Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 38.djvu/301

Rh while protecting his left flank with a small force, have carried consternation into the ranks of the enemy in front. General Lee was pressing up from the south and east to touch elbows with Jackson's right flank, and the energy of those men would have infused itself into every man in the Southern army, while Hooker, bewildered and utterly in the dark as to what was best to be done, would inevitably have sought to extricate his army by as orderly a retreat as possible in this dark wilderness, on a dark night, with an unfordable river on one side and Lee and Jackson with their exultant army on the other. One cannot help believing that destruction or surrender at discretion would have been Hooker's hard alternative before midnight. Jackson had a longing for a midnight tight. At Fredericksburg he hardly restrained himself. At Chancellorsville his impetuosity was at its maximum when he was unhorsed by a ball from his own men.

It is a discouraging task to look for faults in Colonel Henderson's book. It is discouraging even to attempt to add anything to his charming and noble work. We should greatly like to know the opinion entertained of General Jackson by officers of the German, Russian or French army after they have examined Colonel Henderson's faithful picture of him. The American soldier educated to war in a country with the topography of Virginia, in its valleys, and wildernesses and swamps, must admit that Jackson waged his battle with perfection, and that for the special duties which devolved upon him his equal could not have been found. But we should like to know how the strictly neutral foreign soldier will regard the man who has drawn from Colonel Henderson so enviable a biography. If Colonel Henderson could realize with what pride the soldiers of Jackson have treasured up the memory of their service under him, with what absorbing pleasure, as they turn the leaves of his work, they see themselves again in a triumphant whirl, he would feel that at least he has been rewarded by the gratitude of the fast thinning ranks of the soldiers of Stonewall Jackson.