Stonewall Jackson has long been a figure of legend and romance. As much as any person in the Confederate pantheon—even Robert E. Lee—he embodies the romantic Southern notion of the virtuous lost cause. Jackson is also considered, without argument, one of our country’s greatest military figures. In April 1862, however, he was merely another Confederate general in an army fighting what seemed to be a losing cause. But by June he had engineered perhaps the greatest military campaign in American history and was one of the most famous men in the Western world. Jackson’s strategic innovations shattered the conventional wisdom of how war was waged; he was so far ahead of his time that his techniques would be studied generations into the future.
In his “magnificent Rebel Yell…S.C. Gwynne brings Jackson ferociously to life” (New York Newsday) in a swiftly vivid narrative that is rich with battle lore, biographical detail, and intense conflict among historical figures. Gwynne delves deep into Jackson’s private life and traces Jackson’s brilliant twenty-four-month career in the Civil War, the period that encompasses his rise from obscurity to fame and legend; his stunning effect on the course of the war itself; and his tragic death, which caused both North and South to grieve the loss of a remarkable American hero.
Chapter 2. The Imperfect Logic of War
Chapter 4. Discipline and Other Novel Ideas
Chapter 5. A Brilliant Retreat
Chapter 6. Maneuvers, Large and Small
Chapter 9. Scream of the Furies
Chapter 10. Glory and Darkness
Chapter 11. A Very Small, Very Bitter Fight
Chapter 12. A Highly Unusual Man
Chapter 13. The Embattled Professor
Chapter 14. Deliberately and Ingeniously Cloaked
Chapter 15. An Upright Citizen
Chapter 16. Where Is the Thunder of War?
Chapter 17. A Preternatural Calm
Chapter 18. A Season of Storms
Chapter 20. The Realm of the Possible
Chapter 21. A Jagged Line of Blood
Chapter 24. Hazards of Command
Chapter 26. The Professor’s Time/Speed/Distance Equation
Chapter 28. The Taking of Winchester
Chapter 29. Lincoln’s Perfect Trap
Chapter 30. A Strange Fondness for Traps
Chapter 31. Slaughter in a Small Place
Chapter 32. Acclaim, and a New Mission
Chapter 33. The Hilljack and the Society Boy
Chapter 34. The Defense of Richmond
Chapter 35. Victory by Any Other Name
Chapter 36. In Which Everything Changes
Chapter 37. No Backing Out This Day
Chapter 38. The Hum of a Beehive
Chapter 39. At Bay on His Baptismal Soil
Chapter 40. The Mongrel, Barefooted Crew
Chapter 41. The Blood-Washed Ground
Chapter 42. Stonewall Jackson’s Way
Chapter 44. Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man
Chapter 45. “An Iron Sabre Vowed to an Iron Lord”
Chapter 46. Immortality - Photographs
Appendix: Other Lives, Other Destinies