[DL] Stonewall Jackson

[Xotzil@aol.com]

Came across this in the book I'm currently reading "A Walk in the Woods" by 
Bill Bryson. It's ostensibly about him trying to talk the Appalachian trail, 
but he throws in lots of asides about the places he passes and his 
observations on things that have gone on there. This one kind of put me in a 
Deadlandsy mood.

* * * * *

"Now Stonewall Jackson is a man worth taking an interest in. Few people in 
history have achieved greater fame in a shorter period with less useful 
activity in the brainbox than Gen. Thomas J. Jackson. His idiocyncrasies were 
legendary. He was hopelessly, but inventively, hypochondriacal. One of his 
more engaging physiological beliefs was that one arm was bigger than the 
other, and in consequence he always walked and rode with that arm raised, so 
that his blood would drain into his body. He was a champion sleeper. More 
than once, he fell asleep at the dinner table with food in his mouth. At the 
Battle of White Oak Swamp, his lieutenants found it all but impossible to 
rouse him and lifted him, insensible, on to his horse, where he continued to 
slumber while shells exploded around him. He took obsessive zeal in recording 
captured goods and would defend them at all costs. His list of materiel 
liberated from the Union Army during the 1862 Shenandoah campaign included 
"six handkerchiefs, two and three quarter doze
n neckties, and one bottle of red ink." He drove his superiors and fellow 
officers to fury, partly by repeatedly disobeying instructions and partly by 
his paranoid habit of refusing to divulge his strategies, such as they were, 
to anyone. One officer under his command was ordered to withdraw from the 
town of Gordonsville, where he was on the brink of a signal victory, and 
march on the double to Staunton. Arriving in Staunton, he found fresh orders 
to go at once to Mount Crawford. There he was told to return to Gordonsville."

"It was largely because of his habit of marching troops all over the 
Shenendoah Valley in an illogical and inexplicable fashion that Jackson 
earned a reputation among bewildered enemy officers for wiliness. His 
ineradicable fame rests almost entirely on the fact that he had a couple of 
small but inspiring victories when elsewhere Southern troops were being 
slaughtered and routed and by dint of having the best nickname any soldier 
has ever enjoyed. He was unquestionably brave, but in fact it is altogether 
possible that he was given that nickname not for gallantry and daring, but 
for standing inert, like a stone wall, when a charge was called for. General 
Bernard Bee, who gave him the name at the First Battle of Manasasas, was 
killed before the day was out, so the matter will remain forever unsolvable."

"His victory at Harper's Ferry, the greatest triumph for the Confederacy in 
the Civil War, was almost entirely because for once he followed the 
instructions of Robert E. Lee. It sealed his fame. A few months later he was 
accidentally shot by his own troops at the Battle of Chancellorsville and 
died eight days later. The war was barely half over. He was just thirty-nine."

* * * * *

The above got me to thinking. What if some of the "great military minds" are 
in fact being given their marching orders by manitou instead? A kind of 
"Military Hucksterism." Clever battle plans are garnered by giving manitou 
what they ask for (increasingly odd behaviour, perhaps?), which increases the 
fear and mistrust of the troops to their leaders.

Of course, the "plans" they are giving the leaders are also being 
co-ordinated with manitou doing exactly the same thing on the other side, to 
prolong the war even more, and drive the fear level and the death toll up 
ever higher...

Might make an interesting basis for a campaign.

(all of the above quoting is taken from "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson, 
pages 171-172)

--Jacques