Almost Exactly What I Was Hoping For

I've wanted to read a biography of the oddity known as "Stonewall" Jackson for a long time. S. C. Gwynne's Rebel Yell was almost exactly what I was hoping for in that it examined a fascinating and historically significant man with a bewildering combination of strong characteristics. I got a gripping story told in abundant detail: here was the tactical brilliance, the Christian piety, the weird quirks, the strict discipline, the hypochondria, the slave-owning, the stated tenderness toward blacks, and the burning desire for the Confederacy to stage a no-prisoners war of city-razing and slaughter. And it was all told in clear and elegant prose.

But although I enjoyed this long walk down a weird, sometimes beautiful, sometimes horrifying path, I did find some irritating stones in my shoe now and then.

Gwynne ends his book with some quotations of praise for Jackson from northerners, including Union soldiers who fought against him. Yeah, that's weird. Americans didn't wake up after V-J day to find newspapers touting the courage of Admiral Yamamoto. We didn't read after Osama bin Laden was killed about his brilliance. And yet Union newspapers, in the days just after Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson's death, praised him for his military genius, his bravery, and his Christian and moral convictions. That's super-interesting, and I'm glad Gwynne reported it. But I also felt, after having read the whole book, that the author included this material partly to justify his own admiration for Jackson.

OK, admiring the admirable in your flawed subject is just fine for a biographer. But, as I see it, Gwynne stepped over a line a few times. Consider his statement that Jackson never broke a law. First of all, Gwynne himself tells elsewhere of Jackson breaking the law in holding a Sunday School for slaves. But secondly, can we really say that a person can join a movement that declares its political independence from its mother country and then seize a military installation of that mother country without breaking a law? Isn't the point of rebellion that the rebels have decided they have to break the law and fight to the point that they won't be punished for breaking that law? We must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall hang separately, right?

One of the northern admirers Gwynne quotes near the end said he hoped Jackson's admirable traits could be laid against his betrayal of his country. That's an interesting sentiment to ponder. But it's the only hint in the whole book that Jackson's stand with the seceded states was a betrayal. Gwynne says that, at the crucial moment in April 1865, Jackson saw his loyalty to his state as higher than that to the United States. Come on! Surely at this point in our history, any responsible biography of Jackson (or of any of several of his similarly situated colleagues) needs to point out, at least, that as an officer in the United States Army, he had taken a solemn oath to protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, to bear allegiance to her, and to obey the President. We shouldn't have to expect to read an author telling us with a yawn, "Oh well, he just decided that it was more important to be an enemy than to fulfill his oath to defend the United States from enemies."

But this attitude of treating treason as too insignificant to mention only came to the surface briefly a handful of times. Aside from that, this book was exactly what I was hoping for.