WHENCE THE CONQUEROR
Nothing in the making of Tom Jackson had been easy. His first American ancestor of record was a huge Irishman, one John Jackson, who emigrated from obscurity to Cecil County, Maryland, in 1748, and was shunted toward the wilderness. By 1769, he had staked a tomahawk claim—blazing his boundaries on the virgin bark of giant trees—along the Buckhannon River and Turkey Run, not far from what was to become the town of Weston, West Virginia. Buffalo destroyed his first corn patch, but John returned to settle. With two sons he fought in the Revolution, helped to clear out the Indian tribes, and left large tracts of land to his heirs.
Edward, son of John, was the grandfather of General Thomas J. Jackson, and it was in Edward’s time that the family began to prosper. Jackson men were Congressmen and judges and tax collectors. Edward was a county surveyor and sat in the Virginia legislature; a brother, John G. Jackson, married Mary Payne, the sister of Dolly Madison.
Years later, before he had cloaked his ambition with discretion, young Tom Jackson was to look back on these times when he declared to a kinsman:
“I have some hopes that our ancient reputation may be revived.”
Edward Jackson’s son Jonathan, a young lawyer of Clarksburg, (West) Virginia, was, in view of his father’s property, a man of promise. He married Julia Beckwith Neale from a near-by farm in 1818. Julia was said to have ancestors who were soldiers in the service of the British Crown—professionals; but there were no records. Jonathan had begun well: A basic education at the Randolph Academy in Clarksburg, and a reading of law in the office of his uncle, the judge who had married into the Madison Administration. Admitted to the bar at twenty, Jonathan was for a time a Federal tax collector. He had raised a company of cavalry for the War of 1812, but was not called to duty.
Four children were born to Jonathan and Julia: Elizabeth, Warren, Thomas, Laura. Thomas was born January 21, 1824, in Clarksburg, with Dr. James McCalley in attendance. The mother named him for her father, Thomas Neale. He was to reach manhood before adding the name of his own father.
The boy was three when Elizabeth died of an undiagnosed fever. The father tended her, contracted the disease, and within two weeks was dead, leaving his family penniless because of his unfortunate way with money and property, and a weakness for signing the notes of friends. The widow clung to her cottage home in Clarksburg by operating a little private school and by sewing for her neighbors. She gave this up after two years and married an even less successful lawyer, Captain Blake Woodson. Her new husband caught on as clerk of court in Fayette County to the west and took her with him.
Out of concern for the mother’s health, the children were scattered: Warren to her brother, Alfred Neale, near Parkersburg, where he prepared for a brief life of teaching school; Thomas and Laura to the country home of their grandmother, Edward Jackson’s widow. The grandmother lived near the village of Jane Lew, not far from the original site where old John Jackson had fought Indians and buffalo. The departure for this home marks the beginning of the T. J. Jackson legend.
It is a family tradition that the five-year-old Tom, displaying the fearless spirit of an incipient lieutenant general, ran into the woods and hid from a bachelor uncle sent to fetch him, and returned only at night. After two days of bribery and persuasion, the children agreed to leave their mother and went to the big home on the West Fork of the Monongahela, where they were to spend many happy years with the grandmother, a couple of maiden aunts and a clutch of high-spirited, godless bachelor uncles.
Julia Jackson died in Tom’s sixth year, and shortly after the parting from her the children were carried to her deathbed for a scene of prayer and blessing that made a deep impression on the boy; the children returned immediately to the farm. The grandmother died in 1835, and Tom was sent to the home of a cousin, William Brake, near Clarksburg, on the theory that the old homestead was no longer a fit place to raise children, since the maiden aunts had married and the matriarch was gone. Tom could not bear the new home for long. He ran away into Clarksburg; he told relatives in a firm, young voice, “I have disagreed with Uncle Brake. I have left him, and I’m not going back.” He got a riotous welcome on his return to the home of the bachelor Jacksons—in particular from Uncle Cummins, who was the head of the horse-loving, fox-hunting, race-crazy clan.
There followed a boyhood idyll. Tom grew up on the ample farm, dividing his time between a jockey’s saddle on the four-mile track of the place and the farm chores; he is said to have directed crews of Negroes at felling timber, to have worked with millers in the family gristmill, tended sheep, flailed the flax crop, caught monstrous fish in the clear streams, gone coon hunting and boating on the West Fork, and, though probably inconstantly, attended a country school.
One summer, according to the legend, he and Warren drifted down the Ohio in a log canoe, spending some time with relatives; and then, striking out for themselves, they passed the winter and spring on an island in the Mississippi, far down in Kentucky. They cut firewood for passing boats, and they returned by steamer with nothing to show for their labors but new trunks, though Warren soon developed tuberculosis, as his mother had before him. At nineteen Warren was dead.
The Jacksons remembered Tom’s devotion to learning, and that he lay on the floor to study while a slave held a blazing pine knot over his head—the bargain being that, as Tom learned, and the slave held the hissing light, the boy would pass on the knowledge and both become educated. It is said that the slave learned enough to enable him to escape via the Underground Railway.
