Viewing page 2 of 6

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:06:10]
{SPEAKER name="David C. Ward"}
Um, he was a dogged, persistent, kind of, straight-ahead guy and I'm reminded, there's this great story about U.S. Grant.

[00:06:22]
His near contemporary at West Point, who again led this kind of difficult, checkered, indifferent life, and as somebody said of Grant

[00:06:30]
that he remind- he always looks to me that the expression on his face is that he's about to just set his jaw and run through a stone wall or a brick wall or

[00:06:39]
in that case, no pun intended. But that same characteristic of Grant and Jackson, people who really weren't sure how their lives were gonna turn out.

[00:06:48]
But were gonna try and do the best they could just to succeed. And Jackson, and this is the curious element with him,

[00:06:56]
He succeeds at war, and it's a hard thing to say. We like to think of ourselves as a peace loving country, peace loving people, where war

[00:07:04]
is a last resort, and Robert E. Lee, of course, in many ways epitomizes that as the reluctant, skillful, genius, but a reluctant warrior. Jackson is

[00:07:13]
mustered out as a second lieutenant, he goes to the war. The War in Mexico had broken out, he goes to Mexico and he thrives.

[00:07:20]
There is somebody who in many ways he comes alive on the battlefield. And he rises, by he- by the end of the Mexican war he's a breveted

[00:07:29]
major, he makes the biggest leap in terms of rank of anybody in the US Army. And not only does he succeed because he's in the Army

[00:07:39]
he succeeds because he's a fighter, he's a killer. He earns- he earns Winthrop Scotts personal acclimation. At one point he under heavy fire on a road outside

[00:07:44]
of Chapultepec and he, Jackson, refuses- he disobeys an order to withdraw, unlimbers his cannon, essentially uses them as large shotguns

[00:08:02]
and chases the Mexican Army down the road, loading up his two twin cannons. He had trained as an artillery man at West Point

[00:08:12]
and chases with this, under heavy fire, and wins the admiration and the day. After that, what do you do? The peacetime army whatever

[00:08:26]
was going on sectionally, in terms of the division between north and south, you're in what's now called the Old Army.

[00:08:31]
You have an engineering background, Jackson's kind of kicked around a couple of camps in Florida and New York, and here he reveals another

[00:08:40]
aspect of his character, in addition to being very dogged and persistent, he had an incredible sense of self. Which again I suggest contributes

[00:08:48]
to his ability as a warrior. And to be blunt about it, like your next-door neighbor who's always suing you, Andrew- Stonewall- Thomas

[00:08:56]
Jackson has difficulty with virtually every commander and a great many of his subordinates. He's always putting people on charges,

[00:09:03]
he's always quarreling with them, he believes that he is right, he has a whole series of disputes, he's fractious, he's having-

[00:09:11]
has trouble adjusting to other people's authority. Again this notion of push and pull between the structure of the military,

[00:09:18]
and his own ambitions, and his own sense of his self-worth, which is highly developed. What happens to him, fortunately, probably,

[00:09:26]
'cause he's involved in a really nasty court martial, joint court-martial, disciplinary case with his officers, his particular bête noire

[00:09:34]
he gets offered the job of optics and physics at VMI, essentially natural sciences which encompass just about everything,

[00:09:43]
and he resigns from the army and spends the next year at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, at which he is

[00:09:49]
by all odds the worst teacher in the history of probably the English-speaking world. He's a horrendous teacher, and it's

[00:09:55]
even been, again, this sense of uncommunicativeness, the inability to be flexible, to lead through, y'know,

[00:10:04]
good graces, all the nineteenth century attributes he was supposed to have. This doggedness, and it's- because again we know

[00:10:12]
what happened to him, he becomes a martyr to the South, he's probably one of the greatest, or is one of the greatest combat

[00:10:18]
generals in American history, and so you can kind of, you see how it all turns out, and it turns out okay

[00:10:25]
and it's kind of amusing that his students used to throw spitballs at him, or one of them had a water pistol and would frequently sneak behind

[00:10:32]
outside the classroom and shoot him in the back with a water pistol. But when he was running an artillery exercise, they would-

[00:10:41]
the students would unloosen the wheels, so Jackson would order the artillery case on a fly across the plane and the wheels would go flying off

[00:10:47]
and Jackson would go, because he was totally humorless, would look at this and go, "Well how did that happen?"

[00:10:52]
and set about doing it. But he apparently was, legitimately, an awful teacher. There's no sugar coating it.

