Gods and Generals

Who was "Stonewall" Jackson, one of the Confederacy’s greatest heroes?

For ten years before the Civil War, he was a rather unpopular professor of artillery tactics and natural/experimental philosophy at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). It wasn’t until he was a general in the field, away from the repetitive tedium and occasional controversy of his classroom, that Jackson’s true talents emerged. (Don't miss this battle animation from the U.S. Military Academy.) Within two years he catapulted from relative obscurity (the link depicts him in 1855) to national prominence.

Born "Thomas Jonathon Jackson," he often signed his name as "T.J. Jackson." His boyhood home, Jackson’s Mill, is located in what is known today as Weston, West Virginia. (It was part of Virginia until the northern counties of that state rejoined the Union.) Orphaned early in life, Tom Jackson was devoted to his younger sister Laura, although their relationship was destroyed during the Civil War. She was an ardent Unionist.

Jackson’s first wife, Ellie, died on 22 October 1854, shortly after giving birth to their stillborn son. She was 30 years old. Three weeks after her death, Jackson observed (in a letter to his sister Laura):

I am reconciled to my loss and have joy in hope of a future reunion where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.

He married his second wife, Mary Anna Morrison (whom he called “Esposita”) in 1857. They lived in Lexington, Virginia in the only home Tom Jackson ever owned. Their first child, a daughter named Mary Graham Jackson, was born in May of 1858. Jackson announced the birth of his daughter (who was initially “doing very well"). But little Mary died before she was one month old.

Tom and Anna’s second child, Julia Laura (who was named after her paternal grandmother) was born during the war. She lived to be 26 years old. (A picture of Julia with her mother, Mary Anna Jackson, was taken a few years after the war.) Julia married William W. Christian and, after having two children (Julia and Jackson), she died of typhoid fever. The Confederate hero’s descendants still survive.