In 1838, when Tom was fourteen, he had his first job, and his first contact with the church which was to mean so much to him. He worked on the Parkersburg-Staunton Turnpike and each Sunday walked three miles to hear a neighborhood minister. There is no more than a hint as to why he did so; perhaps he was in unconscious protest against the godless home of his uncles. In any event, this and other signs of strong character so impressed a local squire, Colonel Alexander Withers, that in 1841 he got for Tom a constable’s post. His duties were inconsiderable: the serving of legal papers for the most part. It is likely that Uncle Cummins and others of his kin, numerous in the county, helped to put Tom on the public payroll.
The first instance of Jackson’s lifelong concern over his health was an attack of dyspepsia at this period. He thought life on horseback might improve his condition, even as he rode through the hills bringing tidings of trouble to neighbors and kin. He had a reputation as a steady, dependable boy, far from brilliant, with no signs of eccentricity.
His Uncle Cummins evidently gave him free rein; the nephew was to write in later years: “Times are very different from what they were when I was at my adopted home. None to give their mandates, none for me to obey but as I chose, surrounded by my playmates and relatives, all apparently eager to promote my happiness.”
The shade of Cummins which lingers indicates a vigorous character, a man whose love for litigation, a family failing, caused him feuds with prominent men of the area and consumed much of his income in court; a citizen of influence and a king-maker whose blessing launched many a political career. He was one of the thousands who died in California in the turbulent Gold Fever of ’49. Tom, when told of the death of Cummins, was to write: “This is news which goes to my heart. Uncle was like a father to me.”
In 1842, Tom was struck by the accidental good fortune which was to mold his life. A boy from his district, having won a place at West Point, withdrew, and there was a vacancy for Western Virginia. Tom, who learned overnight of the glories of the Academy and the military life, determined to have the place. There is no evidence that he had yearned to be a soldier, nor even that he had ever seen one; his interest in military matters, so the family memories run, had been limited to marching at the head of playmates as a child, imagining himself at war. In any event, West Point seemed a glittering opportunity to better himself, and Tom bent his every effort toward going there.
Cummins was a major help, for Samuel S. Hayes, the district Congressman, was a friend, and Hayes wrote from Washington that he would give all possible help. Hayes was probably astonished to see Tom walk into his office a few days later on the strength of nothing more than a kindly letter to an influential constituent. There is a legend that Tom hurried to Washington much as he was to hurry his columns of riflemen in later years, and that he rode desperately across country to overtake a stagecoach which he had missed at Clarksburg, sending home a slave with his winded horse.
To Congressman Hayes as to Cummins and all others, the grim-faced boy confessed a lack of training to fit him for West Point, but threatened such application to duty that he would be able to remain in the Academy. The session had already begun, and there was probably scant competition for the post. Hayes took young Jackson to the Secretary of War, who approved the candidate despite his shortcomings, and after a brief tour of Washington, including a peek at the city from atop the half-built Capitol, the impatient Tom was off for West Point. He arrived on the historic plain, July 1, 1842.
Jackson’s entrance was observed by a little group of cadets which included three future Confederate generals: A. P. Hill, George Pickett and Dabney H. Maury. In later years, Maury wrote:
“A cadet sergeant came by us conducting a newly-arrived cadet to his quarters. This newcomer attracted our attention at once. He was apparently about 20 years of age, was well-grown; his figure was angular and clumsy; his gait was awkward. He was clad in old-fashioned Virginia homespun woolen cloth; he bore across his shoulders a pair of weather-stained saddle bags, and his hat was one of those heavy, low-crowned, broad-brimmed wool hats usually worn in those days by overseers, county constables, wagoners, etc. He tramped along by the side of the sergeant, with an air of resolution, and his stolid look added to the inflexible determination of his whole aspect, so that one of us remarked, ‘That fellow has come here to stay.’
“So much did he impress me that I made inquiry at once about him, and found he was from Virginia. I then sought him out and endeavored to show him some especial interest, and to let him know that he was not without friends in that strange land. He was not at all demonstrative, however, and seemed determined to hew out his own career.”
Jackson stayed at West Point, but he was for long uncomfortable and the butt of many cadet pranks because of the irresistible combination of country inelegance and grave earnestness which he offered to tormentors.
The Academy tradition is that he studied long after lights out by banking coals upon his fire and lying before it, boning up on subjects in which he found himself years behind, particularly algebra and geometry.
General John Gibbon recalled for a biographer a scene of Jackson at the blackboard in a classroom, so ill at ease that he squirmed in pain, smeared chalk over hands, face and uniform, and sweated so freely that he was for years a marvel to his mates. The boys called him “The General.”
Jackson soon won the sympathy of instructors. He had a frank, manly approach to his ignorance, and often confessed that he could not recite the day’s lesson since he was months behind and had not mastered earlier assignments.
