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

by S.C. Gwynne

It is a matter of record that, a mere fourteen months earlier, the man everyone from Charlottesville to Washington was so breathlessly concerned about had been an obscure, eccentric, and unpopular college professor in a small town in rural Virginia. He had odd habits, a strangely silent manner, a host of health problems, and was thought by almost everyone who knew him to be lacking in even the most basic skills of leadership. To call him a failure is probably too harsh. He just wasn’t very good at anything; he was part of that great undifferentiated mass of second-rate humanity who weren’t going anywhere in life. And yet on that bright June day in Charlottesville the oddball science teacher had just completed a military campaign in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley that made him the most famous military figure in the Western world.

His metamorphosis began in the first year of the war, with his brilliant performance in the Confederate victory at Manassas. But it was rooted mainly in an extraordinary campaign that had begun on March 23 and ended on June 9, 1862. What Jackson did in those seventy-eight days, in a small and dazzlingly beautiful theater of war bounded by mountain ranges on either side, redefined the conflict and made him the most celebrated field commander in the war. Though the particulars of each battle or skirmish could be quite complex, their significance, seen collectively, was strikingly clear and simple. Using a combination of speed, deception, and sheer audacity, Jackson, with 17,000 men (and often far fewer), had taken on and beaten Union forces that, though never united, totaled more than 52,000. He marched his men at a pace unknown to soldiers of the day, covering an astounding 646 miles in 48 days, fighting five major battles, and skirmishing almost daily.

He was such a literalist when it came to duty that he had once, while in the army, worn heavy winter underwear into summer because he had received no specific order to change it. Once, when seated on a camp stool with his saber across his knees, he was told by VMI’s superintendent to “remain as you are until further orders.” The next morning the superintendent found him seated on the camp stool in the same position, because, according to Jackson, “you ordered me to remain here.”5 He insisted that his students obey his orders just as unquestioningly. He was as painfully formal in conversation as he was in class.

That his diet was odd, too, often consisting of water and stale bread or buttermilk and stale bread and he was so resolute about this that he carried his own stale bread with him when invited out to dinner.

There was, however, one item that stood out on Major Jackson’s curriculum vitae as of that bright April afternoon. That was his conspicuous and, to many, uncharacteristic record in the Mexican-American War in 1847.

Behind the pomp and circumstance lay the curious fact that the stern, inelegant man leading the column had done everything in his power to prevent the war that he was now marching off to fight. He hated the very idea of it. His conviction was in part due to his peculiar ability, shared by few people who landed in power on either side—Union generals Winfield Scott and William Tecumseh Sherman come prominently to mind—to grasp early on just how terrible the suffering caused by the war would be, and just how long it was likely to last.10 The detail-obsessed physics professor’s embrace of such a large abstraction is perhaps an appropriate introduction to the man himself: Jackson’s brilliance was that he understood war. He understood it at some primary, visceral level that escaped almost everyone else. He understood it even before it happened.

In the months leading up to the war Jackson had remained a confirmed Unionist. He opposed secession. Though he was a slave owner, he held no strident, proslavery views. Indeed, his wife, Anna, wrote that she was “very confident that he would never have fought for the sole object of perpetuating slavery.”

those early days. “I have never heard any man express such an utter abhorrence of war,” she wrote. “I shall never forget how he once exclaimed to me, with all the intensity of his nature, ‘Oh, how I deprecate war!’

“I am in favor of making a thorough trial for peace,” wrote Jackson, “and if we fail in this and the state is invaded to defend it with terrific resistance—even to taking no prisoners.”19 Taking no prisoners.

What, then, had sent the professor and his cadets marching down the hill on that pleasant spring day? The answer is maddeningly complex, partly because Jackson’s reasons for fighting had little to do with what had propelled the two sections into the war in the first place. Nor were they the same reasons the seven states of the lower South had seceded in late 1860 and early 1861.

Neither Jackson nor most of his fellow citizens in Lexington believed that the war was about staving off the immediate abolition of slavery. By and large, they abhorred the idea of secession.

