His troops loved him, that says a lot.
Posted on 11/11/2002 7:12:48 AM PST by stainlessbanner
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, perhaps the most feared and respected of Confederate generals, was by most accounts an odd person to have over for dinner.
Awkward, with a thin, almost feminine voice, Jackson was incapable of chatty conversation. He obsessed about digestion and was known to bring his own food -- crusts of stale bread, usually -- to parties.
Aside from his military accomplishments, Jackson's eccentricities are what many acquaintances remembered after his death in 1863. But there was much they didn't see.
Jackson's "Book of Maxims," a collection of slogans and bits of wisdom he compiled as a young officer, reveals the kind of man Jackson hoped to become before the country was split by the Civil War. The book was believed to have disappeared until about 13 years ago, and copies are now available.
"Too often, the popular perception of Jackson was of a religious zealot, a loose cannon, a hypochondriac, the village idiot," said Jackson biographer James Robertson Jr., who rediscovered the maxims in a mislabeled box at Tulane University.
"This book shows he was not. He was a very determined man. He was a man who wanted to be liked, who wanted to be part of society if only he could learn how."
Jackson grew up the orphaned son of a failed lawyer in the mountains of what is now West Virginia. He had less than a fourth-grade education when he entered West Point, and his time in New York was spent mostly alone.
"He'd be invited to an afternoon tea, and he'd go and just stand against the wall," Robertson said. "He didn't know what else to do."
His maxims, which he collected in his late 20s from books he was reading and from his own experience, provide a rare view into Jackson's mind at this awkward time.
There were tips for meeting friends: "A man is known by the company he keeps" and "Never weary your company by talking too long or too frequently."
Longer entries dealt with one of his greater difficulties, how to socialize: "Sit or stand still while another is speaking to you -- (do) not dig in the earth with your foot nor take your knife from your pocket & pare your nales (sic) nor other such actions."
Some of his maxims were meant for inspiration. The most famous, "You may be what ever you will resolve to be," is now displayed on an archway at Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson was a professor.
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
His troops loved him, that says a lot.
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.
"I like liquor - its taste and its effects - and that is just the reason why I never drink it."
Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson
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.
....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
R.E. Lee, the most noble and sublime of all Americans.
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.
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. ;-)
You are abaolutely right, they are very different men. I chose the handle because it is so in your PC face.
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.)
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