He found life no easier outside the walls. Despite his training as a jockey, he was an ungainly figure on a dragoon’s saddle, and never achieved the form required in taking jumps on cavalry horses.
Jackson began with the most lowly group of his class, which the Point called The Immortals, and it appeared that he would drop even below them and into oblivion at the end of his first year. But his struggles were valiant and endless. He later said, “I do not remember having spoken to a lady while I was at West Point”—and he evidently did little else but wage his uphill battle for belated learning. This was most severe in the study of French, but serious on every front. His grade standing at the end of the first year was precarious, but he clung on: Of a class of 72, he stood 70 in French, 51 in general merit, 45 in mathematics. He drew 15 demerits.
A few stories accumulated about him during his stay. One was that a fellow cadet substituted his uncleaned musket for that of Jackson, when inspection was imminent. Jackson was known to be scrupulously neat, but he accepted the demerits without protest, refusing to report the incident to his officers. But when he discovered the identity of the culprit, he had to be sat upon to prevent his taking the case directly to the commandant. Jackson insisted that the scoundrel be dismissed for conduct unbecoming a gentleman.
Another story was that his roommate, acting as orderly-sergeant, offered Jackson immunity from answering roll calls in the chill dawn. But despite his urging, and assurances that his absence would not be reported, Jackson steadfastly refused, and met the painful duty each day.
Most of the stories have about them an air of having been conceived, or enlarged, after Jackson’s rise to fame. Some of the developing signs of character, however, are unmistakable. Here, for example, Jackson began the curious health regimen which was to lead him over the country in search of relief for his vague ills. Here he began his habit of sitting bolt upright, to protect the natural alignment of his internal organs. He also wrote a book of maxims, boyish and derivative, but indicative of his cast of mind. A few samples:
Disregard public opinion when it interferes with your duty.
Sacrifice your life rather than your word.
You may be whatever you resolve to be.
Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off unnecessary actions.
Be not disturbed at trifles, nor at accidents.
The tough young mind, yet unformed, seemed to be groping for a rigid creed.
At the end of the second year his standing had improved: 52 in French, 18 in mathematics, 30 in general merit. He drew only 11 fresh demerits. But a pair of new menaces had risen: in drawing he was 68; in engineering, 55.
In a letter to his sister Laura, in January, 1844, he spoke of his health, his examinations, his improved rank, and then:
I am almost homesick, and expect to continue so until I can have a view of my native mountains … my pay when I leave this institution will be about $1,000 a year; though fate may decree that I shall graduate in the lower part of my class, in which case I shall have to go into the infantry, and would receive only $750 a year.… But be that as it may, I intend to remain in the army no longer than I can get rid of it with honor, and means to commence some professional business at home.
At the end of his third year, Jackson had risen further: 11 in philosophy, 25 in chemistry, 59 in drawing, 20 in general merit. And, he added: “In conduct, one.”
In letters to Laura at this period he wrote:
I am enjoying myself very well, considering that I am deprived of the blessings of a home.… I have before me two courses. The first would be to follow the profession of arms; the second, that of a civil pursuit, as law. If I should adopt the first I could live independently and surrounded by friends whom I have already made, and have no fear of want.… If I adopt the latter … my exertions would have to be great in order to acquire a name. This course is most congenial to my taste, and I expect to adopt it, after spending a few years in pursuing the former.
And:
My constitution has received a severe shock, but I believe I am gradually recovering. My exercises this year with the broadsword as well as the small are well calculated to strengthen the chest and the muscles. So that I have some reason to believe that they will have the desired effect of restoring me to perfect health.…
… Rumor appears to indicate a rupture between our government and the Mexican. If such should be the case the probability is that I will be ordered to join the army of occupation immediately, and, if so, will hardly see home until after my return, and the next letter that you will receive from me may be dated from Texas or Mexico.…
Tom graduated in July with a distinguished class that had dwindled to sixty members. He ranked 17 in general merit, 12 in engineering, 5 in ethics, 11 in artillery, 11 in mineralogy and geology, with 7 demerits for the year. He made his lowest rank—21—in the study of infantry tactics.
In his class were Union generals of the future: McClellan, Stoneman, Couch, Gibbon, Foster, Reno. There were distinguished Confederates as well: A. P. Hill, Pickett and Maury, and D. R. Jones, W. D. Smith, and C. M. Wilcox.
Jackson got a brevet lieutenant’s commission, in artillery, July 1, 1846. He left West Point with a reputation as a shy young soldier of sound mind, “but not quick.”
Sylvanus White, a cousin, recalled that Tom stopped at home for a few days this summer before going to Mexico, and that he condescended to drill with the home guard. A Colonel McKinley persuaded Tom to take over a company and insisted, even when the fledgling soldier protested that he would not understand the Colonel’s commands. True to that prediction, the first company of Jackson’s career took off on a false course at an improper order, and went off the parade-ground, through the town. Tom marched it on, obeying orders to the letter.
