STONEWALL JACKSON.*
THE book before us must take rank not only as an excellent biography of Stonewall Jackson, but as a standard history of that portion of the American Civil War in which Jackson had a part. It includes a lifelike picture of the man, and a critical study, from the military standpoint, of his campaigns. The books which have been written about the Civil War are numerous. Colonel Henderson himself has contributed to the subject before. There are enough of them to constitute a library, and several relate expressly to Stone- wall Jackson. Yet, with a sufficiently intimate acquaintance with the best of these works, we have no hesitation in saying that for fulness of detail, excellence of presentment, and general accuracy, there is, among them all, nothing better than Colonel Henderson's present work. He has a thorough grasp of his subject and the needful enthusiasm, together with superior literary skill. The many maps and plans have been carefully drawn, and give material help to the student. These two massive volumes claim close and attentive reading if they are to be appreciated, but the reader who does them this justice will be fully repaid.
Colonel Henderson's enthusiasm for the subject of his book, and his obvious leaning toward the cause for which Stonewall Jackson fought, do not debar him from discerning the good points in Jackson's foes. As a rule, he does them full justice. Lincoln, for example, he seems to estimate correctly. While commenting freely on the mistakes he made in the conduct of the war, he as freely admits his " rich endowment of common- sense," his "high sense of duty," his "political sagacity," and his "courage and patriotism." Equally in the case of McClellan, he recognises his merits as well as his defects, his organising ability and courage, and his power of inspiring confidence with his solders ; against which must be set his extreme, and, as it proved, fatal, caution. Perhaps his qualities as a strategist are too readily discounted ; he had scarcely an opportunity of proving them. The actual service he did to his country was to create a splendid army out of very raw material. Of General Banks, Colonel Henderson speaks with some scorn :—" His appointment was political. He was an ardent Abolitionist ; but he knew nothing whatever of soldiering. He had begun life as a hand in a cotton factory.
What the President expected when he gave him an army corps it is difficult to divine; what might have been expected any soldier could have told him. The appointment doubtless got rid of an opponent who might otherwise have been a thorn in the side of the Administration." Such a charge, involving as it does the honour of Lincoln, cannot be sustained, and, we believe, was not intended as a reflection on Lincoln by the author, who, as we have seen, freely recognises the President's "high sense of duty." Lincoln made mistakes --even greater mistakes than giving Banks a command—but they were the mistakes of a man whose singleness of purpose is not open to question. Banks was not a great commander, but others could be named who knew, or ought to have known, something of soldiering, who proved to be indefinitely worse. He did the best he knew, but his opportunities for distin- guishing himself were small. Even Colonel Henderson admits that "it may well be questioned whether many an army officer would have done any better than Banks."
We suspect the head and front of Banks's offending is to be found in the second section of Colonel Henderson's indict- ment: "He was an ardent Abolitionist." For Colonel Henderson, although no advocate of slavery, is an "ardent" Anti-Abolitionist. He does not seem to have studied the history of the Abolition movement prior to the commence- ment of the war, but to have derived his somewhat belated notions of it at second hand from friends of the South, whose lingering prejudices need not be wondered at. It is curious to find an Englishman, at this late day, talking in the fashion Bo familiar in the " fifties " and early " sixties,"—cursorily dismissing John Brown as a "fanatic," describing the Abolitionists (who included Emerson, Lowell, and Curtis, as well as Wendell Phillips and Garrison) as a "number of misguided if well-meaning men " ; and, on the 'other hand, affirming that " under the system of the plantations, meaty and morality were being gradually instilled into the loured race." It is quite true a certain number of these "misguided" men and women had been opposing the slave- * *tonneau Jackvn and the American Civil War. By Lieutenant-Colonel°. • R. Henderson. 2 soh. London: Longman and Co. [t<'-a.] power for many years with all their might; but it is also true —and this Colonel Henderson does not seem to realise—that their labours were brought to a speedier close than would otherwise have been possible, by the fiercely aggressive action of that slave-power. But for this, the end might have been that (to use Colonel Henderson's words) : " Under the influence of such men as Lincoln and Lee the nation might have returned to its better senses, and North and South combined to sweep away the curse of human servitude." What the temper of the slave-owners really was is sufficiently manifest in the history of the settlement of Kansas, in the forced decisions of the Courts of Law, and in the arbitrary and oppressive legislation of the period, — notably the Fugitive Slave Act. No friend of justice for the coloured race in America believes that the war was the best con- ceivable solution of the difficulty; or is blind to the truth that, at best, it only partly solved it. It was simply inevitable. The slave - owners would not permit things to remain as they were, much less consent to the gradual extinction of their "peculiar institution " ; but were so resolved to dominate the whole Union that the milder friends of freedom found themselves forced into active co-operation with the " fanatical" Abolitionists.
