TOM GAVE HIMSELF THE MIDDLE NAME JONATHAN, IN HONOR of his father, when he arrived at West Point in the summer of 1842. His parents had given him no middle name. Now that he was set on a course of restoring the family honor of which his father was a part, Tom felt it right and proper to attach his sire's memory to that quest, since Jonathan Jackson had contributed all he could to it. Jonathan's failures were to be pitied, not derided. Therefore, Tom would carry his father's name forward with his own.

The efforts of two other Jonathans loomed larger in Tom's admission to the United States Military Academy, however. Those and the decision of another young western Virginian, the original academy congressional selection from Tom's district. That man, after spending several weeks at the institution in the late summer and early fall, decided its rigors were not for him and departed back to the Old Dominion.

At that point, a pair of talented young Virginia attorneys swung into action on Tom's behalf. Jonathan Bennett, a family friend of the Jacksons and Neales, and John Carlisle, a distant cousin of Tom's, asserted their budding influence in the political realm on their young friend's behalf. The fact that both these rising stars, in their midtwenties, proved such strong advocates for Tom strengthened his resolve that West Point was the correct course for him to take. Western Virginia congressman Samuel Hays recommended Tom for the appointment due largely to his respect for the work and word of Bennett and Carlisle.

It would not be the last time the winsome Bennett and the sturdy Carlisle would serve as Tom's emissaries.

The ascendency of the Jackson family name was not what impressed the small gathering of plebes that eyed the western Virginia mountaineer the first time he clomped through the doorway to the south barracks of the United States Military Academy. What a sight to behold for erudite young men such as George McClellan, George Pickett, Jesse Reno, and Dabney Maury, the latter three of them Virginians. Plain homespun clothing, massive brogans, a ridiculous wagoner's hat, and grimy saddlebags, slung over his shoulder—such fare did not grace their rarefied haunts.

Nor did it grab the fancy of Ambrose Powell Hill, who was of Culpeper County, but who coveted the Virginia society of Richmond and the Tidewater. To A. P. Hill, Jackson represented precisely that Virginian from which he wished to move as far away as possible, as quickly as possible. Jackson was not of the Virginia to which Hill aspired. Stay away and don't get painted with the same brush as that buffoon, Hill thought to himself as he and his unaffected young mates snickered at the passing hayseed.

“Here comes your fellow Virginian, Hill,” the brilliant, diminutive, fifteen-year-old McClellan cackled.

No! Immediately connected with that fool, Hill thought, wincing. Just what I don't wish. Must move away, stay away, brush his kind away like lice.

“Don't blush, Hill,” McClellan smiled. “If that unfortunate bumpkin lasts through the semester it will be a feat to rival any in the storied history of our beloved institution.”

Tom strode, head down, past the group, which was now laughing out loud. His only salutation was a slight nod. After he passed, Pickett gave the group a slight nod of his own, then bowed out his legs, gave another nod, stooped over, nodded again, and marched a couple of mimicking steps after Tom, nodding—slightly—all the while. He grabbed a sack from the somber Hill and slung it over his shoulder.

“Why, I got all my earthly belongings in here, Hill,” Pickett winked. “Just brung 'em up from the farm, don't you know!”

Several in the growing cluster of cadets began imitating Pickett. The whole area soon looked and sounded like a flock of clucking, quacking geese (for that was Tom's assigned persona), with necks stretched, heads nodding—slightly—and everyone grasping for something to pitch over their shoulders.

“What's going on over there?” a barrel-chested upper-class Ohioan inquired of a passing comrade as he stared from the other end of the hall at the animated commotion.

“I think they're welcoming that new fellow, Jackson, who just came in from the mountains out in western Virginia,” came the reply. “He's supposedly quite the oaf.”

The Ohioan's eyes narrowed. “They had best be circumspect. An oaf who has made it to this place—and two months late at that—from the mountains of western Virginia may be heard from.”

The other man nodded. As he walked off, though, he thought to himself, Ulysses “Sam” Grant is a good man, but he takes the oddest views on some things.

“I got me some books in these here bags,” Reno laughed with a thick backwoods inflection as the mockery continued, “but I don't know how to read 'em.”

“I got me some lard in mine,” McClellan retorted.

“Me, I ain't got nothin' in mine,” Pickett said with a straight—nodding—face. “They's jest fer show.”

“I don't know, Mac,” Maury said, slowing to a flapping squat, a smile still painted on his face. “That fellow looks as though he intends to stay.”

“Pickett, I will grant you,” McClellan said, “that I have never seen a man with such big feet move so fast!”

At this, the entire group exploded into raucous, hooting laughter. All except for Virginian A. P. Hill. He was not laughing at all, and he stood quite still.

Tom knew he would not be the most prepared of cadets entering West Point with the class of 1846. He started a third of a semester behind everyone else and missed out on the rigorous summer training program on the plains outside the campus—and the introductions and bonding that accompanied it—as well as the first several weeks of the academic semester.

The real problem, however, lay in the spartan academic background the young Virginian brought with him to the institution. The fascinating thing was, despite his patchwork education, he had taught other youngsters for nine months in a one-room western Virginia schoolhouse. None of this came close to preparing him for what lay in store his first year at West Point.

While McClellan breezed to good grades and a satisfying, if demanding, freshman experience, Pickett breezed to bad marks, and Hill breezed to middling ones—and, initially at least, poor conduct—Tom Jackson fought for his academic life, in the classroom and out. And the other cadets knew it. Some felt for him; others did not care; and a few made sport of the lanky, taciturn youngster whose awkward and abrasive unsociability masked shyness and complete social ignorance.

