DATE: Sunday, May 18, 1997                  TAG: 9705070711

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review 

SOURCE: CHILES T.A. LARSON 

                                            LENGTH:   84 lines

STONEWALL'S STORY VA. TECH PROFESSOR SCOURED ORIGINAL SOURCES ON GEN. THOMAS L. JACKSON

STONEWALL JACKSON

The Man, the Soldier, the Legend

JAMES I. ROBERTSON JR.

Macmillan Publishing USA. Simon & Schuster Macmillan. 924 pp. $40.

Stonewall Jackson seems never to have been far from James I. Robertson Jr.'s thoughts.

Now a professor at Virginia Tech, Robertson wrote his first term paper in the fifth grade at Danville's Forrest Hills Elementary School on the Confederate general. His doctoral dissertation at Emory University was on the Stonewall Brigade.

Robertson, a leading Civil War historian, spent four years in the making of his brilliant Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend. Though there have been about three dozen Jackson biographies published since 1866, the authors of many of them, Robertson notes, started with preconceptions they wanted to prove. Robertson took the reverse approach: He set out to uncover as many unpublished primary sources as possible to learn what made Jackson, considered one of the greatest military commanders in world history, tick.

Among the numerous sources Robertson uncovered was the little black book of axioms that Thomas Jonathan Jackson started keeping at West Point. These formed the underpinnings of his character and guided him throughout his life - a life marked by commitment to family, devotion to duty and strong spiritual faith.

Robertson carefully examines Jackson's childhood for clues to the man who later would seem a paradox to many. His upbringing, writes Robertson, was ``so filled with loneliness that he would not discuss it in later years.''

Jackson's father and sister died when he was 2; five years later, after his mother's death, he was sent to live with an uncle. Although the uncle provided security and material things, he was not nurturing. Jackson ``developed an unwavering honesty, a powerful sense of integrity and deep feelings of responsibility; and he did it all with a minimum of formal education as well as little or no religious training.''

Admitted to West Point after another appointee left, Jackson, considered an oddball, struggled to keep pace with other cadets. Through sheer determination and long hours of study, he graduated in the top third of his class. The story among his classmates was that Jackson would have finished first if he'd had another year at the academy.

Service in the Mexican War brought Jackson three brevet promotions for heroism and acquaintance with Robert E. Lee, his eventual Civil War commander. But the ensuing years only brought him frustrations and an exit from the army, though not from military service. He accepted a professorship at Virginia Military Institute, where he again struggled with textbooks. A lackluster teacher at best during his decade at VMI, Jackson was frequently the subject of student pranks. He endured them with absent-minded grace while earning people's respect.

During his VMI tenure, Jackson was drawn to the Christian faith and to marriage. Both his first wife and child died in childbirth. In time, he remarried and experienced a period of great happiness, only to have it blunted by the outbreak of the Civil War.

With the first Battle of Bull Run, the true measure of Jackson, the man and soldier, began merging with Stonewall, the legend, Robertson says. It was in Manassas that Confederate General Barnard E. Bee, in rallying his troops, saw Jackson's line and hailed, ``There is Jackson standing like a stone wall.''

But in less than two years, during what would prove to be the high-water mark of the Confederate cause, the 39-year-old Jackson would be mortally wounded by friendly fire at Chancellorsville.

Jackson, whose formula for victory was discipline, secrecy and lightning-like moves, was constantly marching and fighting. His most famous campaign ranged over the Shenandoah Valley, where in a span of 32 days, he defeated separate Union armies at McDowell, Front Royal, Winchester, Cross Keys and Port Republic, before removing his war-weary ``foot calvary'' to Lee's defense of Richmond.

Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend is a colorful mosaic of a towering figure. Thanks to Robertson's impeccable scholarship, the man of stony silence still speaks today. MEMO: Chiles Larson is a photojournalist who lives in Ivy, Va. ILLUSTRATION: Phot

FILE

Thomas J. Jackson's statue stands outside VMI, where he taught

before the Civil War.

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