Stonewall Jackson's Little Sorrel

by Sharon B. Smith

  The immigrants were people of lowland Scottish and border English descent whose ancestors had spent a few generations in the northern part of Ireland, thanks to the desire of King James I to turn Ireland into an English-speaking and Protestant part of his kingdom. In the early seventeenth century James established the Ulster Plantations, a scheme to provide land for Scots immigrants to settle the newly British province now known as Ulster.

  The plan worked and Ulster remains mostly Protestant to this day. John Jackson’s ancestors were among the lowland Scots who arrived early, but it’s unclear where they settled. Most believe the site was Coleraine in County Derry, while others think the location was a village called The Birches in County Armagh.

  Both villages were close to one of the great racecourses of the early years of Thoroughbred horse racing. This was the Down Royal course at Downpatrick in County Down, chartered by the king in 1685. The three-mile horseshoe-shaped course saw rich men match their great horses, including the legendary Byerly Turk, one of the three male line ancestors of all modern Thoroughbreds and most other horses of quality.

  There is no record of the Jacksons having visited the course, but thousands of Ulster Scots did, and horse racing became part of the Scots-Irish culture that survived their later trip across the Atlantic. The Ulster Scots may have enjoyed the entertainment provided by racing, but the farmland offered by King James in Northern Ireland proved insufficient. They began emigrating early in the eighteenth century with John Jackson among those leaving Ulster. Jackson, his father, and his brothers left around 1723 for England rather than North America, settling in London. The father and brothers disappeared from the public records, but John turns up in the criminal records of London’s Old Bailey court. Jackson family tradition claimed that John Jackson was a house builder of substance, sailing to America with a contract in hand for a project in Maryland. In reality he was convicted of theft in January 1749 and sentenced to a term of servitude in North America. Jackson was sentenced to seven years as an unwilling indentured servant and shipped to Maryland, most likely on the sailing ship Litchfield, in May 1749. During the voyage he met a thief named Elizabeth Cummins. Jackson and Cummins became the great-grandparents of the future Confederate general. Family lore of a genteel ancestry was incorrect.

  What became of the couple once they arrived in America is not recorded. Transported convicts were offered for the highest bid. Dr. David Ross of Bladensburg, Maryland, who in addition to his medical practice operated as a convict merchant, most likely was the person who sold Jackson and Cummins.

  Ross’s cargoes were well advertised and widely appreciated. In 1760 a planter named George Washington of Mount Vernon, Virginia, which was only fifteen miles from Bladensburg by boat, noted in his diary entry for January 25: “Wrote to Dr. Ross to purchase me a joiner, bricklayer, and gardner [sic] if any ship of servants was in.” If Washington had needed a joiner eleven years earlier, Ross might have offered him John Jackson.

  Ross, like Washington, was a very wealthy man who put much of his money into high-quality livestock, including horses, owning about a dozen of them at the time of his death. If he was interested in racing, he had only to walk across the street from his elegant brick mansion. One of the Maryland colony’s twenty racecourses was in Bladensburg within sight of Ross’s front door.

  Cummins may have spent time in Bladensburg, but it’s more certain that John was sold to Cecil County, in far northeast Maryland, while Elizabeth remained closer to where she arrived, either in Baltimore, Annapolis, or Bladensburg itself.

  Cecil County had become an important location for racing and breeding fine horses at the time of Jackson’s arrival in 1749. A racecourse in Charles Town was among the most important in the Maryland colony, attracting thousands of spectators, including George Washington, to annual race meets. When John Jackson’s sentence was up, he married Elizabeth Cummins and the couple headed west. In 1758 they settled on a small farm near what became Moorefield, Virginia, across the rich Shenandoah Valley. This was true frontier, with little cleared land and few towns or villages. The Jacksons, like other Scots-Irish settlers, traveled west looking for land, and what they found was land that belonged to somebody else.

  They probably owned an ordinary horse or two for work and transportation, but they lived close to far better horses. The Jackson homestead stood just a few miles south of the vast holdings of the famous horseman Thomas Lord Fairfax, who had inherited nearly a million acres of Virginia from his grandfather Lord Culpeper. Thomas Fairfax had ordered his property surveyed and, just in case, had young surveyor George Washington examine the neighboring land as well. So it turned out that Washington, also a fine horseman, surveyed the acreage used by the Jacksons.

  Fairfax was not a racing man, even though his English ancestors had been instrumental in developing the Thoroughbred. But he was a fox-hunting man and he encouraged Washington to join him in this activity. They may well have galloped in search of fox through land that became the Jacksons’ farm. Descendants of these first Jacksons, including Stonewall himself, came to enjoy fox hunting as well.

  John and Elizabeth Cummins Jackson left the Moorefield area after ten years, moving several times farther west into what later became West Virginia, where horse racing was well under way. The first record of organized racing in the future state occurred in Charles Town in 1786. The site of the first racecourse was just seven miles from Harpers Ferry, where Colonel Thomas Jackson would choose himself a little sorrel horse off a confiscated railroad car seventy-five years later.