He was then off to war by a long route. He made his way from Fort Hamilton, on Long Island, to Pittsburgh, a four-hundred-mile journey, and then took a boat to New Orleans. He was thirty-six days on this trip, and K Company, First Artillery, was still far from the fighting. Jackson went to Monterrey, and then to Saltillo, reporting for duty; but even this invasion of Mexican soil did not suffice. On the eve of the battle of Buena Vista, he was ordered to join General Winfield Scott, who was ready to storm Vera Cruz.
Jackson thought he would never see action. His impatience was recorded by D. H. Hill, an officer who was to become his brother-in-law.
“I really envy you men who have been in action,” Jackson told Hill. “I should like to be in one battle.”
Hill added: “His face lighted up, and eyes sparkled as he spoke, and the shy, hesitating manner gave way to the frank enthusiasm of the soldier.”
On March 9, 1847, when he was barely twenty-three, Jackson had his first glimpse of war—and it was like a page from an Oriental fairy tale, a pageantry of color and high drama he would mention often, and never forget. He stood on one of the ships lying offshore as the armada of tiny surfboats swept for the beach. Jackson was near the island of Los Sacrificios, where Cortez had landed more than three hundred years earlier. The army’s bands blared over the water as the miniature boats hit the dazzling sands, and the figures of men crawled ashore like insects.
Just a mile inland were the white walls of Vera Cruz, but there was no sign of life or resistance, and the American force quickly went ashore. By noon, almost all of Scott’s troops were strung out in their sandy camp, some 13,500 strong. At sunset, the gruff commander had completed his council of war and was ready to invest the city. It would probably fall to an assault since it was defended by no more than four thousand Mexicans and had been deserted by Santa Anna; but Scott would use caution. For nine days he dug trenches, and for four days more he waited for heavy guns. Jackson at last saw fighting.
He commanded a light battery and his were among the first guns fired. He was busy through the five days of bombardment before the rather informal defending army surrendered the city; the light battery’s guns were kept hot, and Jackson almost never left them. The result of his work came in a later promotion to the permanent rank of second lieutenant, “for gallant and meritorious conduct at the siege of Vera Cruz.”
It was not all martial pomp for Jackson, however. Much later he was to confess a weakness on this battlefield to a woman friend, who wrote: “He has told me that his first sight of a mangled and swollen corpse on a Mexican battlefield as he rode over it the morning after the conflict, filled him with as much sickening dismay as if he had been a woman.”
This weakness was not to endure.
Vera Cruz surrendered its garrison, four hundred cannon and all its stores. Scott had lost but sixty-four men. Jackson was excited by victory, but there was a detachment of mind as he wrote to Laura of the details:
The capitulation occurred yesterday.… The troops march out under the condition of not serving against us during the present war unless exchanged.… This capitulation … a regular siege … must in my opinion excel any military operations known in the history of our country.
I approve of all except allowing the enemy to retire; that I cannot approve of … we had them secure, and could have taken them unconditionally.
While I was at the advanced batteries, a cannon ball came in about five steps of me. I presume you think my name ought to appear in the papers, but when you consider the composition of our army, you will entertain a different view … only those who have independent commands are as a general rule spoken of.…
You will take particular care that neither this nor any subsequent letter gets into a newspaper.
The season dragged into April, and as Scott waited for more supplies, Santa Anna climbed into a forbidding position astride the highway to Mexico City, in a mountain gap called Cerro Gordo. Scott’s engineers studied it with concern, for the two armies were now of equal size, and it might be costly to attack the hill fortress. The Americans advanced slowly through a country of broad forests. For a few days young Jackson had an opportunity to look at the country.
He found it “mostly a barren waste, cities excepted,” with “but two seasons, wet and dry.” For a time he lived in a Mexican house which charmed him: “With a large back lot, which contained a beautiful orange orchard. Also in this lot was a fine bathing establishment, the pool being about 25 by 30 feet.”
Wandering, he found a church, “the most highly ornamented in the interior of any edifice” he had ever seen. He was
… struck by the gaudy appearance on every side, but most especially the opposite end from the entrance, which appears to be gilded. At the base is a magnificent silver altar, and on each side are statues to attract the astonished beholder. The music is of the highest character. The priests are robed in the most gorgeous apparel. The inhabitants take off their hats on approaching the church and do not replace them until they have passed it. One day while I was near the building I observed a senora (lady) gradually approaching the door. Upon another occasion I saw a female looking at a statue and weeping like a child.
The words revealed a Jackson more than fascinated by his first glimpse of the Catholic Church. His letters to Laura hinted that he was smitten with the primitive life of Mexico, which drew him strangely, though it must have seemed irrevocably sinful and heathen to young Tom.
