We have had green peas for some time, and the strawberries are … beginning to disappear, but the cherries are coming in.
I wish that you could see our Institute, for I consider that it is the most tasty edifice in the state.… The weather is delightful.… I derive much pleasure from morning walks, in which is to be enjoyed the pure sweetness of carolling birds.…
My appetite and digestion have improved …
I have for months back admired Lexington, but now, for the first time, have I truly and fully appreciated it. Of all places that have come under my observation in the United States, this little village is the most beautiful.…
In taking a retrospective view of my own life, each year has opened … with increased promise.… I too have crosses, and am at times deeply afflicted … but I am improved by the ordeal … by throwing myself upon the protection of Him whose law book is the wonderful Bible. I would not part with this book for countless universes.
He made frequent mention of his health, and his abiding concern for tribulation, which he seemed to relish, as in the striking phrase, “I am a man of trouble.”
In April, 1853, he stunned Laura with a line in a letter: “I am invited to a large party tonight, and among the scramble, expect to come in for my share of fun.” Not even this prepared her for the news, however, for Major Tom, sworn to secrecy by his fiancée, had hoodwinked Lexington with a brief courtship of Eleanor Junkin, a daughter of Dr. George Junkin, a Northerner, Presbyterian minister, and president of Washington College.
Eleanor’s older sister, Margaret, the poet, was her inseparable companion; the girls had twin interests, dressed identically, and were much alike, except that Eleanor was less shy and a bit the prettier. That did not prevent Margaret from going on the honeymoon with Eleanor and Jackson—through New York City, to Niagara Falls, into Canada, back through Boston, West Point, and other places.
Margaret left almost the only record of the wedding trip. Once, she recalled, on a Sunday afternoon in Montreal, “it was a matter of surprise to the rest of us to find Jackson going out on Sunday afternoon to witness the drill of a Highland regiment. When the matter was reverted to … he defended himself stoutly for having done so, giving as a reason … that if anything was right and good in itself, and … he could not avail himself of it any time but Sunday, it was not wrong for him to do so.”
Eleanor disagreed, “quietly but firmly,” branding Jackson’s reasoning as sophistry, until Jackson said, “It is possible that my premises are wrong; when I get home I will go carefully over all this ground, and decide the matter for myself.”
The result was a rigid observance of Sunday quiet which was to be interrupted only by war, and then only under the most extenuating circumstances.
Margaret also left a vivid glimpse into Jackson’s nature, a moment on the honeymoon when “the military enthusiasm of Jackson’s character first revealed itself to me. My sister and I stood with him one magnificent August evening, on the Plains of Abraham, at the foot of the monument erected to General Wolfe. As he approached the monument, he took off his cap, as if he were in the presence of some sacred shrine … he stood a-tiptoe … appearing much taller than usual … thin, sensitive nostrils quivering with emotion, and his lips parting … as he turned his face toward the setting sun, swept his arm with a passionate movement around the plain, and exclaimed, quoting Wolfe’s dying words, ‘I die content!’”
“‘To die as he died, who would not die content!’”
Of the marriage, Jackson had warned his family only with an inscrutable sentence: “Tell Miss Eliza that she must be on the lookout for something in relation to me.”
Jackson paused on the honeymoon to write a physician friend from The Revere House in Boston, announcing his news thus: “I was married on the 4th instant to an intellectual, pure and lovely lady.”
The couple returned to Lexington in the fall, where Jackson took over the drilling of the enlarged cadet corps, and wrote his sister: “My wife is a great source of happiness. She has those requisites of which I used to speak to you.”
He sent Laura a lock of Eleanor’s hair, commenting, “This she reluctantly parts with because of its color, which she hopes may prove more acceptable to your taste than it has ever been to hers.”
