Stonewall Jackson: Normal or Nuts?

The Civil War’s Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson might have been the South’s greatest field commander, but for years modern historians have played up what they perceive are his nutty eccentricities. But was Jackson, whose campaign in the Shenandoah Valley and whose victory at Chancellorsville are still required reading at war colleges around the world, as crazy as some think?

J.G. Fay's 1877 print of the last meeting of General Robert E. Lee and Jackson at Chancellorsville.

In his short life, Jackson ran away from home to escape an abusive step-father, took jobs as a constable, a surveyor and teacher, graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, earned three brevet promotions in the Mexican War, commanded artillery units in New York and Florida, became a college professor, toured Europe and became the stellar military leader that made him famous. He is perhaps the most misunderstood personage in Civil War history.

In some ways, Jackson was a man ahead of his time, but he also seems very much a product of his time. In our modern smugness, we struggle to comprehend the avant-garde genius Jackson’s contemporaries saw in him, and we need to understand a time long passed; a time for instance when people did not snap countless self-indulgent photographs, indeed a time when people did not even dare smile for a camera. They wanted to be taken seriously by posterity.

Let’s look at some popular anecdotes that have been used to caricature Jackson.

He was clueless as a professor at Virginia Military Institute.

At V. M. I. in Lexington, Virginia, where he taught before the war, some students called him Tom Fool. Whether this was because of the way he walked or talked or taught is not clear, but does that prove anything? Don’t teenage boys, especially at an all male military school, make fun of their teachers? It is classic attention-getting behavior. V.M.I. cadet James T. Murfee wrote, “As boys we were not able to comprehend the military genius that was within him…Not only did we not understand him, but I think that no one at that time understood him…”

Jackson, understood or not, commanded a certain respect at V.M.I. When the secession debate threatened to erupt into violence on campus, it was Major Jackson who stood between the factions and calmed the situation. When the cadets marched off to war, Major Jackson led the column out of Lexington.

Another story is told of a student who, instructed to read a passage for class, asked Jackson what it meant, whereby the major simply told him what he had already explained and instructed the boy to re-read the assignment. Today education emphasizes “teaching the child to think,” scaffolding and differentiation. But education then was not what it is today, for better or for worse. Back then the education of a fourteen-year-old had him “learn the material.” This was done by reading, memorizing and often reciting the facts. Understanding and experience could happen only after mastery of the material. Jackson simply used the tried and true “boring method” of teaching. A student who asked for more than that was often seen as insubordinate or even obstinate.

Thomas Jonathan Jackson

Jackson was a hypochondriac who continuously sucked lemons.

For years, on the anniversary of Jackson’s death at Guinea Station, Virginia, someone anonymously sent a funeral wreath adorned with lemons to the appropriately named Stonewall Jackson Shrine. The lemon story never sours.

Jackson seems to have suffered for many years from stomach ailments or dyspepsia as it was called. Fruits, especially citrus fruits like lemons were a common salve for dyspepsia back then, and sometimes are still used today in homeopathic remedies. The lemon story was perpetuated in the reminiscences of Richard Taylor, the son of President Zachary Taylor who commanded Jackson’s old brigade when he was promoted to Corps commander. It probably happened that Jackson came into some lemons at some point and used them accordingly. Taylor’s yarn lives on, but it has been taken out of context in subsequent years. Other contemporaries of Jackson make no mention of lemons.

Some writers have mocked Jackson’s belief that one arm was longer than the other. He is said to have sometimes held up one of his arms to “balance the humors” in his body. Was that so crazy? Almost everyone has one arm that is longer than the other, it is usually our dominate arm, so Jackson was right about that. Almost everyone in the 1860s still followed the Hippocratic theory of humors which had dominated Western medicine for centuries. Jackson was not different, we are. It seems clear that he had chronic dyspepsia and relied on the best theories of medicine at that time; medical practices that included no concept of sanitation or infection and still used cupping, bleeding and toxic chemicals for cures. Again we misunderstand the context of the times as we point out what we perceive to be Jackson’s hypochondria.

Jackson was a religious zealot.

And what’s worse, he was a hypocritical Christian; a blue-eyed killer as the late novelist-historian Shelby Foote dubbed him. It’s true he was an Old Testament Presbyterian who had a sincere commitment to the faith of his Northern Irish forebears. Again that was true for most civilized men and women in his time. We are the ones who have changed in regards to religious devotion.

Today’s cafeteria Catholics, food Jews and the mainstream denominations, some of whom have replaced the Apostle’s Creed with environmental poems, are far removed from the Presbyterianism of Jackson’s time. The educated class, to which Jackson belonged, strove to live up to the high standards of a Christian leader.

Christianity does not preclude justifiable war and Jackson thought about and wrote extensively about the morality of war. He kept holy the Sabbath day. He did not drink because, he once said, I like it too much.  He once walked two miles in the rain to return a library’s key because he had promised to return it within an hour. He kept even the smallest promise. Yes, he was particularly committed to faith and honesty and piety. All the more to his credit, and like everyone else back then, he did not smile for his photographs.

So was Stonewall Jackson normal or nuts? Well, would Robert E. Lee have entrusted his army to a flake? The very sober Lee called Jackson his right arm and had full confidence in the man, most pointedly when he trusted Jackson at Chancellorsville. There he bet on Jackson’s ability to split an already outnumbered army, march an entire corps in the dark wilderness for miles, and effectively strike the enemy’s flank. Chancellorsville is considered Lee’s greatest victory. His faith in Jackson won it for him.

Stonewall Jackson’s life story belies the idea that he was loony. He came from the humblest of beginnings, overcame many obstacles including a lonely orphaned upbringing. He worked his way up in life, was well-educated as an engineer at West Point, the country’s elite school for that discipline. He finished 17^th out of 59 in his class despite his lack of preparation for university work.

He had broad horizons, and took every opportunity to see the world, serving in Mexico, where he immersed himself in the Spanish language and Catholic theology. He lived and traveled in Florida and New York, choosing Niagara Falls for his honeymoon. He toured Europe and loved the history and cultures he experienced there.
 

Niagara Falls, New York, where Jackson honeymooned.

In his military career he chose the artillery over cavalry or infantry, because the artillery branch was on the cutting edge of military science and technology. He embraced new technology and modern ideas. He put gas lights and stoves in the only house he ever owned. He tried hydrotherapy and other medical innovations for his chronic ailments. At the First Battle of Manassas, he used trains to move troops to the front for the first time in military history. He defied the law and his Lexington neighbors by organizing a school to teach black slaves to read and write.
 
Even so Lexington’s elite judged Jackson worthy of its respect. He married Ellie Junkin, whose father was president of Washington College, and when she died in childbirth, he married Mary Anna Morrison, the daughter of the president of Davidson College; two very respectable alliances for a man with his common roots. Like those university presidents, Robert E. Lee knew he could trust Thomas Jackson.

Perhaps one of Jackson’s V.M.I. cadets said it best when sizing up the true Stonewall Jackson. James H. Lane wrote that he was “wonderfully eccentric…a man of great bravery, conscientious and fearless in the discharge of every duty, strictly honest and just in his intentions.”

Stonewall Jackson: Normal or nuts? How about  wonderfully eccentric!
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Kelly J. O’Grady is the author of Burning Rage: A Ced Buckley Civil War Mystery and Soldiers Just Like You, based on the true story of the trial of the 54^th Massachusetts. If you like looking at the Civil War, its time and its people, in a different way, look for these books at Amazon.com.