Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 38.djvu/287

Rh The thrilling effect of those words is felt by the writer to this day. They touched the heart of every boy who heard them, and men now gray will tell of the enthusiastic cheers which drowned all further speeches. Jackson had taken his step towards immortality.

And now we have some faint idea of the man whose wonderful career seems to have fascinated Colonel Henderson.

We have dwelt somewhat at length upon this period of General Jackson's life, because we think if Colonel' Henderson's treatment of his subject is lacking at all, it is in not picturing with quite enough vividness the contrast between the man of 1860 and the man of 1863. Fate was so gradually but so surely enveloping him in darkness; his life was so like the dull flint until opportunity struck the spark, that the marvel of his genius, so nearly buried, becomes the more brilliant when we realize the bound he made from the school teacher to the greatest figure produced in the Civil War, General Lee in some respects excepted. But of General Lee much was expected, and much was realized. His life for years before 1861, military and social, had been so different from Jackson's; he was so widely known; his family had for so long a time held so high a place in the history of the developing country, that his immediate accession to high rank in the Southern army and his splendid abilities as a soldier, were regarded as matters of course. But with General Jackson the case was very different. At one time the army in front of Fredericksburg was under his command, General Lee being in Richmond or sick, and General Longstreet being south of Richmond towards Suffolk. The writer recalls the trace of uneasiness that manifested itself among the men at that time, and this even after the splendid exhibition of ability General Jackson had shown in the campaign of 1862. And so it happened that the great peculiarity of General Jackson's case as a soldier was the almost unexpected and sudden development of his surpassing genius for just the kind of warfare it fell to his lot to wage.

When Colonel Henderson speaks of the untiring energy of the man, the writer is reminded vividly of a scene he witnessed on what was known as the "Bath" or "Romney" expedition in January, 1862. About dusk on the day preceding