“I do not recollect of ever having heard such a roar of musketry.” So declares Thomas Jonathan Jackson after the First Battle of Kernstown in Virgina. Jackson is more popularly known as General “Stonewall” Jackson.
Jackson and his 3,000 Confederate soldiers today fight a Union force of more than twice their size in an opening gambit to solidify control of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Jackson fights brilliantly, but the overwhelming numerical superiority of his foes force his Confederates to retreat at the end of the day, handing victory to the Union. It will be his only loss in what turns out to be a prolonged series of battles, in the coming months, known as the Valley Campaign.
Jackson, already having displayed legendary bravery at the Battle of Manassas the previous July, in the coming months burnishes his exalted status in the minds and hearts of white southerners. Yet in less than fifteen months, he will be dead, fatally wounded in the heat of battle by accidental friendly fire. The tragic death of such a piously religious general sears his legacy forever into the ethos of the white South, second only to Robert E. Lee.
As do other white Christians of the Confederacy, Southern Baptists look upon Jackson as one of the great hopes for southern independence. Jackson, in turn, understands Baptists: in his early formative years, he attended a Baptist congregation.
“Joseph Lightburn [a neighbor friend] … introduced Tom [Jackson] to the Bible. This changed Tom’s life. He devoured the Bible, reading all about the military campaigns in the Old Testament and the promise of hope and love in the New Testament. He attended church with the Lightburn family at the nearby Baptist church. Tom thought about entering the ministry when he grew older but abandoned the idea because he had a limited education and was embarrassed to speak in public.”
Thus Baptists imbued in young Tom Jackson a love of the Bible, and in the Bible the future general Stonewall Jackson began his military education.
Sources: Stonewall Jackson biography and photo (link); “Stonewall Jackson,” StonewallCountry.com (link); Battle of Kernstown (link)