“I was much impressed with the thought that before me stood a man in the full vigor of health, who must in a few moments enter eternity. I sent up the petition that he might be saved. Awful was the thought that he might in a few minutes receive the sentence, ‘Depart, ye wicked, into everlasting fire.’ I hope that he was prepared to die, but I am doubtful. He refused to have a minister with him.”11

“This mad attempt by a handful of vulgar cutthroats, and its condign punishment,” wrote the Reverend Robert Lewis Dabney, an important Presbyterian leader in the South and later chief of Jackson’s staff, “would have been a very trivial affair to the Southern people, but for the manner in which it was regarded by the people of the North. Their presses, pulpits, public meetings and conversations, disclosed such a hatred of the South and its institutions, as to lead them to justify the crime, involving though it did the most aggravated robbery, treason and murder; [and] to exalt the bloodthirsty fanatic who led the party, to a public apotheosis.”16

“The Harper’s Ferry invasion has advanced the cause of disunion more than any event that has happened since the formation of the government,” wrote the Richmond Whig and the Richmond Enquirer under a single byline. “Thousands of men who, a month ago, scoffed at the idea of a dissolution of the union . . . now hold the opinion that its days were numbered.”

For those who witnessed it, what happened next was an astounding transformation, one that many would talk about for decades to come. “Military men make short speeches,” Jackson began, in a tone of voice unfamiliar to his charges, “and as for myself I am no hand at speaking anyhow.” There was something about his voice that caught the cadets’ attention, a hint that the man on the rostrum was no longer their eccentric professor, a man they sometimes called Tom Fool, the object of teasing and jokes around the institute. Jackson continued: “The time for war has not yet come, but it will come, and that soon. And when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.”

What settled the matter for Virginians—with the same galvanizing speed with which the attack on Sumter had united the North—was a proclamation, issued on April 15 by Abraham Lincoln, calling on the states that had not seceded to provide 75,000 troops “to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union,” and also “to execute the laws of the Union, [and] suppress rebellions.” Virginians knew what this meant: armed coercion.

If the cadets who marched to Richmond with Thomas Jackson four days later had been asked why they were doing it, few would have replied that it was because of their convictions about slavery, or their beliefs about state sovereignty or any of the other great national questions that had been debated for so long. They would have told you then—as most of Stonewall Jackson’s soldiers in the army of the Confederate States of America would have told you later—that they were fighting to repel the invaders, to drive the Northern aggressors from their homeland.

To Jackson, Lincoln had launched a war of aggression against sovereign states.

This was in part Jackson’s own fault. He was motivated by the belief that, for the South to win against obvious industrial and numerical odds, it would have to win quickly. That meant hitting the enemy’s green troops hard and soon, and not paying attention to such political niceties as state boundaries. That meant burning Baltimore and Philadelphia and making Northerners understand on a visceral level what this war was going to cost them. As early as the week after secession, Jackson had proposed to Virginia governor John Letcher the idea he had mentioned in the letter to his nephew in January: a war of invasion in which the South would fly the “black flag”—meaning that all Union prisoners would be summarily executed. He even proposed to set the example himself.

“He affirmed that this would in the end be the truest humanity,” wrote Robert Dabney, “because it would shorten the contest, and prove economical of the blood of both parties.

The outcome of the Battle of Manassas—or as Northerners, who liked to name battles after watercourses, had it, Bull Run—turned on this very same tactic, in this case a secret and stunningly successful Federal march around the left wing of the Confederate army. The movement followed the military maxim, bringing a large mass of Union troops to confront a small rebel force. By the late morning of July 21, the Union tactic had created a mismatch so extreme that it should have resulted in the wholesale rout of the Confederate army and the triumphant arrival that day of the Union army at Manassas Junction. Richmond, ninety miles away, ought to have been trembling in mortal terror. That the Federals failed to accomplish any of these things—in fact, failed so completely and miserably that almost the exact reverse happened—is the story of the first great battle of the Civil War.

comical incompetence of Beauregard and his staff. His problems began with the combat order itself, a muddled, contradictory, and occasionally nonsensical document, later famous as the single most confusing order of the war.

“Yonder stands Jackson like a stone wall,” he said. “Let’s go to his assistance.”16 At the time, his statement, overheard by four witnesses, probably sounded like an inspiring bit of metaphorical language, something to help spur the men into the fight. But Bee’s words would become one of the most famous utterances of the war, noteworthy both because they gave birth to a name and a legend, and because they were among the last words ever spoken by the dashing warrior from South Carolina, one of the battle’s greatest heroes, who at that moment had less than an hour to live.

