of command, and even long experience of war, that he can apply the rules of strategy before the enemy.  In the first place he may lack the character, the inflexible resolution, the broad grasp, the vivid imagination, the power of patient thought, the cool head, and, above all, the moral courage.  In the second place, there are few schools where strategy may be learned, and, in any case, a long and laborious course of study is the only means of acquiring the capacity to handle armies and outwit an equal adversary.  The light of common-sense alone is insufficient; nor will a few months’ reading give more than a smattering of knowledge.

“Read and re-read,” said Napoleon, “the eighty-eight campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Turenne, Eugene, and Frederick.  Take them as your models, for it is the only means of becoming a great leader, and of mastering the secrets of the art of war.  Your intelligence, enlightened by such study, will then reject methods contrary to those adopted by these great men.”

In America, as elsewhere, it had not been recognised before the Civil War, even by the military authorities, that if armies are to be handled with success they must be directed by trained strategists.  No Kriegsakademie or its equivalent existed in the United States, and the officers whom common-sense induced to follow the advice of Napoleon had to pursue their studies by themselves.  To these the campaigns of the great Emperor offered an epitome of all that had gone before; the campaigns of Washington explained how the principles of the art might be best applied to their own country, and Mexico had supplied them with practical experience.  Of the West Point graduates there were many who had acquired from these sources a wide knowledge of the art of generalship, and among them were no more earnest students than the three Virginians, Lee, Jackson, and Johnston.

When Jackson accepted an appointment for the Military Institute, it was with the avowed intention of training his intellect for war.  In his retirement at Lexington he had kept before his eyes the possibility that he might some day be recalled to the Army.  He had already acquired such practical knowledge of his profession as the United States service could afford.  He had become familiar with the characteristics of the regular soldier.  He knew how to command, to maintain discipline, and the regulations were at his fingers’ ends.  A few years had been sufficient to teach him all that could be learned from the routine of a regiment, as they had been sufficient to teach Napoleon, Frederick, and Lee.  But there remained over and above the intellectual part of war, and with characteristic thoroughness he had set himself to master it.  His reward came quickly.  The Valley campaign practically saved Richmond.  In a few short months the quiet gentleman of Lexington became, in the estimation of both friend and foe, a very thunderbolt of war; and his name, which a year previous had hardly been known beyond the Valley, was already famous.