The latter group of cadets found daily entertainment in watching Tom's classroom performance. His inept, though dogged, attempts at the chalkboard became proverbial around the campus, and word of them spread beyond the plains of the Hudson.

With autumn chill washing the trees into a cornucopia of brilliant hues, Tom stood before his mates yet again one bright day, his uniform covered in chalk dust and his face beaded with hot perspiration.

George McClellan, now sixteen and seated near the front of the class, did not dislike the earnest, guileless Jackson. He just had difficulty comprehending how so ungainly and ill-prepared a hillbilly could qualify for the academy, or would even wish to subject himself to such continual humiliation.

Dislike was perhaps not the best word to describe the feelings of A. P. Hill, seated in the middle of the room, toward Jackson, either. Disdain and disregard would both have been preferable. Hill did despise the obsessive way in which Jackson seemed to conduct all his affairs, whether academic, martial, or personal. Of course, Hill thought to himself, were I as lacking as he, I might act in a like desperate manner.

“Psst … Reno,” McClellan whispered across the aisle.

Reno, his eyes glazed over, turned to see McClellan grin toward Jackson.

Up front, the Virginian's trembling hand pressed the chalk against the board with such force that snowy white flecks of it fluttered downward. He grimaced in pain for an answer that would not seem to come, as though trying to expunge a hideous evil from his constitution. Or a lost family name.

The instructor, seated at his desk, noticed a drop of Jackson's sweat pat against the hardwood floor. The man glanced at his timepiece. Titters skipped through the class. The instructor looked back toward Tom, who maintained his earnest comportment. Then, the solemn youth inadvertently screeched the chalk across the board. A couple of cadets laughed out loud. A. P. Hill was embarrassed for himself. The instructor was embarrassed for Tom.

The lights went out each night at 10:15 for all cadets except one. That young man, eyes tired and bloodshot, would sit bolt upright on the wood floor in his small dormitory room. Sometimes Tom Jackson would extend his left arm straight up in the air. He did this because, in addition to the rheumatism, digestive problems, and hearing and vision difficulties he felt had worsened since his matriculation to West Point, his mind had grown increasingly certain that one side of his body was heavier than the other. By launching an arm upward, he could temporarily direct the blood flow of his body to provide a corrective for at least this problem.

Tom's nightly cerebral ceremony in no way aided the vision difficulty, the dim light of a coal-burning heater providing the only illumination in the room. The youth knew this, but he believed much must sometimes be sacrificed to achieve a greater good.

One frigid black midwinter night the young Virginian sat in his customary spot on the chilled floor. Near him lay a sheet of paper with a few lines of handwriting. He picked it up and read.

20 January 1843

My dearest little sister Laura, I trust this correspondence finds you well from your recurrent ills. I must confess that I am almost homesick, and expect to continue so until I can have a view of my native mountains. I intend to remain in the army no longer than I can get rid of it with honor, and commence some professional business at home.

Tom grimaced in pain and grabbed his stomach. He reached for a compact metal kit on a nearby shelf. He opened it and pulled out several small bottles of medicine, took a slug from each, sighed, and returned the bottles to the kit.

Across the room, his slumbering roommate bellowed out a booming, bull moose snore. Tom turned toward where the cadet lay on his mattress, on the floor. Then the weary youth gazed at his own, empty, sleeping spot. A few minutes, just a few, and then I could go a couple of more hours. He yawned and stretched.

Now the words came back to him, as they often did this time of night, when it seemed so cold, so dark, so—hopeless. When it seemed as though the glances and snickers and forced friendliness were all merited. When it seemed as though maybe he should be back at the mill, swapping lies and slugs of corn mash and passing the years good-for-nothing.

You may be whatever you resolve to be.

She was with him, always, leading him. She had tried. She knew the name needed a champion. And she somehow knew he would be the one to champion it. He would carry her honor forward with him; and when the name was restored, he would dedicate it to her enduring memory. For she had given him everything.

He finished near the bottom in nearly all his classes that first year. Young George McClellan finished first in most of them, and first overall. But those few who stayed close around Tom began to see something beyond a homespun hayseed. He was not fancy; he was not fun. But they saw roots and still waters that ran deep. They saw a comrade who, when he was able to come up for air from his woeful academic struggles long enough to breathe, possessed an amazing concern and tenderness for their needs, an almost feminine sense of nurturing. Nearly everyone who knew him came to respect and admire the rough-hewn mountaineer.

Pickett and Reno entered Tom's room one evening when he was out. They intended to play one of their frequent pranks on him. This particular occasion, they planned to replace his underwear with some especially frilly female undergarments procured from a certain women's institution a few miles up the Hudson River. The pranksters were caught up short upon seeing a Bible verse written on a faded sheet of paper next to Tom's chest of drawers. It read, “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.”

“Since when did Tom Hick Jackson go getting religious?” Reno asked in surprise. Tom attended prescribed services and chapels, but little else of a religious nature.

“I don't know. He did bring blankets, soup, and medicine to Stoneman when he was sick,” Pickett said.

“No fooling? I thought Stoneman played Tom Hick for the fool.”

“He did. Before he got sick.”

The two pranksters left Tom's room, female undergarments still in hand.

The second year, “Tom Hick” finished thirtieth in his class. The third, twentieth. The fourth, seventeenth. George Pickett finished last that year. Last was superior, however, to the status of A. P. Hill, who had contracted a severe case of venereal disease during a summer sojourn in New York City two years before, nearly died, and was forced to graduate with the class of 1847.

“My heavens,” Reno said to McClellan as they prepared to depart from the academy, “if we had had one more year, Mac, Jackson would have finished ahead of you.”

That, and Providence, had gone and arranged a war down in Mexico just for Thomas Jonathan Jackson—the man and the name.