The peculiar, piercingly loud noise the advancing men made was something neither rebel nor Union troops had heard before, and whose exact inspiration is unknown. It was the implausible result of each man giving a sequence of three sounds that registered somewhere between the screech of a bird and the bark of a fox: a short, high-pitched yelp, followed by a short, lower-pitched bark, followed by a long, high-pitched yelp. Collectively, the noise sounded feral, unearthly, and inhuman, like an ululation from the pit of hell. It would become the stuff of Union nightmares throughout the war. As one Federal soldier put it: “There is nothing like it on this side of the infernal region. The peculiar corkscrew sensation that it sends down your backbone . . . can never be told.”18 The practice would spread through the entire Confederate army and it would soon have a name: the rebel yell.19

And it soon became clear that the battle’s ultimate effect would be to strengthen Northern resolve, not weaken it, as the initial shock and distress shifted quickly into a grim new determination. The day after the battle, President Lincoln signed a bill for the enlistment of 500,000 three-year volunteers, and three days later signed another for 500,000 more. The public response in the North was immediate and enthusiastic; new recruits jammed Union recruiting offices.

For the South, the unquestioned Confederate heroes of the Battle of Manassas were Pierre G. T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston, in that order. Bory, hero of Sumter, got most of the credit. He really deserved very little of

“Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.”14

shells filled the air around him, including a cannonball that rocketed between his legs, he yelled to his men, “There is no danger! See? I am not hit!” (He said later this was the first and only lie he ever told.) At first he got no takers; then, finally, an old sergeant walked up and together they dragged the remaining cannon across a ditch and up onto the road. They began firing again. As they did so, another member of the gun crew made his way forward. Instead of accepting his help, Jackson shouted, “Go back yonder! Tell Colonel Trousdale to send men forward! . . . Tell him with fifty men we can overrun the battery ahead!”

He had been on active duty for only fifteen months, and he had been promoted to first lieutenant and then to brevet major. No one in his class from West Point—indeed, no one in the entire army in Mexico—had been promoted faster. He was twenty-three years old, and in the small, tightly circumscribed world of the US Army, he was famous.

windy, or even that some accident had not happened. If someone said, “Don’t you wish it might stop raining?,” he would reply with a quiet smile, “Yes, if the Maker of the weather thinks it best,”9 thus instantly killing the conversation.

Though he was devoutly religious, and dutifully went to church several times a week, he was also famous for falling asleep during the service. He did this at almost every service, usually during the sermon. Because he insisted on sitting perfectly erect in his pew, the moment that sleep overtook him was a dramatic one, as he suddenly tilted to one side.

No matter what was happening or what interesting or momentous conversation was under way, Major Jackson would rise and leave, without fail, at 9:00 p.m.

When, in response to Jackson’s question “What are the three simple machines?” a cadet answered, “The inclined plane, the lever, and the wheel,” Jackson replied, “No, sir. The lever, the wheel, and the inclined plane.” That was exactly as they were listed in the textbook, and that was how Jackson wanted it.6 No amount of student outrage or protest could dislodge him from this position. His course managed to be both dreadfully dull and appallingly difficult, with few light moments.

By throwing myself on the protection of Him whose law book is the wonderful Bible. My dear sister I would not part with this book for countless universes. I feel ready to make every sacrifice to carry out the will of Him who so loved us as to give His only begotten son to die for me.

Laura and Ellie got along well. As was the custom of the day, they exchanged locks of hair. But friends agreed that Ellie’s most telling effect on Jackson had to do with his religion, and his marriage to her coincided with a conspicuous deepening of his faith.

Jackson himself summed it up in this extraordinary statement, in response to a friend’s asking how he obeyed the biblical command to “pray without ceasing.” He replied, I can give you my idea of it by illustration, if you will allow it, and will not think that I am setting myself up as a model for others. I have so fixed the habit in my own mind that I never raise a glass of water to my lips without lifting my heart to God in thanks and prayer for the water of life. Then, when we take our meals, there is the grace. Whenever I drop a letter in the post-office, I send a petition along with it for God’s blessing upon its mission and the person to whom it is sent. When I break the seal of a letter just received, I stop to ask God to prepare me for its contents, and make it a messenger of good. When I go to my classroom and await the arrangement of the cadets in their places, that is my time to intercede with God for them. And so in every act of the day I have made the practice habitual.