  If the first two generations of American Jacksons did take advantage of their proximity to horse racing, they would have been typical immigrant Scots-Irish. As a group, they were exceptionally fond of matching horses for speed and did it from their earliest years on the North American continent.

  Take as an example the Reverend John Hindman, whose fame (or infamy, depending on one’s Presbyterian zeal) spread across frontier Virginia. The Londonderry-born Hindman had arrived in Virginia in 1742 to help organize Presbyterian churches in the frontier beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hindman loved horse racing so much that he sailed back and forth across the ocean to better indulge himself.

  The Scots-Irish settlers of Augusta County built race paths almost as soon as they had carved their homes out of the forest, and the Reverend Hindman quickly adapted, going so far as to serve as a jockey for John Stephenson, a leading landowner and racehorse breeder of the region. But the Presbyterian Church frowned on Sunday racing, an unfortunate situation given that frontier Virginians found Sunday to be the very best day for their favorite activity.

  So John Hindman packed up, sailed back to the British Isles, took Anglican orders, and returned to Augusta County to race any day he pleased. The reverend lived only a year after his return to Virginia in 1748, but he managed to add several racehorses, a set of jockey silks, and other racing equipment to his estate.

  Andrew Jackson, a second-generation Ulster Scot, was a famous lover of horse racing. The seventh president, probably not related to Thomas Jackson, even brought three of his best horses along to the White House in 1829, including the fast gray Thoroughbred Bolivar. Andrew Jackson himself managed Bolivar’s training while he was president.

  Thomas Jackson, born six decades after Andrew, was involved in racing, but his fondness didn’t last a lifetime, as Andrew’s did. Religious fervor burned more intensely than did any affection for racing. But at one point in his early life he was deeply involved in the sport and had close contact with outstanding horses. This period certainly affected his horsemanship.

  Jackson’s father, Jonathan Jackson, grandson of John and Elizabeth, was not known as a horseman, but he was an acknowledged and enthusiastic gambler whose interests lay mostly in card games. But it was inevitable that the occasional wager on a horse would be part of his life.

  Jonathan was a frontier lawyer but not a very good one, and his fondness for gambling
was part of his problem. He had settled in Clarksburg, Virginia, now West Virginia, to clerk for and later become a law partner of his first cousin John George Jackson, a prominent attorney and politician during the first decades of the nineteenth century.

  Like all county seats, Clarksburg hosted monthly court days, so people with legal business could get it all done at once. They could file suit, collect debts, or face charges. They could also get a month’s worth of entertainment during the two or three days court was in session. Among the entertainment at most court days in Virginia was horse racing. Since racing, and particularly gambling on racing, was illegal in many of Virginia’s counties, courts in some towns found themselves prosecuting participants in earlier races while new races took place a few hundred yards out of town.

  How much Jonathan Jackson might have wagered on racing as opposed to cards is impossible to know, but we do know he got himself deeply in debt, prompting his upright cousin John George to break up the law partnership. Jonathan died at thirty-six, leaving three small children and a mound of debt. The middle child was four-year-old Thomas Jackson.

  Jackson had no real memory of his father. He did hear family stories about the debt and never became a gambler himself, although horses remained part of his life. After his father’s death and his mother’s subsequent remarriage and death, Thomas was sent to live with Jonathan’s younger half-brother, Cummins Jackson. Cummins controlled hundreds of acres of family land as well as a thriving mill near Weston, Virginia.

  Like Jonathan, Cummins was a gambler. But unlike his brother, he was a reasonably good businessman and could afford his losses. He could also afford to buy and keep racehorses and compete with them over his own racecourse. Undoubtedly he took in his orphan nephew because of family affection and responsibility, but he also realized the advantage of having a lightweight young boy to train as a jockey for his horses.

  Cummins built his racecourse just to the west of the house and mill on the acreage that had been known for decades as Jackson’s Mill. It was a grass course, as level as he could make it, designed to host four-mile competitions. Although there was quarter-mile racing elsewhere in Virginia, the longer form was gradually taking over. We know from memories gathered after Thomas Jackson became famous that Cummins favored the longer distances.

  Jackson’s Mill in 1909. The racetrack was across the river in the left of the picture.

  Library of Congress

  The course itself was most likely not four miles around. Typically, during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a racecourse was a mile or two miles in a round or oval shape. With anything bigger the spectators would be unable to see all the action. The horses would be required to complete two or more circuits to make up the standard four-mile distance. In important races, a horse would have to finish first in at least two different four-mile heats to win a given race, which means a winning horse would be required to run at least eight miles in a day, sometimes as many as sixteen.

  At a private course like the one at Jackson’s Mill, races might consist of only one heat, known as a dash, to determine a winner. Dash is a misleading word. The race was still four miles long and even the fastest horses were unable to dash for that distance. The record is silent as to what kind of races Cummins Jackson conducted and Thomas Jackson rode, but most likely they competed in dashes, with wagers rather than prize money on the line.