On April seventeenth, rescued from what threatened to become an exotic interlude, he joined the army in the attack at Cerro Gordo. Here he had his first lesson in flank assault. His instructor was one of Scott’s engineers, Captain Robert E. Lee. For Lee uncovered the unsuspected weakness of the Mexican line and proposed a blow across the face of precipitous rocks. Scott launched his attack. Twice the Mexicans drove back the Americans in the front, but at the climax, when every gun blazed from the beetling hill, Scott’s cannon came up over Lee’s rough road, crushed the western flank, rolled the Mexicans back and routed them. More than twelve hundred Mexicans fell, and Santa Anna lost all his guns, as well as three thousand prisoners. Once more, however, Scott loosed his prisoners and plodded on in the path of the enemy. Jackson’s K Company was not engaged in the attack, but was held in reserve. The company came into action as Santa Anna fled through the mountains, and the light guns sped the retreat.
It was not enough for Jackson “to give them a few shots from the battery”; he was again critical of Scott’s methods in a private letter: “They succeeded in effecting their escape for want of our dragoons.”
Jackson wrote that his commander, Captain Taylor, “has spoken of me very flatteringly in his report to General Twiggs.” But as the army pushed on toward Mexico City, Jackson was left behind. He wrote ruefully to Laura:
I have the mortification of being left.… Notwithstanding my present situation I have some hope of getting forward by and by.… But all this is with General Scott.
I throw myself into the hands of an all-wise God, and hope that it may yet be for the better. It may have been one of His means of diminishing my excessive ambition.…
Laura may have been puzzled at the expression of a fatalism new to Tom’s character, and even more by the air of marked humility. This first fulsome religious expression followed his casual acquaintance with the Catholic Church. His mention of God, characteristically linked with a confession of his ambitions, seemed to set a pattern for young Tom in which God, war and ambition were inextricably mingled. He was to add other elements.
He wrote Laura further. “I am in fine quarters and making rapid progress in the Spanish language, and have an idea of making some lady acquaintances shortly.”
Now he literally called himself to duty. A vacancy in a light artillery battery under Captain John Magruder lured him. Magruder was shunned by other young officers, for he had a reputation as a hard taskmaster, was hot-tempered, and always sought the hottest of fighting. Handsome John would be satisfied with nothing less than perfection in his subordinates. Jackson applied for the post.
“I wanted to see active service,” he said. “To be near the enemy … and when I heard that John Magruder had got his battery, I bent all my energies to be with him; for I knew that if any fighting was to be done Magruder would be on hand.”
Jackson chased Magruder across wild country, from his garrison post at Jalapa to Puebla. At last, when Scott thought himself ready for the field again—in August—the army pushed forward. The offensive interrupted at least one army feud. Magruder issued a challenge to a duel to General Franklin Pierce, who was so soon to become President. It was Jackson who carried the challenge for his superior officer.
The big push also overrode other interruptions, one of them vividly described by Dick Ewell’s brother, Tom, who was to die in battle in this strange country:
“The water here, unless well qualified with brandy, has a very peculiar effect on one—it opens the bowels like a melting tat. General Scott came to see us the other day. He complimented Major Sumner very warmly on our improvements, and especially on the extraordinary vigilance of our scouts who, as he said, were peering at him from behind every bush as he approached the camp. To those aware of the disease prevalent here, the mistake of the General is extremely ludicrous. When we go to drill, the men have to leave ranks by the dozens, and as the plain is bare as a table, they make an exposé of the whole affair. The effect is unique as they squat in rows about a hundred yards from the battalion, and when we deploy as skirmishers we run right over them.”
Dysentery and other ailments filled Scott’s crude hospitals, and as he strove to throw forward every possible man, he lost entire regiments. Volunteers whose enlistments expired trudged off home. In the face of all handicaps, the army entered the valley of Mexico City on August tenth, and, while still charmed with the view of one of the earth’s loveliest cities, was driven to the attack.
Once more Scott found Santa Anna in an almost impregnable position. He had dug in at a place known as San Antonio, which he had covered with guns and laced with trenches. One flank was guarded by an impassable bog; the other, almost as forbidding to the eye, was called the Pedregal, a waste of volcanic stones, cruelly sharp, piled in endless heaps and defiles.
Dick Ewell was writing home about this time, and he was a more imaginative correspondent than Jackson: “I really think one of the most talented men connected with this army is Captain Lee of the Engineers (that was Robert E.). By his daring reconnaissances pushed up to the cannon’s mouth, he has enabled General Scott to fight his battles almost without leaving his tent.”
It was now Lee who gave the army and Jackson a second lesson in flank attack. Lee pierced the awesome Pedregal. His hand struck the Mexicans from their fine position and drove them to the walls of their capital. In the doing, however, there was grim work for American troops, including Jackson and Ewell, the commander and lieutenant of the future.
Captain Lee found a mule path over the Pedregal and work parties widened it into a road. The army streamed over the gigantic rock pile. After crossing the Pedregal, the Americans faced a ridge held by General Valencia and his troops, whose twenty-two guns outranged those of Magruder. Of this, Ewell wrote home:
We went out with General Scott and staff, who stood on a hill overlooking the scene.… Valencia from his works kept up an incessant fire of heavy artillery … now and then blazing away with his six thousand muskets as though our troops were within fifty yards (Mexican fashion).… The Mexicans were so surprised at not being at once driven off that they thought a great victory had been gained. They commenced a jubilee that night, among other things their bands would strike up, “Hail Columbia,” play about half through it and stop.
