Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/163

Rh and more fully narrated by Colonel Henderson, his greatest biographer, without being impressed with two facts in reference to his mental characteristics:

First, that his intellectual development and growth were steady, gradual, and persistent from his youth onwards, and were very marked during the last years of his life, and particularly after he entered upon his service in the War between the States. Both the extent and the ratio of his mental growth were apparently greatly accelerated during those two years of incessant occupation and great responsibility.

Like Cromwell, and other men whose marvelous abilities have been first shown after they had reached the prime of manhood, Jackson seems, until the occasion for their exhibition arose, slow in manifesting some of the extraordinary talents with which he was endowed, chiefly, doubtless, because the occasion for their display had not sooner arisen. One thing is certain, namely, that in the last two crowded years of his life he manifested a wonderful vigor, capacity, and quickness of intellect, of the existence of which few, if any, of his acquaintances had any conception before his entrance upon that war. With some, the circumstance that some of these powers were not exhibited by him in equal measure during his previous career has been taken as evidence that they never existed. But the proof that he was, in 1861, 1862, and 1863, a man of extraordinary ability and of unquestioned genius are overwhelming.

Second: Another well-authenticated fact in reference to his mental phenomena, is, that his mind acted with greatly increased rapidity, activity, and power upon the battlefield. When confronted with great danger and charged with the great responsibility of directing the movements of troops under fire, he seemed to be given an almost supernal ken; his mind, under the stimulus of the excitement and peril of the conflict, apparently acted with calmness and coolness, and yet with the celerity of lightning- and the certainty and precision of a rifle ball driven straight to its mark.

It was not so much that his warrior spirit, his gaudiam certaminis, under such conditions transformed the ordinarily