Stonewall Jackson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Stonewall Jo^son. By Lenoir Chambers. (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1959. Two volumes. Pp. ? and 597, ix and 536. $20.00.) since his untimely death in the spring of 1863, a considerable number of biographies of Stonewall Jackson have been published. Books about the man have been written by his wife, by soldiers who served with him during the war, by the British soldier-historian G. F. R. Henderson, by the poet Allen Tate, and more recently by newspaperman Burke Davis and Professor Frank Vandiver. To this already large collection can now be added the two-volume, eleven-hundred-page contribution of Lenoir Chambers, editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. It is, in thè opinion of this reviewer, a distinguished addition. There are two aspects of this study that make it a work of real significance. In the first place, it is the best written and by far the most thorough analysis that I have ever read of Jackson the military man. It traces in minute detail the various battles and campaigns that catapulted this little-known character into prominence, from his first assignment at Harpers Ferry through the Federal rout at Chancelorsville where the general was accidentally shot by his own men. And though the author quite properly concludes that Jackson was an unusually gifted commander, the tenor of the book is not that of unqualified hero-worship. As to Jackson's uncharacteristic slowness during the Seven Days, Mr. Chambers argues that the general, because of exhaustion and sickness, was simply not himself. No such excuses , however, are offered to explain away his mistakes at Cedar Run or at Fredericksburg. There is much information about Jackson and his not always pleasant dealings with other high-ranking Confederate officers, about his handling of his staff, and about his relationship with Lee. Of this latter, Mr. Chambers succinctly claims that "integrity met integrity." Ih addition to its value as a military study, the work has added significance because the author has succeeded in separating the man from the legend. Ih "humanizing" his subject, however, Mr. Chambers has confirmed my worst suspicions about Jackson's personality. He was an eccentric , a religious fanatic, and at times, a hypochondriac. He was a tactless, narrow-minded prude who could be as prim as an old maid schoolteacher . How else explain a man who could return his nephew's letters with corrections made in spelling and grammar, who could assign his sister to "unending misery" unless she mended her ways (i.e., accepted 315 316CIVIL WAR HISTORY his own set of values), who could take his wife to task for calling their newborn babe "cherub," or who could disrupt an army post by publicly charging his commanding officer with unauthorized hanky-panky involving a servant girl? Not until I had read this book did I fully realize just how unattractive a person Stonewall really was. Mr. Chambers necessarily covers a good bit of familiar ground. The story of the industrious orphan boy who plodded his way through West Point, of the promising young junior officer in the Mexican War, of the pedestrian professor at the Virginia Military Institute, and of the spectacularly successful Confederate commander is one that is already generally known. It is the author's contention that the thirty-nine years of Jackson's life divide naturally into two periods: the first thirty-seven and the last two. He believes that the character traits which made for greatness in the field were already fully developed when that officer marched away to war in 1861. The maps are excellent; they make it relatively easy to follow the author's narrative. A mild complaint might be lodged against the decision to place all the notes in the back of the second volume, though this is admittedly a minor criticism of a major work. Otis A. Singletary The University of Texas Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse. Edited by Richard Barksdale Harwell. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1959. Pp. xx, 321. $6.00.) copies of kate cumming's diary published in 1866 have come to rest primarily in various rare book collections, known only to serious students of the Civil...