Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

by S.C. Gwynne

Whenever he encountered French at the fort, Jackson averted his eyes, an old military practice known as “cutting.”

What was undebatable was that, because of his own prudence and caution, however justifiable, Jackson had missed one of the great opportunities of the young war: to swallow an enemy army whole. Ulysses S. Grant had done it at Fort Donelson in Tennessee three months before, the only general to do so in the first year of the war.9 He was famous for it.

What he had done did not seem quite plausible. He had twice eluded Union forces that had been sent to destroy him. He had moved farther and faster and more secretly than anyone in the Union high command had believed possible and had defeated Union forces more than one hundred miles apart. He had then pursued his helpless quarries for thirty and thirty-five miles, respectively. He had driven Banks clean out of the South. None of this could be explained by conventional notions of warfare, certainly not by warfare as it was being practiced by any Union commanders of the period. There was something lethal about this Confederate general, something grim and unyielding and inexplicable and alarmingly single-minded.