Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson (January 21, 1824 – May 10, 1863) was a Confederate general and military officer who served during the American Civil War. He played a prominent role in nearly all military engagements in the eastern theater of the war until his death. Military historians regard him as one of the most gifted tactical commanders in U.S. history.
Born in what was then part of Virginia (now in West Virginia), Jackson received an appointment to the United States Military Academy, graduating in the class of 1846. He served in the United States Army during the Mexican–American War, distinguishing himself at the Battle of Chapultepec. From 1851 to 1861, he taught at the Virginia Military Institute.
When Virginia seceded from the United States in May 1861 after the Battle of Fort Sumter, Jackson joined the Confederate States Army. He distinguished himself commanding a brigade at the First Battle of Bull Run in July, providing crucial reinforcements and beating back a fierce Union assault. Thus Barnard E. Bee compared him to a "stone wall", which became his enduring nickname.
Jackson performed exceptionally well in various campaigns over the next two years. On May 2, 1863, he was accidentally shot by Confederate pickets. He lost his left arm to amputation. Weakened by his wounds, he died of pneumonia eight days later. Jackson's death was a severe setback for the Confederacy. After his death, his military exploits developed a legendary quality, becoming an important element of the pseudohistorical ideology of the "Lost Cause".
Thomas Jonathan Jackson was a great-grandson of John Jackson (1715/1719–1801) and Elizabeth Cummins (also known as Elizabeth Comings and Elizabeth Needles) (1723–1828). John Jackson was an Ulster-Scots Protestant from Coleraine, County Londonderry, in the north of Ireland. While living in London, England, he was convicted of the capital crime of larceny for stealing £170 (equivalent to £32,589 in 2025); the judge at the Old Bailey sentenced him to seven years penal transportation. Elizabeth, a strong, blonde woman almost 6 feet (180 cm) tall, born in London, was also convicted of felony larceny in an unrelated case for stealing 19 pieces of silver, jewelry, and fine lace, and received a similar sentence. They both were transported on the merchant ship Litchfield, which departed London in May 1749 with 150 convicts. John and Elizabeth met on board and were in love by the time the ship arrived at Annapolis, Maryland. Although they were sent to different locations in Maryland for their bond service, the couple married in July 1755.
The family migrated west across the Blue Ridge Mountains to settle near Moorefield, Virginia (in Hardy County now in West Virginia) in 1758. In 1770, they moved farther west to the Tygart Valley. They began to acquire large parcels of virgin farming land near the present-day town of Buckhannon (the Hardy County seat), including 3,000 acres (12 km2) in Elizabeth's name. John and his two teenage sons volunteered to serve their new county in the American Revolutionary War, traveling southeast to fight in the Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780; John finished the war as captain and served as a lieutenant of the Virginia militia after 1787. While the men were in the Army, Elizabeth converted their home to a haven, "Jackson's Fort", for refugees from Indian attacks.
John and Elizabeth had eight children. Their second son was Edward Jackson (1759–1828), and Edward's third son was Jonathan Jackson, Thomas's father. Jonathan's mother died on April 17, 1796. Three years later, on October 13, 1799, his father married Elizabeth Wetherholt, and they had nine more children.
Thomas Jackson was born on January 21, 1824 in the town of Clarksburg, the Harrison County seat named after the Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark, and on a historic road which in the 1830s became the Northwestern Turnpike. He was the third child of Julia Beckwith (née Neale) Jackson (1798–1831) and her attorney husband, Jonathan Jackson (1790–1826). Both of Jackson's parents had been born in Virginia; Julia's family came from nearby Parkersburg on the Ohio River. They married in 1817 and settled in Clarksburg, where Julia bore a daughter Elizabeth in 1819, and a son Warren in 1821. Thomas was named for his maternal grandfather. Some dispute the actual location of Jackson's birth. A historical marker on the floodwall in Parkersburg, claims that he was born in a cabin near that spot when his mother was visiting her parents. Some contend that in Jackson's early childhood, he was called "The Real Macaroni", though the origin of the nickname and whether it really existed are unclear.
