The Story of First Lieutenant Thomas Jonathan Jackson_ [Essay Example], 792 words GradesFixer
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The Story of First Lieutenant Thomas Jonathan Jackson: [Essay Example], 792 words GradesFixer
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The Story of First Lieutenant Thomas Jonathan
Jackson
Categories: American Civil War (https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/american-civil-
war/)
Civil War (https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/civil-war/)
Thomas Jonathan Jackson was a great Confederate general that a big part of the
American Civil War, and he was one of the best known Confederate commander
after Superior general Robert E. Lee. Jackson was born on January 21, 1824 in
Clarksburg, West Virginia. His father was a lawyer and his name was Jonathan
Jackson, and his mother Julia Beckwith Neale which had four children, Jonathan was
the third kid that was born. When he was 2 his father and his older sister were killed
by typhoid fever. His mother struggled to make ends meet since she was an only
mother. In 1830 his mother married Blake Woodson, who did not care for his new step
children. Their mother died of bad health and so they went to live with their half-
uncle Cummins Jackson who owned a grist mill. There older brother Warren went a
different way and went to live with relatives on their mother's side, but later died of
tuberculosis.
Cummins Jackson was strict with Thomas, Jackson looked up to Cummins as a
schoolhouse teacher. Jackson was a good helper around the farm, tending to sheep
with the assistance of a sheepdog, driving herds of oxen and helping harvest wheat
and corn. Formal teaching was not easily to obtained, but he attended school
whenever and wherever he could. Most of the education Jackson had was self-
taught. He once shuffled a deal with one of his uncle's slaves, to give him pine knots
in order to get reading lessons. Thomas would stay up at night and read borrowed
books using the pine knots for lighting. In Virginia there was a law on giving
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11/29/23, 4:06 PM
The Story of First Lieutenant Thomas Jonathan Jackson: [Essay Example], 792 words GradesFixer
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education to a slave. Even though it was against the law Jackson secretly taught the
slave, as he had promised. When he became literate, the slave fled to Canada using
the Underground Railroad.
In his later years at the Jackson's Mill, Thomas was a school instructor. Then he was
given an appointment, in 1842, for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. After a
pretty slow start, he graduated 17th in his class and was a second lieutenant
assigned to artillery. He joined his regiment in Mexico, where the United States was at
war. He first met General Robert E. Lee during the Mexican War, who later became the
commanding general of the Confederate armies, and it was there that Jackson first
revealed the qualities he had and which he later became famous. The ability to keep
his head, and bravery in the face of enemy fire was resourceful. At the end of the
fighting in Mexico, he was promoted to first lieutenant and the brevet rank of major,
he was then assigned to the occupation forces in Mexico City. Finding service in the
peacetime army tedious, he resigned from his commission and became a professor
in artillery tactics and natural philosophy at the Virginia Military Institute in 1851.
Though he worked hard at his new duties, he never became a very popular or highly
successful teacher. As a stern and shy man, he earned a reputation for eccentricity
that followed him all the way to the end of his career. With his strong sense of duty
and his moral righteousness, along with great devotion to the education of cadets,
earned him the derisive title “Deacon Jackson” and he was compared with Oliver
Cromwell. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War he had offered his services to the state
of Virginia and was ordered to bring his VMI cadets from Lexington to Richmond. Very
soon after, he was given a commission as colonel in the state forces of Virginia and
was then charged with organizing unpaid workers into an effective Confederate
army brigade, this rapidly gained him fame and also advancement. He was
introduced to Anna by her sister Isabella. Jackson had recently accepted a teaching
position at a nearby Virginia Military Institute.
In 1853, Jackson married Elinor Junkin, the daughter of Washington College's
president, Dr. George Junkin. She died by childbirth the next October. Around
Christmas 1856, Jackson and Anna married in the front the parlor of Cottage Home
11/29/23, 4:06 PM
The Story of First Lieutenant Thomas Jonathan Jackson: [Essay Example], 792 words GradesFixer
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on July 16, 1857.They had bought a brick house on East Washington Street in
Lexington, and that’s where they lived from 1858 to the outbreak of the Civil War in
1861. Their first daughter, Mary Graham Jackson, sadly died in infancy in 1858, but
their second child, Julia Laura, was born in Charlotte on November 23, 1862, right
before the Battle of Fredericksburg. Then Jackson died on May 10, 1863 Guinea,
Virginia. The cause of his death was Pneumonia. Jackson was accidentally shot by
his own men, which is friendly fire, during the Battle of Chancellorsville and then he
died just a few days later.
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