There was no need for Colonel Henderson to enter upon this subject of controversy at all. His object was to justify the course taken by Stonewall Jackson when the war broke out. For this purpose it would have been sufficient to state, in twenty lines, the general principles which Jackson held on the subject of slavery, and on the duty of citizens to their own States and to the Union. Enough, at this later day, that Jackson decided honestly according to his lights, and like Lee, when his State seceded, seceded with it; and that, in all his subsequent behaviour, he was loyal to the best he knew. For the purpose of rightly estimating his character we need not inquire whether, in the light of subsequent events, his convictions were true or false. The ethical aspects of the race question in America, may have to be discussed again, but the proper task of the present biographer was with the man Stonewall Jackson, and not with the controversies amid which he was thrown. His sterling qualities have a better chance of recognition if they are allowed to stand on their own basis, than when they are mixed up with questions of opinion which, even after the lapse of all these years, cannot always be argued dispassionately. For this reason, even if Colonel Henderson had been well versed in the history of the Abolition movement, we think any detailed discussion of it in the present work might have been omitted with advantage.
We have no other serious complaint to make. If some- times the author stretches a point to justify Jackson where others have thought he erred, he may well be ex- cused. To say that " during the whole of the two years he held command he never committed a single error" is a statement too daring. We cannot agree that his conduct at Hundley's Corner and White Oak was wholly free from error, and the fact noted by Colonel Hender- son that "Jackson himself, neither in his report nor elsewhere, ever admitted that he was in any way to blame," does not alter our opinion. It only shows he had not erred wilfully, or else that—like all men of a certain rigid and narrow type—he could not, in his own estimation, do any wrong. General D. H. Hill was probably quite correct when he said that Jackson's genius "never shone when he was under the command of another. It seemed then to be shrouded and paralysed." To refute this Colonel Henderson points to the second Manassas (Bull Run), Harper's Ferry, Sharpsburg, and Chancellorville ; but the fact is that on all these famous fields, although Lee was in supreme command, Jackson's hands were free. Colonel Henderson lays great emphasis on Jackson's qualities as a strategist. Be this as it may, the great source of his success was his daring. If he was not actually reckless, it is certain be never admitted, even to himself, that he was beaten, and his indomitable spirit con- verted more than one seemingly hopeless disaster into victory. It was one such feat, at the first battle of Bull Run, that won him his nickname. When the whole of the Confederate forces, with the exception of Jackson's own troops, were flying in disorder, General Bee checked them by pointing to Jack- son, and shouting : " There is Jackson, standing like a stone wall; rally behind the Virginians " ; and so the day was saved. Jackson was matched against Generals who, if they were his equals in other respects, fell far below him in
audacity. How he would have fared if he had been opposed by a Wellington, or even a Grant, with daring akin to his own, s a point which the history of his actual exploits leaves in doubt. Would the battle have raged until both armies were annihilated ? To conceive of Jackson yielding is almost impossible. He was neither cruel nor callous ; on the con- trary, often tender and keenly sympathetic; yet in war he poured out human blood like water with absolutely no com- punction. With all its fascinating interest the story of his campaigns is often gruesome reading. On the bloody field of Sharpsburg, between the dawn and sunset of September 17th, 1862, twenty-one thousand nine hundred and ten men were stricken down. The Confederate troops had been over- whelmed; but Lee, with all his losses, was resolved not to retreat. The scene when night had fallen is thus finely depicted:—
" So the soldiers' sleep was undisturbed. Through the September night they lay upon their arms, and from the dark spaces beyond came the groans of the wounded and the nameless odours of the battlefield. Not often has the night looked down upon a scene more terrible. The moon, rising above the moun- tains, revealed the long lines of men and guns, stretching far across hill and valley, waiting for the dawn to shoot each other down, and between the armies their dead lay in such numbers as civilised war has seldom seen. So fearful had been the carnage, and comprised within such narrow limits, that a Federal patrol, it is related, passing into the cornfield, where the fighting had been fiercest, believed that they had surprised a whole Con- federate brigade. There, in the shadow of the woods, lay the skirmishers, their muskets beside them, and there, in regular ranks, lay the line of battle, sleeping, as it seemed, the profound sleep of utter exhaustion. But the first man that was touched was cold and lifeless, and the next, and the next; it was the bivouac of the dead."
In many points of character Stonewall Jackson was the counterpart of "the fanatic John Brown." He, too, has been called a fanatic. The term is as applicable to one as to the other, but quite inadequate for either. In both cases the men believed themselves to be the express instruments of the Almighty, and their work a divine mission. Their concep- tions of duty may have been narrow, but they were clear, and real enough to be lived for and died for. Both were essentially men of action ; to see a duty was to do it, and when it had to be done they knew neither difficulties nor con- sequences. These stern, silent, inflexible men, absolutely faithful and absolutely fearless, born leaders, destined to die by violence in the service of duty, fought on opposite sides in the cause they had at heart; but now they stand out in a kind of spiritual brotherhood, two lonely, impressive, pathetic figures, among the many heroes of the Civil War.
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