Stonewall Jackson

Thomas Jonathan Jackson was born on January 21, 1824. His great-grandparents had met on a prison ship bringing them to America as bond servants after a judge found them guilty of theft. Their ship landed in Maryland where they served out their indenture at different locations and married in 1755. In 1758, the family moved across the Blue Ridge Mountains to Moorefield, Virginia, in what is now West Virginia. They finally settled even farther west in the state, where they began to accumulate land. The couple had eight children. The two older sons and father fought in the American Revolution.

Thomas's grandfather was Edward, the second son; and his father was Jonathan, Edward's third son. Jonathan Jackson died of typhoid fever, leaving a 28-year-old widow and three young children. Julia Jackson refused charity, moved to a small cabin, taught school, and took in sewing. Because of Julia's remarriage and declining health, Thomas and his sister were sent to live with their half-uncle. After his mother died, Thomas went to live with another relative but ran away after continued verbal abuse.

Thomas was mainly self-taught. In 1842, he was accepted into West Point. Because of his sketchy education, he poured determination and hard work into the academy and graduated well. He met Robert E. Lee in the Mexican-American War. Three years after his first wife died giving birth to a still-born daughter, Thomas married Mary Anna Morrison, the daughter of the president of Davidson College in North Carolina.

As the Civil War drew near, the issues divided him and his sister, who he'd always been close to. She'd become a staunch abolitionist, and Thomas was a Confederate general. In fact, many historians consider him to be the most gifted tactical commander in American history and think the war would have ended differently had he lived. As it was, Confederate pickets accidentally shot him during the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. His arm was amputated, but he died of complications and pneumonia eight days later.

He had received the nickname, "Stonewall," at the First Battle of Bull Run. There he rushed his troops to fill a gap in the Confederate line.  One of his fellow generals is reported to have remarked, "Look, men, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall." They began calling him "Stonewall," and it's how he's still remembered.

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