STONEWALL JACKSON: THE MAN, THE SOLDIER, THE LEGEND, by James I. Robertson, Jr. (Macmillan Publishing, 940 pages, $40.00).
“You maybe what ever you resolve to be” was one of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson’s favorite axioms, and in this thoroughly researched biography,Robertson, one of the country’s leading Civil War historians, examines why this Confederate general’s unfaltering determination made him an enduring legend.Robertson traces Jackson’s life from Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia),where he grew up an orphan, through his lonely years at the United States Military Academy at West Point and his participation in the Mexican War, to his appointment in 1861 to the rank of colonel in the Confederate Army and his untimely death at the hands of Confederate troops, who mistook him for a Union soldier. The author’s extensive bibliography and notes complete this comprehensive look at the man who inspired many Americans to conclude that”had Jackson lived, the Confederate quest for independence would have come much closer to realization.”
