Stonewall Jackson

After a difficult childhood in present-day West Virginia, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson attended West Point before serving in the Mexican-American War, earning an early reputation for bravery and toughness in battle, not to mention the rank of brevet major by war’s end in 1848.

Professor Stonewall Jackson

Three years later, Jackson resigned his commission to accept a professorship at the Virginia Military Institute, where he taught artillery tactics and physics for the next ten years, and while he preferred that his beloved Virginia would remain with the Union, when Virginia seceded in 1861, Jackson joined the Confederate Army before being promoted to brigadier general under General Joseph E. Johnston.

During his participation in the First Battle of Bull Run, Jackson earned his nickname when he rushed his troops to the front line to repel a determined Union attack, prompting a fellow general to say, “Look, men, Jackson’s standing like a stone wall!”

Spearheading the Shenandoah Valley Campaign in the spring of 1862, Jackson established himself as a strategic and victorious commander, repeatedly outmaneuvering his 15,000-man army against a superior Union force of more than 60,000, preventing the Union Army from capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond, at the same time earning the admiration of top Union generals by the campaign’s end in June.

That same month, Jackson joined Robert E. Lee’s army, where his highly publicized performance at the Second Battle of Bull Run, the battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg and the Battle of Chancellorsville, elevated Jackson to legendary status among Confederate soldiers and Southern civilians alike.

Battle of Chancellorsville

During the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, Lee and Jackson engineered their most famous victory, when they devised and executed a plan to rout Union General Joseph Hooker’s 130,000-man army against Jackson and Lee’s considerably smaller 60,000-man force. While Lee engaged in diversionary attacks on Hooker’s front line, on May the 2nd, Jackson moved his 28,000-man force on a 15-mile march against Hooker’s exposed flank, inflicting massive casualties against the Union Army, which forced Hooker to stand down several days later.

Breaking off his attack at sunset, Jackson joined some of his men on a scouting party through a dense forest, where a regiment from North Carolina mistook them for Union cavalry. Shot through his shoulder, surgeons amputated his left arm, and while Jackson appeared to be recovering at first, he passed away from pneumonia on May the 10th, 1863—at just 39 years of age—making Stonewall Jackson, one of the most impactful generals of the American Civil War.