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mental processes. For some experience and resource supply a ready solution. Others, involving the movements of large bodies, considerations of time and space, and the thousand and one circumstances, such as food, weather, roads, topography, and moral, which a general must always bear in mind, are composed of so many factors, that only a brain. accustomed to hard thinking can deal with them successfully. Of this nature are the problems of strategy-those which confront a general in command of an army or of a detached portion of an army, and which are worked out on the map. The problems of the battle-field are of a different order. The natural characteristics which, when fortified by experience, carry men through any dangerous enterprise, win the majority of victories. But men may win battles and be very poor generals. They may be born leaders of men, and yet absolutely unfitted for independent command. Their courage, coolness, and common sense may accomplish the enemy's overthrow on the field, but with strategical considerations their intellects may be absolutely incapable of grappling. In the great wars of the early part of the century Ney and Blucher were probably the best fighting generals of France. and Prussia. But neither could be trusted to conduct a campaign. Blucher, pre-eminent on the battle-field, knew nothing of the grand combinations which prepare and complete success. If he was the strong right hand of the Prussian army, his chief of the staff was the brain. 'Gneisenau,' said the old Marshal, 'makes the pills which I administer.' 'Ney's best qualities,' says Jomini, who served long on his staff, his heroic valour, his quick coup d'œil, and his energy, diminished in the same proportion that the extent of his command increased his responsibility. Admirable on the

field of battle, he displayed less assurance, not only in council, but whenever he was not actually face to face with the enemy.' It is not of such material as Ney and Blucher, mistrustful of their own ability, that great captains are made. Marked intellectual capacity is the chief characteristic of the most famous soldiers. Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Marlborough, Washington, Frederick, Napoleon, Wellington, and Nelson were each and all of them something more than mere fighting men. their age rivalled them in strength of intellect. It was this, combined with the best qualities of Ney and Blucher, that made them masters of strategy, and lifted them high above those who were tacticians and nothing more; and it was this that Jackson cultivated at Lexington.

Few of

So, in that quiet home amidst the Virginian mountains, the years sped by, peaceful and uneventful, varied only by the holiday excursions of successive summers. By day, the lecture at the Institute, the drill of the cadet battery, the work of the church, the pleasant toil of the farm and garden. When night fell, and the curtains were drawn across the windows that looked upon the quiet street, there in that home where order reigned supreme, where, as the master wished, ' each door turned softly on a golden hinge,' came those hours of thought and analysis which were to fit him for great deeds.

The even tenor of this calm existence was broken, however, by an incident which intensified the bitter feeling which already divided the Northern and Southern sections of the United States. During the month of January, 1859, Jackson had marched with the cadet battalion to Harper's Ferry, where, on the northern frontier of Virginia, the

JOHN BROWN

fanatic, John Brown, had attempted to raise an insurrection. amongst the negroes, and had been hung after trial in presence of the troops. By the South Brown was regarded as a madman and a murderer; by many in the North he was glorified as a martyr; and so acute was the tension that early in 1860, during a short absence from Lexington, Jackson wrote in a letter to his wife, What do you think about the state of the country? Viewing things at Washington from human appearances, I think we have great reason for alarm.' A great crisis was indeed at hand. But if to her who was ever beside him, while the storm clouds were rising dark and terrible over the fair skies of the prosperous Republic, the Christian soldier seemed the man best fitted to lead the people, it was not so outside. None doubted his sincerity or questioned his resolution, but few had penetrated his reserve. As the playful tenderness he displayed at home was never suspected, so the consuming earnestness, the absolute fearlessness, whether of danger or of responsibility, the utter disregard of man, and the unquestioning faith in the Almighty, which made up the individuality which men called Stonewall Jackson, remained hidden from all but

one.

To his wife his inward graces idealised his outward seeming; but others, noting his peculiarities, and deceived by his modesty, saw little that was remarkable and much that was singular in the staid professor. Few detected, beneath that quiet demeanour and absent manner, the existence of energy incarnate and an iron will; and still fewer beheld, in the plain figure of the Presbyterian deacon, the potential leader of great armies, inspiring the devotion of his soldiers, and riding in the forefront of victorious battle.

CHAPTER IV

SECESSION, 1860-61

JACKSON spent ten years at Lexington, and he was just five

and-thirty when he left it. more of military cadet battalion.

1861.

For ten years he had seen no

service than the drills of the He had lost all touch with the

army. His name had been forgotten, except by his comrades of the Mexican campaign, and he had hardly seen a regular soldier since he resigned his commission. But, even from a military point of view, those ten years had not been wasted. His mind had a wider grasp, and his brain was more active. Striving to fit himself for such duties as might devolve on him, should he be summoned to the field, like all great men and all practical men he had gone to the best masters. In the campaigns of Napoleon he had found instruction in the highest branch of his profession, and had made his own the methods of war which the greatest of modern soldiers both preached and practised. Strengthened, too, by constant exercise was his control over his physical wants, over his temper and his temptations. Maturer years and the search for wisdom had steadied his restless daring; and his devotion to duty, always remarkable, had become a second nature. His health, under careful and self-imposed treatment, had much improved, and the year 1861 found him in the prime of physical and mental vigour. Already

it had become apparent that his life at Lexington was soon to end. The Damascus blade was not to rust upon the shelf. During the winter of 1860-61 the probability of a conflict between the free and slave-holding States, that is, between North and South, had become almost a certainty. South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, had formally seceded from the Union; and establishing a Provisional Government, with Jefferson Davis as President, at Montgomery in Alabama, had proclaimed a new Republic, under the title of the Confederate States of America. In order to explain Jackson's attitude at this momentous crisis, it will be necessary to discuss the action of Virginia, and to investigate the motives which led her to take the side she did.

Forces which it was impossible to curb, and which but few detected, were at the root of the secession movement. The ostensible cause was the future status of the

negro.

Slavery was recognised in fifteen States of the Union. In the North it bad long been abolished, but this made no difference to its existence in the South. The States which composed the Union were semi-independent communities, with their own legislatures, their own magistracies, their own militia, and the power of the purse. How far their sovereign rights extended was a matter of contention; but, under the terms of the Constitution, slavery was a domestic institution, which each individual State was at liberty to retain or discard at will, and over which the Federal Government had no control whatever. Congress would have been no more justified in declaring that the slaves in Virginia were free men than in demanding

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