Jackson and his wife visited often in the home of her parents. The Major found himself in agreement with Dr. Junkin, who was a strong Union man, and expressed decided ideas in discussions of politics, which were now charged with sectional conflict. In early 1854, Eleanor’s mother died. Jackson wrote of her passing: “She said she was not afraid to die, and that she found Jesus precious to her soul.… She asked us to kiss her and told her children to live near Jesus and to be kind to one another. Her death was no leaping into the dark.”
In the meager records left, Eleanor and “The Major,” as she called him, appear to have led a quiet, happy, normal life, with close relations to each of their families. During this time, for all his love of the Institute, Tom tried to land the chair of mathematics at the University of Virginia. He failed, even though he had a recommendation from Colonel R. E. Lee, the commandant at West Point.
Eleanor took a jolting stagecoach ride to visit Jackson’s relatives in Western Virginia in November, 1854, and when she returned went immediately to bed. She died in childbirth; the child was stillborn. Jackson announced her death to his family:
She has now gone on a glorious visit, though through a gloomy portal.… I look forward with delight to the day when I shall join her. Religion is all that I desire it to be. I am reconciled for my loss and have joy and hope of a future reunion where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.
A bit later he wrote of her as “pure and lovely companion of my happier days.… We loved each other on earth; and shall that love be diminished in eternity?”
For a year he busied himself with the cadets, the church, the concerns of his numerous cousins, and real estate; he bought a farm outside the village. He revealed the growing tension in the country when he wrote to Laura of a kinsman: “Say to him that I design following out his idea of locating some land in a Northern state, but that I am a little afraid to put much there for fear that in the event of a dissolution of the Union that the property of Southerners may be confiscated.”
Abruptly, in July of 1856, he changed his plans in a way to surprise all who knew him. He dropped his land ventures and went off to Europe. He had been promised leave the preceding year, for a European tour, and the postponed vacation was now offered by the Institute. He also wrote Laura that he could not get Eleanor out of his mind: “Yet even with you I would be reminded of the loss of that happiness which I once enjoyed with dear Ellie.”
His passport described him: “Stature 5 feet 9 and three-quarter inches, English; forehead full, eyes gray, nose aquiline; mouth small; chin oval; hair dark brown; face oval, complexion dark.” He then weighed about 175 pounds.
He sailed on the steamship Asia for Liverpool, on July ninth, intending to return in October. He began with a resolution to keep a journal, but lost that habit in England, where he toured the Lake Country, Scotland, and all accessible cathedrals and abbeys. In a letter to a friend, he sounded as if he recited from a travel folder with his account of that summer: “The Rhine, with its castellated banks and luxuriant vineyards; the sublime scenery of Switzerland, with her lofty Mont Blanc and massive Mer de Glace; the vestiges of Venetian beauty; the sculpture and paintings of Italy; the ruins of Rome; the beautiful Bay of Naples, illuminated by Vesuvius; and lovely France, with her gay capital.” Thus the savings intended for investment in Western lands went into these spectacles, which in assortment seem to have almost numbed the traveling Major.
He once wrote another friend: “I would advise you never to name my European trip to me unless you are blest with a superabundance of patience, as its very mention is calculated to bring up with it an almost inexhaustible assemblage of grand and beautiful associations.” He went on in such flowery terms abo
ut the glories of Florentine paintings and sculpture.
Among his visits, however, was one to Waterloo, where he went over the ground. He wrote no letters of this spot, but it is clear from his tireless study of former years that he knew the movements of Napoleon’s campaigns almost as well as his own marches through Lexington. He picked up a smattering of French on his tour, and afterward opened the mornings of his household by reading the Scriptures from a French Testament.
His ship was late in reaching New York on the return voyage, and for several days Jackson was overdue in Lexington. On his arrival a friend asked if he were not afflicted with impatience, in view of his habitual punctuality. “Not at all,” Jackson said. “I did all in my power to be here at the appointed time; but when the steamer was delayed by Providence, my responsibility was at an end.”