Valencia brevetted some of his officers and was crazy with joy. Santa Anna knew something more of the Yankees and ordered Valencia that night, by an aide, to strike his pieces and retire. “Pshaw, pshaw,” said the latter, “Tell Santa Anna to go to hell. I have saved the Republic.”
Jackson fought through these hours with no other evident thought than to serve his battery, to attract attention of his superiors, and survive. If he noted the Mexican music, he made no mention of it. Jackson was part of an army unit which was pinned into an angle of the Pedregal by superior Mexican shell-fire.
The isolated American segment seemed in distress as darkness fell, for huge columns of marching Mexicans had approached during the last hours of day. The bulk of Scott’s force was five miles away, over the Pedregal. After dark, rain fell in torrents and all but drowned the voices of officers in a desperate conference of war at a church in the village of Contreras. The council came to the reckless decision that the enemy should be flanked once more, by holding twelve thousand men with a handful of regular troops, while the storming party circled the position. Captain Lee was sent to advise General Scott. Lee went alone on horseback, without even a guide, through a rainstorm breaking over the Pedregal, which was now infested with bands of Mexican irregulars. He somehow went through, and Scott branded his ride, “the greatest feat of physical and moral courage” of the campaign.
Lee and other engineers led a storming party through the dark to the Mexican flank, and at daybreak the American attack again broke Santa Anna’s army. A pell-mell retreat packed the road into the city, and there was slaughter at the gates. Santa Anna lost another 3,000 as prisoners, and 3,250 in dead and wounded.
The action brought Jackson a citation for gallantry from Magruder:
My fire was opened and continued with great rapidity for about an hour. In a few moments Lieutenant Jackson, commanding the second section of the battery, advanced in handsome style, and kept up the fire with great briskness and effect.… Lieutenant Jackson’s conduct was equally conspicuous throughout the whole day, and I cannot too highly commend him to the major-general’s favorable consideration.
High praise indeed—and this report was sent to an adjutant whom Jackson would meet again one day: Captain Joseph Hooker.
After a lull, in which Scott sought an armistice and Santa Anna, delaying, called up reinforcements, the fighting was resumed. On September fifth, a savage assault carried an outpost of the city, Molino del Rey. Scott then threw his columns at Chapultepec, the citadel of Mexico. The troops hurried in over narrow, gun-swept causeways. Here the climactic scene of the war unfolded. It seemed almost as if it had been staged to display Jackson’s talents.
The lieutenant took his guns behind the Fourteenth Infantry Regiment, up the hill under fire. Jackson challenged a big gun in a breastwork above him and drew the concentrated fire of a whole section of the Mexican line. The guns had obviously been trained on the causeway in advance. The barrage killed Jackson’s horses and dropped fifteen of his men. At the last there was only Jackson and a sergeant. But with the lieutenant handling the sponge-staff and the sergeant firing, the single surviving gun answered the enemy.
Gunners ran past Jackson toward the rear, and many infantrymen joined the retreat. Jackson tried in vain to halt them. He strutted in the open, shouting, “This is nothing, men! Come on. They can’t hurt me. You can stand it!” The men fled on to the rear.
A messenger came up. Jackson was to pull off his gun, if possible, and come to the rear. Jackson refused to obey the order. Magruder appeared and Jackson turned on him in blazing anger. Give him fifty men, he shouted, and he could hold the position. He argued that it was more dangerous to withdraw, as General Worth had ordered, than to push ahead. Magruder agreed.
A fresh brigade came and Jackson swung a second gun into position. The combined fire began to tell and the charging brigade found an opening in the entrenchments above. One breastwork fell, and then another, and advancing parties chased Mexicans upward with ladders, from post to post, until the citadel was taken. This unprecedented battle spectacle did not end it, for the majority of the Mexican forces had fled and were now caught in the slow eddies of thronging humanity in the streets and causeways of Mexico City. Dashing American artillery pieces found good hunting in the packed masses. Jackson ranged well out in front.
The lieutenant had hitched his guns to wagon limbers and run into the center of the city, blasting the retreating peons. Magruder followed closely, with ammunition in his flying caissons. The two argued: Magruder, the army’s noted daredevil, seeking to prevent Jackson from pushing too far in advance of the army, lest he be cut off. This singular discussion was overheard by two young officers, both South Carolinians: D. H. Hill, already known to Jackson; and Barnard E. Bee. The Jackson-Magruder incident was one of the final actions of the war.
The praise which official reports heaped upon him must have contented even Jackson. His name appeared twice in Scott’s report. General Worth wrote: “… The gallant Lieutenant Jackson, who, although he had lost most of his horses and many of his men, continued chivalrously at his post, combating with noble courage.” General Pillow wrote: “… His brave lieutenant, Jackson, in the face of a galling fire from the enemy’s entrenched positions, did valuable service …”
Magruder gave his lieutenant full credit: “I beg leave to call the attention of the major-general commanding to the conduct of Lieutenant Jackson of the First Artillery. If devotion, industry, talent and gallantry are the highest qualities of a soldier, then he is entitled to the distinction which their profession confers.”
