ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 30, 1997 TAG: 9703280029
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO BOOK REVIEW
BOOKMARKS
Definitive biography of a local hero
Reviewed by DONLAN PIEDMONT
STONEWALL JACKSON: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend. By James I. Robertson Jr. Macmillan. $40.
Let it be said up front, and with no ambiguity, that this new biography of Stonewall Jackson by Virginia Tech's Professor James Robertson is a dazzling piece of work. Next to its meticulous scholarship, original insights and crisp writing, previous biographies of the great warrior seem inadequate, and future ones might not be necessary. One cannot say enough good things about this well-researched and well-written book.
Robertson has mined a lode of unknown or overlooked manuscripts, memoirs and letters to produce a memorable portrait of this eccentric, pious, complex soldier. Jackson grew up an orphan in the homes of various kin in Western Virginia, learning outdoor skills and picking up a rudimentary education. Through family connections he entered West Point, totally unprepared for its academic rigors; by iron self-discipline, he survived, prospered and was commissioned.
In the Mexican War, Jackson fought with distinction. In postwar Army posts, he was bored and frustrated (though it was during his assignment at Fort Hamilton, N.Y., that he was baptized into the Episcopal faith.)
He resigned his commission when he applied for and received a teaching post at Virginia Military Institute, where he was regarded as something less than inspiring. ``Single-mindedness is a great asset in an army commander,'' Robertson says about Jackson's classroom performance, ``but deadly in a college professor.'' Jackson was the target of jokes and uncomplimentary nicknames, but many of those who called him ``Tom Fool'' later marched, fought and bled under his flag.
Jackson spent 10 years in Lexington, surviving bachelorhood and the deaths of a wife and child, then finding happiness with a new wife. He had a home and some modest but successful financial investments. In the Lexington Presbyterian Church he served as a deacon, helped establish a Sunday school for black children and, above all, found in the church a sublime faith that sustained him in the trials ahead.
All of his adult life, Jackson put himself in the hands of his God. So, when Virginia seceded from the Union, Jackson saw it as God's will. Like Lee and others, he offered his sword to his native state. Inspired with faith and immune from the burden of second thoughts, Jackson went riding to war, never forgetting that the first duty of the soldier was to fight to win.
All of this Robertson describes in lucid, readable prose. The complex details of Jackson's enduring battlefield successes are invested with clarity and with such a sense of excitement that the reader is eager to turn the page to see how things come out.
Part of Robertson's gift is encapsulating the essence of a man in a few words. Beauregard, for example, was ``much ambition and some ability.'' General Taylor ``spoke French like a native and cursed like a sailor.'' Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy's secretary of war, was ``a consummate politician who combined shrewdness, diplomacy and a smiling aplomb into a mixture that was not always palatable.''
Robertson notes frequently that Jackson in combat was impatient, angry and not very forgiving of mistakes. He demanded from subordinates a degree of obedience to orders as rigid as his own, and when it was lacking, he arrested some officers and brought charges against others. Jackson once publicly insulted one officer, had continuing problems with General A.P. Hill and in effect drove D.H. Hill, his brother-in-law, to transfer from his command.
Yet, as Robertson is quick to establish, the man who once urged his men to kill enemy soldiers and who exhibited notable bravery, was also capable of great tenderness, as shown by letters to his wife. His loving behavior with his infant daughter astonished his staff. In their 1862-63 winter quarters, a 6-year-old child of the host family ``captured Jackson's heart ... entertaining him with her childish prattle.'' He became ``a tender companion, frolicking with a small child.'' When she died of scarlet fever, Jackson was overcome with grief.
As a field commander, he was not without flaws. He refused to share his plans with the men responsible for implementing them, feeling that obedience, not understanding, was all that was required. His impetuosity sometimes led him into action before his forces were ready. Yet in battle his personal magnetism and leadership often produced victory where it had seemed unlikely.
Some historians have criticized Jackson for his putative ``failure'' at White Oak Swamp in the Seven Days Battle. Robertson disposes of this criticism of lethargic inaction there by pointing out that Jackson received no orders to attack. ``If General Lee had wanted me he could have sent for me,'' Jackson told his staff.
At Chancellorsville, Lee audaciously divided his army and sent Jackson on his great successful flanking movement against Hooker. Robertson believes that this ``accomplishment was greater than many of Jackson's more famous marches in the Shenandoah Valley.'' Its greatness, however, was achieved at a fearful cost, for in it Jackson was wounded - fatally - by his own men.
