LIEUT.-GEN. STONEWALL JACKSON.

CHAPTER XV.

Boyhood of Thomas Jonathan Jackson.-His experience at West Point.-His studies and habits.-A novel analysis of awkward manners.-Jackson's promotions in the Mexican War.-His love of fight.-Recollections of "Fool Tom Jackson" at Lexington.-A study of his face and character.-His prayers for "the Union."-A reflection on Christian influences in America.-Jackson appointed a colonel in the Virginia forces.-In command at Harper's Ferry.-Constitution of the "Stonewall Brigade."-Jackson promoted to Brigadier.-His action on the field of Manassas. He turns the enemy's flank and breaks his centre.-How much of the victory was due him.-His expedition towards the head waters of the Potomac.

THOMAS JONATHAN JACKSON was born at Clarksburg, in Harrison county, Virginia, in 1824. He came of a Scotch-Irish family that had settled in Virginia in 1748; and a perhaps fanciful relation has been traced between his ancestral stock and that of Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States. In 1827, he was left one of three penniless orphans; his father, Jonathan Jackson, a lawyer of moderate repute, and a man of social and facile temper, having wrecked a good estate by an imprudent and irregular life. The early life of the orphan was harsh and erratic. He found shelter with one or another of his relatives, until at last he obtained a pleasant home and countenance in the house of an uncle, Cummins Jackson, residing in Lewis county. Here he remained until he was sixteen years old. The early adversity and buffet of his life appear to have inspired the boy with singular determination; and among the first signs of character we find in him is a sensitive ambition reflecting painfully on his dependence on his relatives, and coupled with the resolution to reinstate himself in the ranks of his kindred, and rise from the position to which orphanage and destitution had thrust him.