Rough as was the life of the Virginia border, it had done something to fit this unpromising recruit for the give and take of his new existence.  Culture might be lacking in the distant West, but the air men breathed was at least the blessed breath of independence.  Each was what he made himself.  A man’s standing depended on his success in life, and success was within the reach of all.  There, like his neighbours, Jackson had learned to take his own part; like them he acknowledged no superiority save that of actual merit, and believing that the richest prize might be won by energy and perseverance, without diffidence or misgiving he faced his future.  He knew nothing of the life of the great nation of which he was so insignificant an atom, of the duties of the army, of the manners of its officers.  He knew only that even as regards education he had an uphill task before him.  He was indeed on the threshold of a new world, with his own way to make, and apparently no single advantage in his favour.  But he came of a fighting race; he had his own inflexible resolution to support him, and his determination expressed itself in his very bearing.  Four cadets, three of whom were afterwards Confederate generals,* (* A.P.  Hill, G.E.  Pickett, and D.H.  Maury.) were standing together when he first entered the gates of the Academy.  “There was about him,” says one of them, “so sturdy an expression of purpose that I remarked, “That fellow looks as if he had come to stay."”

Jackson’s educational deficiencies were more difficult of conquest than the goodwill of his comrades.  His want of previous training placed him at a great disadvantage.  He commenced his career amongst “the Immortals” (the last section of the class), and it was only by the most strenuous efforts that he maintained his place.  His struggles at the blackboard were often painful to witness.  In the struggle to solve a problem he invariably covered both his face and uniform with chalk, and he perspired so freely, even in the coldest weather, that the cadets, with boyish exaggeration, declared that whenever “the General,” as he had at once been dubbed in honour of his namesake, the victor of New Orleans, got a difficult proposition he was certain to flood the classroom.  It was all he could do to pass his first examination.* (* Communicated by General John Gibbon, U.S.A.)

“We were studying,” writes a classmate, “algebra and analytical geometry that winter, and Jackson was very low in his class.  Just before the signal lights out he would pile up his grate with anthracite coal, and lying prone before it on the floor, would work away at his lessons by the glare of the fire, which scorched his very brain, till a late hour of the night.  This evident determination to succeed not only aided his own efforts directly, but impressed his instructors in his favour.  If he could not master the portion of the text-book assigned for the day, he would not pass it over, but continued to work at it till he understood it.  Thus it often happened that when he was called out to repeat his task, he had to reply that he had not yet reached the lesson of the day, but was employed upon the previous one.  There was then no alternative but to mark him as unprepared, a proceeding which did not in the least affect his resolution.”