Jackson, Thomas J. (“Stonewall”)

Jackson, Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) (1824–1863), Confederate military hero.A Virginian who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1846, Jackson distinguished himself in the Mexican War, winning brevets to major. In 1852, he resigned his commission to become a professor at the Virginia Military Institute. When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861, Jackson joined the Confederate Army. Soon promoted to brigadier general, he distinguished himself in a series of Civil War battles. At the First Battle of Bull Run (31 July 1861), he earned the sobriquet of “Stonewall” for his defense of a ridge, which helped turn a threatened Confederate defeat into a rout of the Union forces.

In the Spring of 1862, Jackson fought his Shenandoah Valley campaign, proving himself a brilliant strategist and driving the Union Army out of Virginia. He fought in the Seven Days' Battles, but his judgment was blunted by fatigue and sleep deprivation.

In August 1862, he destroyed General John Pope's principal supply depot at Manassas, Virginia. He fought in the Second Battle of Bull Run and defeated the Union forces at Chantilly. He commanded a corps that captured twelve thousand Union troops at Harpers Ferry and fought at Antietam and Fredericksburg. At Chancellorsville, his 2 May 1863 attack on the Union's right flank resulted in one of the most remarkable victories by an inferior force in the annals of warfare. That night, on a personal reconnaissance, he was mistakenly shot by Confederate soldiers. His shattered arm was amputated, but he died eight days later of pneumonia.

Jackson was a deeply religious Presbyterian and a secretive man, an aggressive soldier and stern disciplinarian. He died at the pinnacle of his reputation and entered American mythology as the symbol of a stubborn, persistent fighter.
See also Antietam, Battle of.

Bibliography

Byron Farwell , Stonewall: A Biography of General Thomas J. Jackson, 1992.
James I. Robertson Jr. , Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend, 1997.

Byron Farwell