Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/160

156 And then this impartial and accurate historian crowns his just tribute to Jackson as a military chieftain with the following splendid eulogy upon him as a man:

"'And yet, so upright was his life, so profound his faith, so exquisite his tenderness, that Jackson's many victories are almost his least claim to be ranked among the world's true heroes.'"

An affirmative answer to any question as to Jackson's supreme ability as a commander of armies must be deduced from the tremendous facts thus forcibly grouped by Colonel Henderson.

A similar conclusion would be inferred from a significant statement made by another distinguished and impartial military critic, Lieutenant-General Richard Taylor, who, in a paper upon "Stonewall Jackson and the Valley Campaign of 1862" published in the North American Review in 1878, says: "'What limit to set to his ability I know not, for he was ever superior to occasion.'"

Again and again in his military career, notably in his Valley Campaign, in the campaign and battles of Second Manassas, in the campaign and battle of Sharpsburg, and in the campaign and battle of Chancellorsville, he exhibited a personal and physical prowess which was never surpassed by any of the great captains and born leaders of men in all the campaigns and battles of history. Not by Napoleon, nor Cromwell, nor Gustavus Adolphus, nor yet by Caesar, nor indeed by Hannibal, nor even by Alexander, the Great Macedonian, whose physical and personal prowess, surpassing the courage of ordinary mortals, have been the marvel of mankind through more than twenty-two centuries.

It is difficult to compare Jackson with the other great captains of history, for he was so different from most of them. The equal of any in moral and physical courage, he was vastly