Stonewall was one strange dude

AP ^ | Nov. 10, 2002 | CHRIS KAHN

[MadIvan]

I've heard some things on this side of the Atlantic, that he would stand for hours on end rather than sit, due to his feelings about the displacement of the organs.

It is in some dispute if his habit of compressing cold towels to his body where he felt pain may have contributed to his contracting pneumonia which eventually killed him.

Regards, Ivan

[sharktrager]

The one exception to the rule that there were few mixed race people is Louisiana. There was a very active mixed race society. This primarily was the result of wealthy landowners who kept a second family seperate from their white family.

These men customarily took women who were themselves mixed race. There were regular "quadroon balls" where mothers would take their daughters so they could be paired with a wealthy landowner.

Given the dilution of the black genetic heritage, there were many who could present themselves as white. Usually these people would leave the south altogether and reestablish themselves up north. There are, in fact, many people who are not at all aware of their black heritage.

[StolarStorm]

Sounds like he suffered from Asperger's syndrome.

[AnAmericanMother]

A man I would not like to cross.

His troops loved him, that says a lot.

[Drawsing]

In the unheralded cold war between introverts and extroverts, I am happy to have the illustrious General Jackson on my side. Small talk? Chitchat?...who needs it!

[condi2008]

It is easier to believe of some than others.

I was thinking that if we had before us, for example, the Impeached Ex-President Clinton and George W. Bush; and someone said, "One of them has fathered a child out of wedlock" we might find it easier to believe of the former than of the latter.

The antebellum South tolerated a very high degree of miscegenation.

I still think that as a truly devoted Christian (Presbyterian, BTW), he would not have followed the prevailing culture, whatever it may have been, but the Holy Scriptures, which forbid fornication.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

BTTT

[agrandis]

Very interesting - thanks for posting!

"I like liquor - its taste and its effects - and that is just the reason why I never drink it."
Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson

[agrandis]

LOL! Or WhiskeyPapa will say that he had a swastika and a photo of Hitler on his wall. Or that he sacrificed small children to Satan. And then he'll take the quote I posted in #48, and just post "I like liquor..." and tell us all Jackson was a sot!

BTW, here's another one from Jackson:

"People who are anxious to bring on war don't know what they are bargaining for; they don't see all the horrors that must accompany such an event."

The world should have heeded those words in 1915 and 1916, and we would never have had Hitler, or the soviet Bloc, or Red China, or many other evils.

[sheltonmac]

Haven't read that one.

[STONEWALLS]

"His troops loved him, that says a lot."

....now we're getting down to it!....that's the bottom line that reflects true military leadership....eventually the men will see thru a phoney....it doesn't matter if it's at the squad level or in Jackson's case Corps command....good leadership will always shine thru and it will inspire a confidence that will enable the men to perform above and beyond what would be normally be expected off them....and that in a nutshell is why the Army of Northern Virginia, out manned and under equipped, was able to fight the North to a draw for as long as they did against overwhelming odds.....

Good luck to everybody!

Stonewalls

[laconic]

Another interesting thing about Stonewall; he taught by rote at VMI. He would stand before the class with a presentation that he had memorized word for word and he didn't like questions from the students. On a bet, one of his students asked a question in the middle of a lecture; to his regret, Stonewall answered by rewinding the lecture in his head and reciting it from the beginning, word for word.

[ErnBatavia]

[nathanbedford]

Jackson has lost his left arm but I have lost my right"

R.E. Lee, the most noble and sublime of all Americans.

[nathanbedford]

How typical of modern behavioralist analysis that the author would define Jackson to be the hapless product of his deprived childhood rather than accepting and identifying his core Christian committment as the essence of his being. Jackson, like Lee, was essentially without ego where it mattered, in the spiritual sense. He is a shining example of the extroadinary power derived from dying to oneself. His extroadinary physical courage, his touching tenderness to children and his wife, his unflinching resolve, devotion to duty and acceptance of fate, not excepting his own death, can only be explained as the fruits of his faith.

During a lull in the bloodiest day of the war at Sharpsburg where Jackson and Lee survived by only the narrowest of margins, it was observed to him that, "this day was only carried by hard and stern fighting." Jackson did not view the matter so prosaicily, "anyone who cannot see the hand of God in this affair is blind sir, blind."

Alas, the AP reporter is equally blind.

[Junior]

Definitely does not fit the ultra-religious Stonewall profile. Methinks this may be a confusion with another leader somewhere.

[AnAmericanMother]

Your namesake, on the other hand, was another breed of cat.

Genius, yes. Effective, yes. Saved my daddy's home town, yes. But he flat scares me, in a way that Jackson does not. I wouldn't be afraid to meet Jackson, although I would be in awe of him (readying my best court curtsey). But Forrest worries me.

No offense, of course. ;-)

[nathanbedford]

No offense taken.

You are abaolutely right, they are very different men. I chose the handle because it is so in your PC face.

[AnAmericanMother]

I understand the choice! I imagine that a lot of folks in the Confederacy felt about Forrest the way we might feel about having a nuke lying around . . . . very useful, nay, almost indispensable, but . . . worrisome.

I can't think of any other general who got into a fight with a member of his staff and grappled him to a standstill, then pulled his jacknife open with his teeth and stabbed him. Can you? :-D

(I will say that I share his opinion of that worthless old biddy Braxton Bragg.)

[Maigret]

Always been one of my heroes.