[00:10:59]
At one point alumni and staff are thinking about firing him, but they don't, and he again perseveres. He's considered kind of

[00:11:10]
a fool, I mean, I think most of us have been at educational institutions where you, there's one professor who's just sort of

[00:11:16]
out of it, and Jackson seems to be that guy. And again though, he perseveres at it. What he does during these years, that's

[00:11:25]
also interesting, in terms of his doggedness, is that he gets religion. Whatever's important to him whatever was missing

[00:11:32]
in his life, the absence of family, he went through an incredible lengthy search for a religious home. When he's in Mexico he has discussions with a priest about

[00:11:42]
becoming Catholic, joining the Catholic church. And he actually I think he went to some catechism classes, but in the middle

[00:11:49]
40s he becomes a Presbyterian, he's essentially born again as part of the second great awakening, the aftermath of that

[00:11:56]
and he becomes incredibly devout, literally to the point that he would not pen a letter, he would not mail a letter if he though

[00:12:03]
that the mail, the letter would be in the mail on Sunday. That he, the mail, his representation would be traveling on Sunday, he

[00:12:12]
again, tried to keep the Sabbath. He was reluctant, he didn't like fighting on Sunday, or marching on Sunday but he would.

[00:12:21]
But this notion again, in America, this sense that I think we've lost that America is a place of isolation, of distance, of great hardship

[00:12:28]
being literally and figuratively, and emotionally saved by his devout religious life. He marries, once he finally does talk to a woman,

[00:12:39]
falls in love with a Presbyterian minister's daughter, and again, being Thomas Jonathan Jackson, what happens, she dies in childbirth

[00:12:48]
with a stillborn child. He remarries within 3 years again, to another Presbyterian minister's daughter, that marriage is lasting and they have a daughter.

[00:13:00]
So, Jackson's eking out this existence, holding on long like a lot of unpopular tenured faculty at VMI and what happens, the Civil War breaks out.

[00:13:13]
Which again, personally saves him and makes him, because again this element of the man who's essentially somnolent.

[00:13:21]
Jackson has this peculiar habit, he has, he was a hypochondriac to the nth degree, and in a century that was obsessed with personal health.

[00:13:31]
He constantly was going to springs, including Saratoga, the most famous, having his whole system irrigated, there- the famous story about

[00:13:40]
how he went into battle eating a lemon isn't quite true, what he did because I suspect he was- to be blunt about it I'm sorry it's before your dinner, he was completely blocked up.

[00:13:52]
He ate fruit as often as he could get it, if again, you think about the 19th century diet, which was heavy on salt, pork,

[00:13:59]
and five day old bread, that Jackson, because of his natural, and then natural concern almost comical obsession with his

[00:14:09]
health is eating fruit all the time, not just lemons. He also was convinced that his body's internal organs were completely out of whack.

[00:14:17]
They were out of balance, which is again the famous story that he would ride into battle with his hand in the air, well he didn't just ride into battle, he

[00:14:25]
frequently and at odd moments, which again is why the students at VMI used to throw paper airplanes at him, was he would

[00:14:30]
go into these elaborate jerks because he was convinced that his body, internal organs, let alone the muscles in his arms, were completely out of whack, so he

[00:14:39]
would like, go like this, and try and realign himself and a kind of self-chiropractor. So you have this person who's this queer duck

[00:14:49]
except when it comes to the battlefield, and the war breaks out, again the rumors of war, he led a delegation of VMI students to protect, the hanging

[00:15:02]
of John Brown at Charleston, an incredible Cavalcade actually of coincidences because Jackson was there, Robert E. Lee commanded the whole, the entire hanging

[00:15:12]
Jeb Stewart was also there and I've just learned that the future assassin and actor John Wilkes Booth hid himself in one of the other military units

[00:15:24]
and witnessed John Brown's execution. Jackson is something of a nobody. He knows where he has a little put of political patronage from

[00:15:34]
his marriage, and he had come to notice of Robert E. Lee at the Mexican War, and Lee appoints, Lee provides him with a little bit of patronage that Jackson

[00:15:46]
needs to show his talents, the war breaks out, Jackson is given a small army in the Shenandoah. The Shenandoah is very important throughout the entire war

[00:15:55]
because it led away from Richmond from the North and it led toward the North for the South. It was also as they say the bread basket of the conf- or at least the Upper Confederacy

[00:16:05]
in terms of the importance of foodstuffs and
[00:16:09]

Transcription Notes:
9:55 -- spelling error that takes away from point. ----> The inability "to" lead through. 10:47 -- Spelling error ----> because he was totally "humorless" ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-07-20 12:10:19 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-07-20 14:14:02 ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-12-14 14:27:22 Fixed some spelling errors