He returned to work with renewed vigor, but did not forget Eleanor; he was often seen standing over her grave. And he continued to live in the home of Dr. Junkin. Margaret wrote:
“After the death of my sister, it became the established custom that, at nine o’clock … I should go to his study for an hour or two of relaxation and chat. But if I knocked before the clock had struck, I would find him standing before his shaded light … silent … and dumb. Not one moment before the ninth stroke had died away, would he fling aside his shade, wheel around his easy chair, and give himself up to such delightful nonchalance that one questioned whether this could be the same man.… I came to know the man as never before. His early life … furnished material for endless reminiscence. The blow of his wife’s death was a terrible one to him, and when I would hear him say, ‘Ah, if it might only please God to let me go now!’ I marveled at the depth of his grief. And yet his resignation was very perfect, and to wear the aspect of cheerfulness became a fixed principle.
“… He would tell amusing stories, and be so carried away with them himself, as almost to roll from his chair in laughter. He used to tell of hungry raids upon Mexican gardens, where … officers would make their supper on raw quinces.… He was very fond of dancing at this time (in Mexico), and had no hesitation in being present at Sunday night balls. When surprise would be expressed at this, he would say, ‘Remember, I lived then up to all the light I had, and therefore I did not then, nor do I now reproach myself.’
“It was very evident that the charms of society never had so strong a hold upon him as when he was mingling freely with those beautiful Mexican women.”
It was not long before Jackson again electrified the town—with his second marriage. Just before his wedding to Eleanor he had met, in the home of his friend D. H. Hill, two interesting young women from North Carolina, Eugenia and Mary Anna Morrison, also daughters of a Presbyterian minister and college president.
Mary Anna recalled these days:
“We knew that he was soon to be married. He was very intimate at the house of Major Hill, and was the first gentleman to call on us.… His greeting was most cordial, and he very soon offered his services … saying … we must call upon him as we would upon a brother.”
Anna recalled that her pretty younger sister more often had dates, and thus Anna had the Major’s arm to herself; she called it “the brotherly wing”—when they went to church. She had a strong first impression of him:
“More soldierly-looking than anything else, his erect bearing and military dress being quite striking; but upon engaging in conversation, his open, animated countenance, and his clear complexion, tinged with the ruddy glow of health, were still more pleasing.… His head was a splendid one, large and finely formed, and covered with soft, dark-brown hair, which, if allowed to grow to any length, curled; but he had a horror of long hair for a man … he was at all times manly and noble-looking, and when in robust health he was a handsome man.”
She admitted that her description of him differed from that of others, but there is no indication that she was at first smitten with the Major, whom she saw go off on his honeymoon with Eleanor Junkin. The Morrison girls left Lexington, as did Major Hill, and they heard nothing from Jackson beyond the fact that his wife had died, until the Major shocked Anna with a letter full of such fond recollections of their acquaintance that the family knew she was in for a visit from Jackson.
Anna professed to be incredulous on the day she looked out the window of her father’s house in Lincoln County, North Carolina, and saw Jackson’s awkward figure approaching, unannounced.
Jackson had requested a leave of absence in the middle of the academic term, once he had determined to marry Anna—without notice to her. He got on well with Anna’s father, the retired president and founder of Davidson College, and a man connected with several of the leading families of North Carolina.
After the visit came tender letters, and an engagement. Jackson wrote:
In my daily walks I think much of you. I love to stroll abroad after the labors of the day are over, and indulge feelings of gratitude to God for all the sources of natural beauty with which he has adorned the earth.… As my mind dwells on you, I love to give it a devotional turn, by thinking of you as a gift from our Heavenly Father.
He followed this with one of the most revealing of all his letters.
I wish I could be with you tomorrow at your communion … my prayer will be for your growth in every Christian grace.… It is to me a great satisfaction that our Heavenly Father has so manifestly ordered our union.… When in prayer for you last Sabbath, the tears came to my eyes and I realized an unusual degree of emotional tenderness. I have not yet fully analyzed my feelings to my satisfaction, so as to arrive at the cause of such emotions; but I am disposed to think that it consisted in the idea of the intimate relation existing between you, as the object of my tender affection, and God, to whom I looked up as my Heavenly Father. I felt that as if it were a communion day for myself.