Thomas's sister Elizabeth (age six) died of typhoid fever on March 6, 1826, with two-year-old Thomas at her bedside. His father also died of typhoid fever on March 26, 1827, after nursing his daughter. Jackson's mother gave birth to his sister (and later this man's confidante) Laura Ann the day after Jackson's father died. Julia Jackson thus was widowed at 28, with three young children (including the newborn), and her husband's debts (as Jonathan Jackson had been a compulsive gambler and poor business manager) She sold the family's possessions to pay the debts, and the local Masonic order offered her the use of a small (twelve foot square) one room house. Julia took in sewing and opened a private school to support herself and her three young children for about four years.
In 1830, Julia Neale Jackson remarried, to a widower fifteen years older than her, and with eight children scattered in various places, against her friends' advice. Her new husband, Captain Blake B. Woodson, was an attorney who descended from the First Families of Virginia and Revolutionary War patriot John Woodson. His father (Miller Woodson) had been the Cumberland County clerk of court, and Blake B. Woodson had served one term in the Virginia House of Delegates (1807-1808) representing Cumberland County before moving westward and becoming the Fayette County clerk. They lived near the county seat of Fayetteville in the New River Valley. Unfortunately for this boy and his siblings, Woodson was harsh and verbally abusive. By the fall of 1831, Julia decided to send her children to live with relatives. Warren, Julia's eldest son, moved to live with his uncle Alfred Neale near Parkersburg, and at the age of sixteen, he was hired to teach in Upshur County. Julia moved to Fayette County with her other two children, Thomas and Laura, but remained in poor health. Caring for the children proved such a strain, that she agreed to let their Grandmother Jackson take them to her home in Lewis County (formed from Harrison County), about four miles north of the county seat of Weston, where she lived with her unmarried daughters and sons. This boy's grandmother sent one of her sons (this boy's uncle) and a slave to Fayette County to retrieve the children. When he arrived and revealed the purpose of his visit, a commotion arose among the children, who did not want to leave their mother. Thomas, now six years old, slipped away to the nearby woods, where he hid, only returning to the house at nightfall. After a day or two of coaxing and numerous bribes, the uncle finally with the help of their mother persuaded the children to make the trip, which took several days. When they arrived at Jackson's Mill, they became the pets of an indulgent grandmother, two maiden aunts, and several bachelor uncles, all of whom were known for their great kindness of heart and strong family attachment. However, on December 4, 1831, after giving birth to Thomas's half-brother, William Wirt Woodson, Julia died of complications. Julia was buried in an unmarked grave in a homemade coffin in Westlake Cemetery along the James River and Kanawha Turnpike in Fayette County, within the corporate limits of present-day Ansted.
Then in August 1835, Thomas and Laura's grandmother died.
Working and teaching at Jackson's Mill
As their mother's health continued to fail, Jackson and his sister Laura Ann were sent to live with their half-uncle, Cummins Jackson, who owned a grist mill in Jackson's Mill (near present-day Weston in Lewis County in central West Virginia). Their older brother, Warren, went to live with other relatives on his mother's side of the family, but he later died of tuberculosis in 1841 at the age of twenty. Thomas and Laura Ann returned from Jackson's Mill in November 1831 to be at their dying mother's bedside. They spent four years together at the Mill before being separated—Laura Ann was sent to live with her mother's family, Thomas to live with his Aunt Polly (his father's sister) and her husband, Isaac Brake, on a farm four miles from Clarksburg. Thomas was treated by Brake as an outsider and, having suffered verbal abuse for over a year, ran away from the family. When his cousin in Clarksburg urged him to return to Aunt Polly's, he replied, "Maybe I ought to, ma'am, but I am not going to." He walked eighteen miles through mountain wilderness to Jackson's Mill, where he was welcomed by his uncles and he remained there for the following seven years.