In his emotionally wrenching description of Jackson's death, Robertson describes how Jackson lay in increasing pain until Sunday morning, May 10, and how at the moment of death, as in life, God was in his thoughts.
``It is the Lord's day,'' Jackson said, awakening from a deep sleep. ``My wish is fulfilled. I have always desired to die on Sunday.'' Then, before noon, as the dark angel came for him, the general murmured, ``Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees.'' (The river in Jackson's dying thought, historians have traditionally held, referred to the barrier between life and the afterlife. Robertson disagrees. It was a real river, and in this moving account, he identifies it.)
Jackson passed from death to legend with no stops in between. The Army of Northern Virginia, without Old Jack to carry out Lee's bold designs, would never again taste such victories as its chiefs had produced. The Southern nation survived its paladin by less than two years. Only the legend is left.
DONLAN PIEDMONT-is author of ``Peanut Soup & Spoonbread: An Informal History of Hotel Roanoke.''
Letters chronicle lifelong friendship of Southern writers
Reviewed by ROBERT P. HILLDRUP
THE CORRESPONDENCE OF SHELBY FOOTE AND WALKER PERCY. Edited by Jay Tolson. W.W. Norton & Co. $27.50.
This book, flawed though it is for various reasons, gives insight and understanding to the strains and struggles of the private lives of two writers from the Deep South: Shelby Foote, whose grizzled gray beard and deep Mississippi accent brought him national recognition on the television series, ``The Civil War,'' and the late Walker Percy, possibly the outstanding American novelist of the second half of this century.
As Percy's biographer, Tolson might have added supplementary material that would have helped those not fully familiar with Percy and, indeed, Foote, because the lives of the two were so close for more than 60 years. His introduction is not enough.
Percy and his two brothers (and, to an extent, Foote) were raised by the enigmatic Mississippi stoic and planter William Alexander Percy, after their father died by suicide and their mother died in a strange traffic accident.
William Alexander Percy was himself no mean writer. His ``Lanterns on the Levee'' of almost 60 years ago is the best account of the noble discharge of duty by privileged Southern whites yet written.
Almost from their teen-age years, Foote wrote while Percy, despite his brilliance, dallied, though, admittedly, he dallied his way to an M.D. Stricken with tuberculosis, Percy spent three years reading, came back to the South, married and, with his bride, converted to Catholicism.
Meanwhile, as Percy idled along, secure with a bequest from Cousin Will, Foote was grinding out a series of marginally well-received novels.
This collection is the substance of the letters from Foote to Percy, beginning in 1948, when both were 32. Percy's responses until 1967, alas, are lost. By that time he had won the National Book Award for ``The Moviegoer.'' The result of this gap is a 20-year monologue in which Foote berates Percy for his conversion to Catholicism, accuses him of laziness, but also acknowledges the checks Percy periodically sent to keep his friend going.
Foote's success comes, finally with his book, ``Shiloh,'' and his Civil War trilogy, while at the same time Percy's success continues with his classic second novel, ``The Last Gentleman,'' his book of essays, ``The Message in the Bottle,'' and his enduring comic novel, ``Love in the Ruins.''
In sum, the letters are a touching tribute to the enduring friendship of two talented writers, one always aware of the mysterious City of God, the other concerned with the equally enigmatic City of Man.
As Percy's death from metastatic prostate cancer approaches, the letters take on a deep, warm, still humorous reflection on life and love, mysteries of the world and of the spirit, and the continuing marvel of existence. These letters make a substantive addition to the studies of the lives and work of both men, more so probably for Foote than for Percy, because the former's topic has always been a world with an end and the latter's that of the wayfarer still on a journey toward that which he cannot fully know.
ROBERT P. HILLDRUP, -a former newspaperman, has been an adjunct faculty member of several Virginia colleges and universities.
A reminiscence of Foote
At the Virginia Festival of the Book last week in Charlottesville, George Garrett commented on the fact that Shelby Foote's association with the Civil War is so strong that some readers actually think he fought in it. He told a story of walking down the street in some now-forgotten town with Foote. They were approached by a kindly, older woman who greeted them enthusiastically. After they had chatted a few moments, the woman looked Foote in the eye and asked, ``So, Mr. Foote, tell me, what it was really like at Gettysburg?''
- MARY ANN JOHNSON, BOOK PAGE EDITOR
LENGTH: Long : 171 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Author James Robertson poses near the statue of hisby CNBsubject, Stonewall Jackson, on the Virginia Military Institute
campus in Lexington. color. 2. Shelby Foote (left) and Walker Percy
in Vicksburg, Miss., 1986.