He did not forget the stern nature of his Lord, however. He wrote Anna upon news of the death of Major Hill’s son: “I was not surprised that little M. was taken away, as I have long regarded his father’s attachment for him as too strong; that is, so strong that he would be unwilling to give him up, though God should call for his own.”
They were married in July, 1857, at Cottage Home, the Morrison house in North Carolina. Anna had some bad moments, for her New York trousseau arrived just before the ceremony, and she had been forced to devise an emergency gown. She thought the minister gave an ominous ring to the phrase “indulgent husband” when he exacted promises of Jackson; the bridegroom, she recalled, was frozen stiff with fear.
He had been like a boy, almost childish, in advising Laura of the engagement:
I have an invitation for you; and what do you think it is? and who from?… I suppose you begin to think, Well, what does he mean? Why doesn’t he tell me at once and be done with it? Well, you see I have finished the first page of my letter … so that if I don’t tell you soon, you will hardly get it at all from this sheet. Well, now, having cultivated your patience a little, as all women are said to have curiosity, I will tell you that Miss Mary Anna Morrison, a friend of mine, in the western part of North Carolina … is engaged to be married to an acquaintance of yours living in this village, and she had requested me to urge you to attend her wedding in July next.…
Jackson gave Anna a gold watch and a set of seed pearls, and took her on a trip to Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Saratoga, and Niagara, some of the scenes of his first honeymoon. They did not neglect to stop at several watering places, for the health of the groom. Anna’s most vivid recorded memory was of climbing the Trinity Church spire in New York, to gaze down on the harbor, though she seemed to enjoy rowing about on a lake at Saratoga, poking through the water lilies with the Major at the oars.
Anna developed an enlarged gland in her neck, and Jackson took her to Virginia, to Rockbridge Alum Springs; the health of both improved. They returned to Lexington for the opening of a new school year, and Jackson installed her in a hotel, but he expressed a longing in a letter to a friend:
&
nbsp; I hope we shall be able to call some house our home.… I shall never be content until I am at the head of an establishment in which my friends can feel at home in Lexington. I have taken the first important step by securing a wife capable of making a happy home, and the next thing is to give her an opportunity.
Within a year he bought, on a side street, a big old house whose front steps crouched over the public walk; he spent time and money in renovation, and moved in two or three Negro servants, some plain furniture, and Anna. Mrs. Jackson brought with her a slave woman from North Carolina, one Hetty.
Jackson succumbed to domesticity. He studied a popular book, Buist’s Kitchen Garden, and with the aid of the Negroes produced huge vegetable crops on his farm outside the village.
He and Anna memorized the Shorter Catechism as a Sunday afternoon diversion since he had not learned it in youth. That was the mere beginning of tasks he set for his memory. He now made greater use of his walks to and from the campus by performing feats of mental exercise. He would begin as he left the door of his home, solving a series of complex mathematical problems, until he came to a final conclusion—as if he strode along tossing food to a trained animal. He became more expert at the solution of a variety of puzzles; in later years, he was to look upon terrain covered with combat troops, able in an intuitive flash to solve the difficulties presented. He traced the talent to his mental training in Lexington.
Anna was quickly made aware of the Jackson routine.
Jackson was up at 6 A.M., and knelt for private prayer. He then took a cold bath, every morning without exception. Next, a brisk walk, in rain or shine; in bad weather, he wore rubber cavalry boots and a heavy cloak.
At 7 A.M., family prayers, “which he required all his servants to attend promptly and regularly,” Anna recalled. “He never waited for anyone, not even his wife”
Next, breakfast, and Jackson was off for the Institute, where classes began at eight. He returned home at 11 A.M., done with his classroom duties.
They Called Him Stonewall Page 13
