. He looked at things from every possible angle to find the solution and to know everything about it. Mexican War, he was stationed at Fort Hamilton, and while there he made a public profession and was baptized. After leaving Fort Hamilton, he took with him a firm Christian faith.

Returning from the Mexican War with many honors and promotions, Jackson applied to teach at Virginia Military Institute. He became a professor of mathematics at the Distinguished Military Academy and now named Lexington as his home.

Once he settles in Lexington, then he begins a quest, if you will, a crusade on our offensive for culture. To better himself, he began keeping a book of Maxims. When he got to Lexington, he had absolutely no social glaces, and he had to figure out how he would behave in public. He certainly learned nothing at Jackson’s meal about society and politeness.

He settled in and became the professor of VMI, became an elder at the Presbyterian Church, served on the board of a bank, was involved in some other business enterprises with other locals.

In late summer eighteen fifty-one, a new Jackson begins to emerge, not all positive. He probably was the worst teacher in the history of Virginia Military Institute. He memorized his lectures the day before because of bad eyesight, and then in the morning he would spew off this recorded spiel, so to speak. If a cadet had a question about a point, all Johnson could do is pull back the tape and spew off the same thing. Work forward again. What people forget is that these negative remarks were made the first two or three years he was at the institute. Starting about eighteen fifty-four, et CE, these cadets began to realize, ‘Well, he’s kookie, but there’s something substantive in this van.’ And one of these cadets, loading his class notebook toward the end of a terribly dull, of course, under Major Jackson, the cadet wrote, ‘I can’t stand the way this man teaches, but if I ever have to go to war, I want to go with him because there’s something substantive in the Major.’

And this cadet went to war with him and…

Died for him at Kernstown in March eighteen sixty-two.

Steal. Jackson’s greatest aspiration in life was to have a family like what he did not have as a child.

Jackson, the family, became far more important to him than it worked to a normal person, and this was especially true with children. When Jackson got around little children, he couldn’t stay away from them, and he just…

had to love them.

His love of children was really and literally overwhelming. They tell the story in Winchester of him riding in from a military action outside Winchester. He had on his uniform coat; it was dusty and whatnot. And seconds later, he’s on his hands and knees playing horseye with the children. So here comes this great warrior at one moment, and seconds later he’s down on the floor playing with children.

This is Stone Lawick Jackson.

While in Lexington, he found and married the love of his life, Eleanor Jenkin, who was the daughter of the president of Washington College. He wrote that he didn’t think he could be possibly happier in his life than being married to Eleanor.

At last, he’s able to begin to create this thing that he had sought: this intimacy, the bond of family.

He was a very devoted husband. You know, it’s hard sometimes to picture the fearless Confederate warrior as a family man. But loved his wife.

Dearly. Yet she died in childbirth, and the baby died as well, and he had to bury his beloved wife.

It was overwhelming.

He is a man who has fallen in love for the first time in his life, and he marries this girl, and fourteen months later she’s dead, and the son she…

died with us.

So Jackson lost his wife, he lost his son, he lost his family, all in one tremendous blow. And the night after the shear Wal, no one could find him in Lexington. He just disappeared, and someone thought of going out to the cemetery, and it’s pouring rain, and Jackson’s lying atop his wife’s grave, clawing it to hearth, trying to bring her back. I’m of the opinion that he would have died from that if he had not acquired that overwhelming faith that is his driving force as an adult. And he’s eventually came to the conclusion that God had a reason for taking Ellie and his son, and he must continue his life and let God’s will be done.

After the death of Eleanor and his son, Jackson took an unexpected journey, boarding a ship bound for Europe.

He went to Europe not only to see the sites in Lane history. He went to Europe to Leoni and himself catch his breath, more or lesson, to come back and file again. And it was upon his return from Ula that he contacted an old Flynn and said, ‘Hello. Hope you live on the Meion.’

This led to in the coin us an very quick proposal.

Her name was Mary Anna Morrison. They had met years earlier, when he was actually engaged to Eleanor Jenkin.

And you’ve been listening to the story of Tom Stonewall Jackson, and what a story you’re hearing, and a full and complete picture of this remarkable man who was simply caught on the wrong side of history in the epic battle we now know as Civil War. Right after graduating from West Point, he’s off to the Mexican War, where he’s going to learn firsthand about battle. And he had this commanding officer, Commanding Officer Taylor, who helped Jackson forge a deeper faith. But it was there that Jackson discovered he liked the structure of the military and that he had an aptitude for battle. He was brave to a fault, we heard, fearless in battle. And he comes out of the war a true hero and a Major, mesmerized by the Roman Catholic Church. While in Mexico he dabbles, and when he comes out of the war he has no social graces.

What to do next?

He plans at VMI, where he’s a professor, and not a terribly good one. As one student said of Jackson, ‘I can’t stand the way this man teaches.’ ‘But if I ever go to war, I want to go to war with him.’ And of course, the importance of family for Jackson. He married, and his wife was pregnant when she died. He lost a family all over again. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of General Stonewall Jackson. Here on our American Stories. And we continue with our American Stories and the story of Tom Stonewall Jackson.

Let’s pick up where we last left off.

From reading between the lines. Anna fell in love with Major Jackson. When she first met him. She described, as a young girl I think would in her early twenties, what he looked like when she first saw him, and she said he was five foot eleven and three-quarters. I mean, even then she had described exactly how tall he was, and that he had dark brown hair, and he had his hair cut short. She thought that a beard would look much better on him, and of course, eventually she talks him into growing that beard. She said that when he laughed, though, or when he would smile, his whole face would light up, and he had his papa’s blue-gray eyes. And she said that he was really quite wonderful.

His past show was always for family. He was so loyal to his family, and the love affair with his wife is one of the most beautiful stories in all of American history.

He used to play practical jokes on her all the time. He used to hide behind doors, and he’d jump out and pick her up, turn around, give her a kiss. That’s not exactly what we think about. The strong general called Stonewall.

The greatest joy of his life, the thing he wanted more than anything else, was to be married and to establish a Christian home and to raise children.

As the nation simmered with an impending collision of ideals, Jackson chose a course that transcended predictable stereotypes and established a Sunday school class for both slaves and…