  Although Thomas Jackson’s role as a jockey was well documented by people in a position to know about it, how early and how long he rode remains unknown. He arrived at Jackson’s Mill as a seven-year-old who had done little riding. He soon learned his way around on horseback, riding into Weston to collect the mail, riding with Cummins and other uncles to inspect the property, even riding with them in informal fox hunts.

  Cummins put serious money into racehorses, so Thomas was unlikely to have been allowed to race until he was twelve or so, old enough to control a thousand-pound animal galloping at thirty miles an hour. He continued racing at least until he reached fifteen because neighbors interviewed after he became famous remembered races taking place as late as 1839.

  They also remembered the young Jackson to be a good rider. None suggested that he was ungraceful on horseback. They did recall in considerable detail that the combination of the lightweight Thomas and his well-to-do uncle resulted in a lot of races won and bets collected. They must have found the young jockey’s form to be appropriate and typical because none of them mentioned otherwise. So Jackson may have learned early the forward-leaning, crouched style that so many observers criticized during the Civil War.

  Nineteenth-century jockeys rode more upright than they do today, but they did lean forward farther than other riders of the time. The extreme forward crouch didn’t appear until the end of the century. An American jockey named Tod Sloan is credited with revolutionizing race riding with the so-called monkey crouch that was as inelegant as it was successful.

  What Thomas Jackson most likely did not do aboard his uncle’s horses was ride with the unusually short stirrups so often mentioned. In the 1830s, jockeys in the kind of English-style long-distance racing that Cummins Jackson conducted invariably rode with long stirrups, much longer than jockeys do today. It was another sixty years before Tod Sloan and other American jockeys introduced the short stirrups to English-style racing along with their forward-leaning monkey crouch. Jackson’s short stirrups came from somewhere else, although not from the next place he learned about riding. In 1842 he arrived at West Point, New York, to begin four years at the United States Military Academy. At the time, horseback riding was not a significant part of the education of future officers. Sixty percent of the cadets came from cities and towns and had ridden only rarely, but there was no equitation education at all until their final year at the academy.

  1881 Kentucky Derby winner Hindoo with the long stirrups used by nineteenth-century jockeys.

  Library of Congress

  Even then, riding instruction was limited to one hour every other day. Cadets learned to mount, ride at all gaits, and handle the saber on horseback. They also learned jumping, known as “leaping” in the nineteenth century. We know precisely the style they were taught because the equitation instructor during Jackson’s time at West Point wrote a book on riding that was published while Jackson was there.

  “The body should be erect,” wrote Henry Hershberger, an experienced cavalry officer from Pennsylvania who arrived at West Point in January 1842. No leaning forward was permitted, except slightly and occasionally at the leap and even then leaning backward was preferred.

  The rider’s legs, he said in his The Horseman: A Work on Horsemanship, should be “hanging naturally.” As for stirrup length, he was more specific. “When the rider stands erect in the stirrups the space between his fork or crotch should be four inches or the breadth of his hand.” Some well-admired riders used stirrups so long that there was no distance at all between body and saddle. Fortunately for Cadet Jackson, riding instruction wasn’t graded in 1845–1846, but other cadets did pay attention to his style.

  According to Dabney H. Maury, later to become a Confederate general, Jackson was “singularly awkward and uncomfortable to look at upon a horse.” He, Maury added, “seemed in imminent danger of falling headlong from his horse.”

  As far as anyone noted, Jackson never did fall headlong or in any other direction from a horse at West Point. Maury wrote about Jackson’s riding long after their cadet years, having read decades of declarations that Jackson was a poor and ungraceful rider, and he may not have been totally accurate in what he remembered. Maury may also have failed to realize that a seat that appeared too forward and too short may have been nothing more than out of step with the mid-nineteenth-century riding ideal—not wrong, just different.

  Gen. Joseph Hooker in accepted nineteenth-century military seat.

  Library of Congress

 
Jackson’s next contact with a really good horse would have done nothing to cause him to lengthen his stirrups or sit farther back. In the summer of 1846, shortly after his graduation from West Point, Jackson was commissioned as a second lieutenant of artillery and sent with other young officers to Mexico in defense of the U.S. annexation of Texas.

  Jackson received two brevet promotions as an artillery officer and found himself in possession of status and a good salary in Mexico City after the Mexican capital fell late in 1847. He promptly paid $180 for a beautiful horse, which he rode out in the evening to promenades frequented by the city’s aristocrats. The horse, he told his sister, was worth at least $300. Jackson hoped he and the horse would impress anybody who saw them.

  In the mid-nineteenth century most aristocratic Mexican horsemen, military and civilian alike, rode in a style called a la gineta. The method required stirrups noticeably shorter than those used in the older European military seat. It had been developed out of the style of the North Africans, who had invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century. A reconquest by the rest of Europe began almost immediately, but completion took nearly six hundred years. By the time all of Spain was again Catholic, the short-stirrup riding technique was firmly in control.

  The gineta was transferred to Central and South America beginning in the late fifteenth century. Thomas Jackson would have seen it in full use on the Paseo, the wide boulevard over which he rode his expensive horse in 1848. He admired the ruling class of Mexico City, admired their good horses, and may have admired their gineta as well.