That was enough for the commander. Jackson got his rank as a major for gallantry at Chapultepec. There was scarcely a hint of modesty in Jackson’s reaction, when friends crowded about with congratulations.
Did he feel no trepidation, they asked, when other men were falling all around him?
Not at all. His only fear, Jackson earnestly confessed, was that he would not be able to get into enough of the dangerous action to draw the attention of superior officers, so that he might not be able to make his conduct under fire as notable as he would like!
He gave no further sign that he was pleased with himself, but he appeared as a remarkably single-minded young man who, having won renown on the field, was disposed to accept honors with gravity. He had passed his test as a good soldier, but there was in him none of the detachment with which Ewell, for example, looked upon the war. To Ewell the affair with the Mexicans, bloody though it was, had about it the air of comic opera. Jackson saw only the beckoning of glory.
Jackson did not stop even with complaining of the lack of opportunity under fire. He expounded the beauties of battle to his friends. It was always exalting to him, he said. Something happened to him in the gun smoke. He could not express it with precision, but: “I seem to have a more perfect command of my faculties, in the midst of fighting.”
Jackson remained in Mexico until the following spring, furthering his education in assorted matters. He had fought his last battle of youth. Fourteen years of peace lay ahead of him.
Mexico had not only whetted his appetite for glory. There were stern lessons in supply and strategy and the pinch of privation, and in the very essence of victory in battle—mobility. He also broadened his acquaintance with the military aristocracy of the nation, such as it was to be in the coming years of neglect. In addition to Lee and the distinguished young men of Scott’s staff, there were future Confederate generals on every hand: Ewell and Jubal Early, A. P. Hill and D. H. Hill, Joseph E. Johnston, Huger. There were also embryo Federal commanders: Grant, Hooker, McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Shields.
There were no letters about such companions. Instead, Jackson learned to dance, and became acquainted with some Mexican women. There are faint hues of a colorful season in letters to Laura:
As I believe that this country is destined to be reformed by ours, I think that probably I shall spend many years here and may possibly conclude (though I have not yet) to make my life more natural by sharing it with some amiable Senorita.…
And:
Do not allow my words about marrying in Mexico to disturb you. I have sometimes thought of staying here, and again of going home. I have no tie in this country equal to you.… My pay while with Captain Magruder was one hundred and four dollars per month, and I expect it will soon be the same here; but at present it is only about ninety; yet I have plenty of money.… I dress as a gentleman should who wishes to be received as such. I do not gamble, nor spend my money, as I think, foolishly.…
The morning hours I occupy in studies and business, and generally taking a walk after dinner, and sometimes a ride on the Paseo or elsewhere in the evening.
The Paseo is a wide road on the southwest of the city and about half a mile in length, with a beautiful fountain in the centre, and is a place of fashionable resort. Families of wealth appear there in their carriages at sunset, partly if not entirely for show.… I purpose on riding … this evening hoping to see something there more attractive than at home.
When not on duty I generally pay a visit after supper or tea. Among those families which I visit are some of the first in the republic, as Don Lucas Alleman, Martinez del Rio.…
The book I am now studying is Lord Chesterfield’s letters to his son translated into Spanish; so that whilst I am obtaining his thoughts, I am also acquiring a knowledge of the Spanish tongue.… Subsequent to this I shall study Shakespeare’s works, which I purchased a few days since.…
There was less reserve here than in any letter Jackson wrote concerning the women of his life, and yet there was not enough to convince Laura or other readers that he was involved with a Mexican woman. He was to say much less, in his coy fashion, when it came to announcement of his actual marriage; but of the Mexican romance there remains only conjecture, based on the mild hint. Whatever the fact, some deep experience impressed him in this period, and its impact seems to speak from his letters.
In these pages to Laura, he, for the last time, gave an unstudied and natural image of himself in relations with women. The opposite sex was, for him, shortly to be merged in the powerful whirlpool of God-ambition-war-sacrifice, which appeared to grow within him.
Jackson studied in these months, but even so, thought, “I pass my time more agreeably than the greater portion of the officers,” because of his Mexican friendships. He reported to Laura that his health was good. He read Humboldt’s history of Mexico when the rainy season interrupted his schedule of social calls. He suggested to Laura that the American army was destroying the superstitious nature of the natives, except in one respect: “The natives still, with uncovered heads, drop on their knees at the approach of the Archbishop’s carriage, which is recognized by its being drawn by two spotted mules.”
Jackson was strongly attracted to the colorful figure of the clergyman. In a manner he did not explain, he became friendly with a number of priests in Mexico City, and probably tried to improve his Spanish among them. He was on such terms with these men that he spent some time in their quarters. He was as deeply impressed by the luxury of their lives as he had been by the obeisance of the church’s worshipers, and wrote in obvious awe of the servants who waited upon the priests, and the rich foods of their table.
