Military Term Paper - General Thomas Jonathan Jackson

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Thomas Jonathan Jackson was born January 21, 1824, in Clarksburg, Virginia. His parents died while he was still a child, and his uncle at Jackson’s Mill, in Western Virginia looked after him. In June 1842, at the age of eighteen he was selected at West Point. He graduated in 1846, and received the brevet rank of second lieutenant. At the beginning of the Mexican war, he was ordered to report for duty with the First Regular Artillery. He functioned in General Winfield Scott’s army in its campaign from Vera Cruz to Mexico City. Jackson participated in the attack of Chapultepec.

His religious character started to develop at that time, and he started to study the Bible thus joined the Presbyterian Church in 1851. This religious attachment was to become a major part of the Jackson’s character in years to come. Jackson was personally portrayed as unconventional, demanding, religious, and devoted to his family.

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Jackson was not a religious man when he came to Lexington. His uncle, Mr. Alfred Neal of Parkersburg, West Virginia Jackson had never been under serious imitation as boy or youth, but had always been eminent for great tenderness of conscience, and for a scrupulous discharge of what he thought to be duty. In Mexico, he was noted for his authenticity as a company officer, his strict observance with orders in his own person, and his inflexible notions of discipline. Nevertheless, he had no meticulous regard for religion, and was even the bearer of a challenge from Captain Magruder to General Pierce. Soon after the Mexican war, he brought charges of a depraved act against his commanding officer. The wife of this officer was a most attractive lady, and a great favorite throughout the army. If the crime charged against her husband were confirmed, her peace of mind would be gone forever. An officer, who later became chief of staff to General Bragg, went to Jackson to get him to withdraw the charges, lest the wife should learn of her husband's disloyalty. Jackson shed tears, and said that the thought of wreak pain upon her was agony to him, but his ethics compelled him to prosecute the case.

Jackson had been baptized in the Episcopal Church, but not inveterate. His leanings, however, were toward that church. Its brevity and fullness the Assembly's "Shorter Catechism." impressed him very much. He agreed with everything except destiny and infant baptism. His scruples about the latter did not last very long. In the last years of his life, he was viewed as a fatalist; but his revulsion to predestination was long and gritty.

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John B. Lyle of Lexington, was active in first arousing a religious interest in Jackson's mind. However, even after he had become an earnest Christian, and hoped to connect himself with the church, he had no special fondness for Presbyterianism. This was firm by a potent influence, comatose, to himself.
He died on May 10, 1863 from a shot unintentionally fired by one of his own soldiers. Shortly before his death, General "Stonewall" Jackson had given a great victory to the outnumbered Confederate Army of Northern Virginia at Chancellorsville. He had made a contiguous maneuver around the Union Army and had fruitfully attacked them from the rear.

 

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