Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 25, 1990 TAG: 9004250253
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LEXINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Thirty years later, the Ohio factory worker owns a bust of Jackson, Jackson posters and Jackson biographies. He has visited the site of all of Jackson's Civil War battles, walked the famous Jackson flank march at Chancellorsville and stood where the general received the wounds that led to his death in 1863.
"It must have been divine intervention," says Gabbard of the long-ago visit that introduced him to his Confederate hero. "I never drive through Lexington without paying my respects."
For nearly 100 admirers of the general, this past weekend was a good time for paying respects.
Scholars, factory workers, a high-school history teacher, a mailman and others who find Jackson fascinating spent the weekend here for the biennial Stonewall Jackson Symposium.
Of course, Jackson admirers come to this historic city all the time, visiting Virginia Military Institute - where Jackson taught natural and experimental philosophy before the war - and Jackson's house on Washington Street.
But the Jackson symposium is for the truly devoted - the ones willing to pay $125 for admission, not to mention travel from as far away as Wisconsin, Texas and Ohio, just to attend. "It's difficult to make generalizations," said Michael Lynn, director of the Stonewall Jackson House, when she was asked to describe the symposium crowd. "They come from a wide variety of educational backgrounds. They have a wide variety of interests."
Once here, they may learn much Jackson arcana, such as the report that a VMI cadet once attempted to drop a brick on Jackson's head - from three stories up.
Emory Thomas, a University of Georgia history professor, drew anecdotes and information from Allen Tate's 1928 biography "Stonewall Jackson, The Good Soldier" in the symposium's keynote address Friday night.
The pre-Civil War students at VMI did not like Jackson, who "was responsible for a lot of courts-martial at VMI, a lot of arrests. He was not a very good teacher," Thomas said.
He was, however, a great general by most accounts. He won fame here and abroad for the successes of his swift-moving Confederate foot soldiers before he succumbed to the wounds he received while leading his troops at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
Thomas spoke of "contrasts and paradoxes - perhaps in some cases oxymorons" in the life of Jackson, a man few pre-war Lexington citizens had marked for greatness.
Tate was more direct in his writings: "They thought he was crank at best; at worst a fool."
The Jackson symposium is sponsored by the Stonewall Jackson House, which is owned by the privately funded Historic Lexington Foundation. The Stonewall Jackson House offers a range of educational activities related to Jackson and the culture of the area, said Lynn.
Because the museum's staff is small and 9 1 JACKSON Jackson new scholarly research emerges slowly, the symposiums are held every other year instead of annually, she said. The first was held in 1986.
Each offers not only reports on research into Jackson's military career, but also glimpses of his early life and character. "It's not a strictly guns-and-smoke approach," Lynn said.
On Saturday, Gary Gallagher, a Penn State history professor, lectured on Jackson's famous Shenandoah Valley campaign. Then Katharine Brown, director of the Woodrow Wilson birthplace, talked about a trip Jackson took with his first wife, Elinor, to Highland and Bath counties in 1854.
James Robertson, Jr., of the Virginia Tech faculty, ended the program Saturday night with a lecture on "The Abiding Faith of Stonewall Jackson."
Afterward, Jackson buffs said the symposium had been a good one.
"They're all good," said Douglas Shanz, a Roanoke mailman who has been to all three symposiums.
"I think it feels good to feel good about people in history," said James Morris, a history teacher from Lebanon, Ohio, trying to explain the general's appeal.
Morris said he actually admires Robert E. Lee - who served as president of Lexington's Washington and Lee University after the war - a little more than Jackson. "Lee is my biggie. But Jackson is right up there."
For others, such as Gabbard, there is no contest, however.
"I know Stonewall better than I know my own family," said Gabbard. "I like him because he was religious, he was straightforward. All Lee had to do was suggest something, and he'd do it."
Said Shanz of Jackson:
"He's just my hero, that's all."
by CNB