Stonewall Jackson

I just started reading a biography of Stonewall Jackson. Its amazing how many misconceptions I have about the man. I am very much aware of all the "strange" ideas that Stonewall had and I think I'm finally understanding why he was the way he was.

Thomas J. Jackson was known for his strange ideas. He never sat with his back against the back of a chair. Why? It caused your organs to get bunched up together. He never ate pepper because it caused pain in his left leg. He would ride his horse with his arm in the air. he sucked on lemons. When he taught school, he memorized the text book and just recited it. The list goes on and on. Stonewall Jackson was, indeed, a strange man. But what would cause him to go to such extremes. I think that we need to take a good look at his early life. This could explain a lot.

When he was very young, Thomas' father died. His father had been rather wealthy, but as fast as he would make money, he also spent money. So that by the time of his death, he was broke. Thomas' mother remarried shortly after, but she married a man who was broke as well. His mother and stepfather could not afford to raise him so they sent him to live with his father's brother who was rather wealthy himself. About a year later, Thomas's mother died. This all occurred by the time that he was seven years old.

My thoughts about the lifestyle that Stonewall Jackson chose as an adult, probably has a lot to do with the lack of control of his life that he had as a young boy. Then as a young adult, death seemed to surround him: his first wife died in childbirth, that child also died, he and his second wife had a child who died shortly after birth. It probably seemed to him that his life was swirling out of control. When you are spiraling like that, the only way to gain control is to control your actions....ALL your actions and I believe that he would do some of these things to keep some control in his life. It all seems so odd to us, now, but to Stonewall, these were perfectly normal.

I guess my main point here is that we can hear things about people and look at them as odd, strange, weird, whatever adjective you want to give them. But sometimes we have to take a good look into their lives to understand why they do the things they do. Sometimes tragedy in the lives of a person and drastically change their perspective....and then we have to stop and understand why they changed. This is one reason that I love to read biographies. We can delve into the lives of some of the leaders from the past and understand why they were the way they were. It makes history so much more interesting!