LIEUT.-GEN. STONEWALL JACKSON.

CHAPTER XV.

Boyhood of Thomas Jonathan Jackson.-His experience at West Point.-His studies and habits.-A novel analysis of awkward manners.-Jackson's promotions in the Mexican War. His love of fight.-Recollections of "Fool Tom Jackson" at Lexington.-A study of his face and character.-His prayers for "the Union."-A reflection on Christian influences in America.-Jackson appointed a colonel in the Virginia forces -In command at Harper's Ferry.-Constitution of the "Stonewall Brigade."-Jackson promoted to Brigadier.-His action on the field of Manassas. He turns the enemy's flank and breaks his centre.-How much of the victory was due him.—His expedition towards the head waters of the Potomac.

THOMAS JONATHAN JACKSON was born at Clarksburg, in Harrison county, Virginia, in 1824. He came of a Scotch-Irish family that had settled in Virginia in 1748; and a perhaps fanciful relation has been traced between his ancestral stock and that of Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States. In 1827, he was left one of three penniless orphans; his father, Jonathan Jackson, a lawyer of moderate repute, and a man of social and facile temper, having wrecked a good estate by an imprudent and irregular life. The early life of the orphan was harsh and erratic. He found shelter with one or another of his relatives, until at last he obtained a pleasant home and countenance in the house of an uncle, Cummins Jackson, residing in Lewis county. Here he remained until he was sixteen years old. The early adversity and buffet of his life appear to have inspired the boy with singular determination; and among the first signs of character we find in him is a sensitive ambition reflecting painfully on his dependence on his relatives, and coupled with the resolution to reinstate himself in the ranks of his kindred, and rise from the position to which orphanage and destitution had thrust him.

There were no aristocratic names or traditions of great wealth in his family; but among the peculiar population of Western Virginia the Jacksons were known as an energetic, dominant stock, making distinct impressions on the new country, potential in their neighbourhoods, filling the county offices and places of local distinction, marked by strong and characteristic features, and disposed to be clannish in their family associations. To assert his proper position in this close and influential kindred, and to recover from his position as dependent in the house of one of them, appears to have been the first ambition of young Jackson, and the first instance of serious resolution in his life.

He resolved to obtain an education. He had access to what is called in Virginia the "old-field school;" he might there learn to read and "cipher;" but his mind was set upon acquisitions far beyond these rudiments of learning; and at the age of sixteen we find him having recourse to the office of constable and collector, and hoping from its paltry fees to collect means to enable him to realize to some extent his ardent desire for a liberal education. At this time there appears to have been in young Jackson's mind no thought of a military career, or aspiration after the profession of the soldier. The direction of his life to military employments was purely accidental, and came to pass through his general desire for an education of some better sort than he was able to get in his neighbourhood. Happening to learn that in the military school at West Point there was a vacancy from the Congressional district which he inhabited, and perceiving here an opportunity to obtain a thorough scientific education at the expense of the Government, he eagerly caught at it, and at once obtained letters of recommendation to the member of Congress representing his district, and qualified to nominate him to the Secretary of War. The letters were dispatched at once. But so anxious and active was the boy that he determined to make the journey to Washington, and enforce his application by every possible means. Part of the journey was performed on foot. The ardent country youth, clothed in homespun, with his leathern saddle-bags on his shoulder, made his difficult and curious way to the Federal capital. Without delaying even to change his dress, he ascertained the address of the Congressman, Mr. Hays, and, accompanied by his patron, with the stains of travel upon him, he was introduced at the War

Department, and the circumstances of his journey related there. The Secretary of War was at once pleased with the evidence of the boy's resolution, and his manifestation of an honourable desire of improvement; and the warrant of young Jackson, as a cadet, was made out on the spot.

The four years of our hero's life spent at West Point were, to the common apprehension, of but little promise. He had gone there with very defective literary qualifications and no special preparation whatever for the course of study; he showed no natural sprightliness of mind; his acquisition of knowledge was slow and laborious, but he had the advantage of studying with great thor-. oughness and honesty; and although in the first year he barely escaped being ruled among the "incompetents," he advanced his grade each year, and by steps of remarkable distinctness showed what resolute toil may accomplish in a race with minds of easier disposition. In his first year his "general standing" had been 51;: in his second, 30; in his third, 20; in his fourth it was 17. In the same class with him were Generals McClellan, Foster, Reno, Stoneman, Couch, and Gibbon, of the United States army afterwards; and Generals A. P. Hill, Pickett, Maury, D. R. Jones, W. D. Smith, and Wilcox, of the Confederate States army. In such a company Jackson was scarcely the man to be designated for future preëminence; but to the studious observer his steady steps of ascent, and above all his unlimited confidence in himself, were true signs of future greatness. The young man who wrote in a private book of "maxims," "You may be whatever you resolve to be," who made this the practical dogma of his life, and who was heard repeatedly to declare that "he could always do what he willed to accomplish," had shown that supreme confidence in himself which, distinguished from vanity and conceit, never expressing itself offensively, always associated with quietude and modesty of manner, is the unfailing mark of greatness.

