Jackson

published Alaska, and Missions on the North
Pacific Coast (1880), The Presbyterian Church
in Alaska, An Official Sketch of its Rise and
Progress,1877-84 (1886), Introduction of Rein-
deer into Alaska . . . 1890 (1890) and subse-
quent reports, and the sections on reindeer and
on education in Seal and Salmon Fisheries and
General Resources of Alaska (1898), vol. III.
From 1887 to 1897 he edited the North Star, of
Sitka. In May 1897 he was elected moderator
of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church, the highest honor his denomination can
confer.

Sheldon Jackson, as an academy and college
student, was noted by his associates for his di-
minutive stature and his full-grown determina-
tion to master every task set before him, not-
withstanding his handicap of weak eyes and fre-
quent attacks of illness. A rugged life in the
open, after he had concluded student days and
removed to the West, soon gave to his slight
body a sturdiness quite in keeping with the great
heart and humanitarian ambition of the man.
In the fortieth year of his strenuous activities
in the Rocky Mountain states and in Alaska, a
newspaper correspondent characterized him as
"short, bewhiskered, and bespectacled. By in-
side measurement a giant" (Stewart, post, p.
31). Devoted to his work until the end, he de-
livered his last address in the interest of Alaska
a few days before undergoing an operation from
which he did not recover. He died at Asheville,
N. C, shortly before his seventy-fifth birthday.

[R. L. Stewart, Sheldon Jackson (1908); J. T. Fans,
The Alaskan Pathfinder (1913); Necrological Report
. . . of Princeton Theol. Sem., 1910; A, V. Raymond,
Union Univ. (1907), vol. II; L. D. Henderson, Alaska
(1928) ; Who's Who in America, 1908-09 ; Home Mis-
sion Monthly, July, Sept. 1909; Asheville Gazette
News, May 3, 1909.] R.J.D.

JACKSON, THOMAS JONATHAN (Jan.
21, i824-May 10, 1863), best known as "Stone-
wall" Jackson, Confederate soldier, was born
at Clarksburg, Va. (now W. Va.)* His great-
grandfather, John Jackson, who came to Amer-
ica in 1748 and finally settled in western Vir-
ginia, though born in England was of Scotch-
Irish stock. Thomas was the second son and
the third of four children of Jonathan Jackson,
a lawyer, and Julia Beckwith (Neale) Jackson,
and, as his parents died in poverty during his
early childhood, he was reared by his uncle,
Cummins E. Jackson. He himself added the
name Jonathan when nearly grown. Entering
West Point in July 1842, much handicapped by
a poor preliminary education, he "studied very
hard/' by his own admission, "for what he got,"
aad was so engrossed in his work that he said

Jackson

afterward he did not remember having spoken
to a single woman during his whole cadetship;
but he rose steadily in his grades, year by year,
and in 1846 graduated seventeenth in a class of
fifty-nine that included G. B. McClellan, A. P.
Hill, and others of scarcely less subsequent dis-
tinction. Sent almost immediately to Mexico,
he was distinguished at Vera Cruz, at Cerro
Gordo, and at Chapultepec, became a major by
brevet within eighteen months after graduation,
and was publicly complimented by General
Scott. Returning to the United States in 1848,
he served at Fort Columbus (1848) and Fort
Hamilton (1849-51), N. Y., and was sent to
Florida in the latter year, but accepted the pro-
fessorship of artillery tactics and natural phi-
losophy at the Virginia Military Institute, Lex-
ington, Va., in 1851, and resigned from the army,
effective Feb. 29, 1852.

Jackson was not especially successful as a
teacher and was the butt of many a cadet joke.
While at Lexington he found his chief satisfac-
tions in travel, in the fellowship of the Presby-
terian church, and in a very sunny domestic life.
His first wife, Eleanor Junkin, died in the fall
of 1854, fourteen months after she wedded him,
and on July 16, 1857, he* married Mary Anna
Morrison. Both his wives were the daughters
of Presbyterian ministers. He often spent his
summer vacations in the North and in 1856 trav-
eled five months in Europe, where he seems to
have been more interested in scenery and art
than in the military establishments of the great
powers. He had no part in public affairs prior
to the Civil War, beyond that of commanding
the cadet corps at the hanging of John Brown,
on Dec. 2, 1859. A Democrat and the owner of
a few slaves, most of whom he bought at their
own request, he deplored the prospect of war,
which he described as the "sum of all evils."

Ordered to Richmond on Apr. 21, 1861, with
part of the cadet corps, Jackson was so little
known that when his name was presented for
a commfssion a member of the Virginia conven-
tion inquired, "Who is this Major Jackson?"
He was soon sent to Harper's Ferry as colonel
of infantry, and on June 17,1861, was made brig-
adier-general. Having brought his command to
high efficiency, he moved it with the rest of
Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army to the battle-
field of Bull Run, where it steadfastly sustained
the Federal onslaught at a critical moment.
"There is Jackson standing like a stone wall,"
cried Brig.-Gen. Barnard E. Bee, as his own
troops retreated (Charleston Mercury, July 25,
1861). This incident gave Jackson his sobri-
quet of "Stonewall," which he always insisted

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