What had happened after the delivery of the dead baby was a massive and excruciatingly painful hemorrhage that the doctor could not stop. Ellie bled to death.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. It is his will that my Dearest wife & child should no longer abide with me, and as it is His holy will, I am perfectly reconciled to the sad bereavement, though I deeply mourn my loss. My Dearest Ellie breathed her last on Sunday evening, the same day on which the child was born dead. Oh! The consolations of religion! I can willingly submit to anything if God strengthens me. Oh! My sister would that you could have him for your own God! Though all nature to me is eclipsed, yet I have joy in knowing that God withholds no good things from them that love and keep his commandments.31

By the summer of 1856, Maggie and the major were almost certainly in love and thus faced a very serious problem. The constitution of the Presbyterian Church prohibited a man from marrying his dead wife’s sister.

(Such endearments were not typical of most of the great Civil War generals. “Of the major figures in the Civil War whose letters survive,” wrote Jackson biographer James I. Robertson Jr., “the stern VMI professor sent the most intimate, emotional, and sentimental messages.”9)

He acquired his first slave, Albert, when Albert came to him and asked Jackson to buy him so that he would be allowed to buy his freedom by paying back the purchase price. Jackson agreed, although he was living as a bachelor and had no need of Albert’s services. He initially rented Albert out as a waiter to VMI for $120 a year. When Albert came down with a protracted illness and could not earn money, Jackson took him in and cared for him. War came before Albert had fully paid Jackson.

Though we have no record of how he regarded his slaves, Anna had a fairly traditional Southern view. In her memoirs, she referred to their slaves as among “other animate possessions of the family,” lumping them together with the family’s horse, milk cows, and chickens.16

Jackson proceeded anyway, and soon had eighty to one hundred slaves in attendance at the Lexington Colored Sabbath School. The school was entirely his creation: he conceived it, financed it, organized it, promoted it, and recruited students as well as a dozen teaching assistants. His services began with prayer, which he gave, followed by the singing of “Amazing Grace,” which he would lead also, in spite of being unable to carry a tune. There were Bible readings and oral examinations. Bibles were awarded to the best students. Jackson even delivered, in person, reports to owners of their slaves’ participation and progress.18 His personal influence in the school is evidenced by attendance figures, which dropped during his summer absence to fewer than fifty. From what evidence we have Jackson was well liked by blacks in town. In the words of William White, “He was emphatically the black man’s friend.”

Still, not all Lexington residents liked the idea of the school, not least because state law in Virginia prohibited whites from teaching blacks to read and write. On May 1, 1858, Jackson happened to encounter three lawyers he knew on the street in front of the county courthouse. One of them, Colonel S. M. Reid, clerk of the courts, said to him, “Major, I have examined the statute and conferred with the commonwealth’s attorney. Your Sunday school is an ‘unlawful assembly.’ ” The other two lawyers expressed agreement with Reid, and one of them, J. D. Davidson, said, further, that “probably the grand jury will take it up and test it.” Jackson, normally the most civil of men, responded angrily, “Sir, if you were, as you should be, a Christian man, you would not think it or say so.” Jackson then turned on his heel and strode away. Though Jackson went to Davidson’s office later to apologize, the larger point was made: he would fight any interference with his school.19 The school, in fact, continued in operation for thirty years.20

It was all, as the Philadelphia Press put it, “indescribably grand,”6 so much so that it helped inspire a Washington woman named Julia Ward Howe to begin writing, the next day, new lyrics for the popular tune “John Brown’s Body.”

What made such proximity so remarkable was that, whereas in July the Union had outnumbered its rivals 35,000 to 32,000, there were now 150,000 Federal troops in the field against 40,000 rebels, a mismatch so absurd that many politicians and pundits in the North were beginning to wonder why they were watching reviews at all instead of reading about military victories.8 This was the grand irony of McClellan’s Grand Review.

McClellan’s self-infatuation reached its apogee one evening in November, when Lincoln and Seward came to call on him at his home. They were told he was at a dinner party. They waited. An hour later McClellan arrived and was told about his visitors. He ignored them, walked upstairs, and retired for the evening. An hour and a half after they arrived, a servant informed Lincoln and Seward that McClellan had gone to bed.

December 1861

nation. In the late fall, the correspondent for the Times of London in Washington made an astonishing diary entry that read, “All the diplomatists [foreign diplomats], with one exception, are of the opinion that the Union is broken forever, and the independence of the South virtually established.”20

There would be no great offensive strikes. Instead, armies would be recruited and dispersed over a vast defensive perimeter—a theory of war, propounded by the famed military tactician and historian Antoine-Henri Jomini and studied closely at West Point, that favored the holding of cities and other real estate over the mass destruction of enemy armies.2 That theory would soon be discredited.