Such a confidence resides in all great minds; a peculiar con-fidence, supreme, quiet, waiting its time, rather approaching austerity than conceit, never unpleasant in its expression, disposed to silence and solitude, and often exhibiting that shyness and einbarrassment in general companies which were early remarked as peculiarities in Jackson's behaviour, and superficially ascribed to a naturally graceless manner. The world makes no greater mistake

than to designate as "modest" men, or as persons holding low opin ions of themselves, those who are awkward and bashful in society, who blush easily when confronted in a general conversation, or are constrained and embarrassed in the conventionalisms of social intercourse. But an observation more studious than that of the drawing-room and general assembly often discovers under such manners the very sensitiveness of a supreme self-appreciation, the chafe or reserve of a great proud spirit without opportunity to assert itself. It is thus we may explain how the shy and clumsy manners of Jackson, which made him the butt of social companies, yet covered an enormous self-regard and masked the ambition which devoured him. A recent biographer declares: "The recollection is still preserved of many of his personal peculiarities; his simplicity and absence of suspicion when all around him were laughing at some of his odd ways; his grave expression and air of innocent inquiry when some jest excited general merriment, and he could not see the point; his solitary habits and self-contained deportment; his absence of mind, awkwardness of gait, and evident indifference to every species of amusement." These eccentricities were the subjects of jesting comment among the companions of the obscure man: they have since been recited as curiosities of greatness.

In the Mexican War Jackson's ambition was like a consuming fire; he sought the earliest distinction, and from West Point he immediately reported for duty on the field, in Mexico, where he was assigned to the First regiment of heavy artillery. His record in this war was a succession of active and daring services; he was always seeking the post of danger, and the opportunity of distinction. For "gallant and meritorious conduct at the siege of Vera Cruz," he was promoted to the rank of first-lieutenant. In the battles of Contreras and Cherubusco, he again obtained distinction, and was brevetted captain. Intent upon the opportunity of distinction, he had obtained a transfer to light artillery service, then almost an experiment in American warfare, and an arm, the peculiarity of which was to be always thrust forward to the post of danger and of honour. At Chapultepec he had charge of a section of Magruder's famous light field-battery, and had pushed forward until he found himself unexpectedly in the presence of a strong battery of the enemy, at so short a range that its whirlwind of iron

tore man and horse to pieces. The cannoneers were either struck down or fled from their pieces, until only Jackson and a sergeant were left in the storm of fire. At this time, Capt. Magruder dashed forward; a shot cut his horse from under him; he ordered Jackson to withdraw his guns, one of which the heroic officer was yet serving, with the sponge-staff in his hand. Jackson remonstrated; he could hold his ground, he declared, and if they would send him fifty veterans, he would capture the battery which had so crippled his. Magruder, enthused by such a display of spirit, acquiesced, the men were sent, and Jackson immediately advanced his section, which was soon thundering after the discomfited Mexicans towards the gates of the city. For his gallantry on this occasion Jackson received the brevet rank of major.

To this rank Jackson had risen within seven months, from the position of brevet second-lieutenant. He was promoted oftener for meritorious conduct than any other officer in the whole army in Mexico; he had made a greater stride in rank than any of his competitors; he had obtained high and remarkable commendation in the official reports; Magruder, his immediate superiour, wrote of him: "If devotion, industry, talent and gallantry, are the highest qualities of a soldier, then he is entitled to the distinction which their possession confers." The ambition of Jackson was at once gratified and stimulated; and from this time he appears to have conceived most strongly the idea that war was his true vocation, and that his way to distinction was the career of the soldier. And he was profoundly right in this estimate of himself. He was, by nature, a soldier. And although we afterwards find him in the quiet walk of a professor at the Virginia Military Institute, possessed by a remarkable religious zeal, a fervid member of the church, delighting in the exercises of piety, yet at the bottom of the man, and to the day of his death, was the same dominant, combative nature, the same disposition delighting in antagonism and conflict that he had displayed on the fields of Mexico. To the last, with all his piety and kindliness, Jackson loved the battle, and confessed to a peculiar exaltation and delight in its hot atmosphere -the irrepressible emotion, indeed, of the born soldier.

In 1851, Jackson was elected a professor in the Military Institute of Virginia, at Lexington, securing a preference over McClellan, Reno, Rosecrans, and G. W. Smith, whose names were submitted