Through these friends he got an audience with the archbishop, to investigate the Catholic Church for himself; but though he saw the cleric several times, their talks passed without written record. For some reason, Jackson seemed to find the church lacking in appeal. He may—or may not—have been impelled to investigate the church by the prospect of marrying in Mexico.
He was now abruptly transferred back to the United States, and the impression left upon him by the months in Mexico was to be revealed only in the most casual and widely separated references. Beyond the use of Spanish terms of endearment to his future wife, the Mexican life seemed not to endure.
The army had ordered Jackson to a vastly different scene: a dull artillery post on Long Island, Fort Hamilton. He gave every indication that he had forgotten his experiences in the south. There remained from that war only the uniform.
Jackson’s concern with religion grew. At Fort Hamilton, his commanding officer was Colonel Frank Taylor, a devout churchman who had been his superior in the First Artillery during the war. Taylor led Jackson into baptism.
Major Jackson had frequent talks with the colonel over his religious status. It seemed to trouble him that he could not ascertain whether he had been baptized as an infant. He went to a near-by chapel—it happened to have been Episcopal—and was baptized. He was careful to specify that the act merely welcomed him into the Christian fold, without binding him to become a member of any particular sect.
The Major settled into a new routine. He went on a long tour of court-martial duty: Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania; Fort Ontario, New York; West Point. He vacationed for a few days in upper New York State, to take a water cure. This was the first of a series of visits to hydropathic establishments, which he thought improved his health. He was forever writing Laura of his infirmities. Once his eyes failed for a few days, and light in his face was so painful that he was forced to mask even his mirror.
Jackson’s doctor introduced him to a Spartan diet of stale bread and unseasoned meat, and the soldier wrote as if he gloried in this addition to his rigid code of self-denial: “The other evening I tasted a piece of bread with butter on it, and then the bread without it, and rather gave my preference to the unbuttered bread; and hence I may never taste any more of this once much relished seasoning.”
He offered domineering advice to Laura on diet: “The yolk of one or two eggs—the white is hardly worth the eating as it requires digestion and affords but little nutrition. For dinner the same kind of bread and meat, one vegetable only, say peas, beans, or this year’s potatoes, and for drink, plain water.”
He warned her in a command which may have revealed more than he intended: “Taste nothing of which you are fond—except such things as I have mentioned. If you commence on this diet, remember that it is like a man joining the temperance society; if he afterwards tastes liquor he is gone.”
Jackson seemed admirably suited by temperament to the new field of dieting. He confessed, honestly enough, that his various ailments could probably be traced to dyspepsia. His health improved. His weight rose from 133 to 166 pounds, and after two years at Fort Hamilton he was heavier than he had ever been. He sounded almost boastful: “My muscles have become quite solid. My exercises are of a violent character, when the chilblains on my feet do not prevent it.”
Near the end of his stay at this post, he wrote to Laura in words which made the course of his religious development unmistakable:
“Yes, my dear sister, rather than wilfully violate the known will of God, I would forfeit my life; it may seem strange to you, yet nevertheless such a resolution I have taken, and I will by it abide. My daily prayers are for your salvation.”
He was now, as abruptly as before, transferred to a new post—this time southward, to Fort Meade, Florida, where he was to spend brief and unhappy months, complaining that his scouting expeditions brought him no contact with the hostile Indians. He wrote more often of his religion and of war:
My opinion is that every one should honestly and carefully investigate the Bible, and then if he can believe it to be the word of God, to follow its teachings.… It is doubtful whether I shall ever relinquish the military profession, as I am very partial to it.
He wrote fondly of the Florida landscape and its vast stretches of pineland wilderness, with rides of “more than one hundred miles without seeing a house.” Then, without warning, in the midst of recounting to Laura the high cost of groceries on the army post, he mentioned a letter he had received from the superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute, advising him of a vacancy on the staff, the chair of Natural and Experimental Philosophy. He had expressed interest, he said, but there was formidable competition: George B. McClellan, W. S. Rosecrans, and G. W. Smith, all comrades of Mexico. With this affair in the wind, Jackson revealed a new facet: “Philosophy is my favorite subject,” he wrote.
In Lexington, Virginia, while Jackson waited and fought Florida fevers, his acquaintance, D. H. Hill, who now taught mathematics at Washington College in the little Virginia town, was telling the people of the Institute of Jackson’s talents. He couldn’t be sure about the philosophy, but Jackson was a crack gunner who behaved as if he had invented artillery. Not only had he shone in Mexico, but had been a determined cadet at West Point, who, if the term had been a year longer, would likely have led his class.
On March 28, 1851, Jackson was appointed: “Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy—and Artillery Tactics.” He made a miraculous recovery from his fevers and packed for home. He wrote Laura:
“I expect to leave for home next week … my health is better than it has been for years, except my eyes, which are still weak.”