At the Institute, despite his reputation for courage, he was no favourite even with the cadets.  He was hardly in sympathy with them.  His temper was always equable.  Whatever he may have felt he never betrayed irritation, and in the lecture-room or elsewhere he was kindness itself; but his own life had been filled from boyhood with earnest purpose and high ambition.  Hard work was more to his taste than amusement.  Time, to his mind, was far too valuable to be wasted, and he made few allowances for the thoughtlessness and indolence of irresponsible youth.  As a relief possibly to the educational treadmill, his class delighted in listening to the story of Contreras and Chapultepec; but there was nothing about Jackson which corresponded with a boy’s idea of a hero.  His aggressive punctuality, his strict observance of military etiquette, his precise interpretation of orders, seemed to have as little in common with the fierce excitement of battle as the uninteresting occupations of the Presbyterian deacon, who kept a Sunday school for negroes, had with the reckless gaiety of the traditional sabreur.

“And yet,” says one who know him, “they imbibed the principles he taught.  Slowly and certainly were they trained in the direction which the teacher wished.  Jackson justly believed that the chief value of the Institute consisted in the habits of system and obedience which it impressed on the ductile characters of the cadets, and regarded any relaxation of the rules as tending to destroy its usefulness.  His conscientiousness seemed absurd to the young gentlemen who had no idea of the importance of military orders or of the implicit obedience which a good soldier deems it his duty to pay to them.  But which was right—­the laughing young cadet or the grave major of artillery?  Let the thousands who in the bitter and arduous struggle of the Civil War were taught by stern experience the necessity of strict compliance with all orders, to the very letter, answer the question."* (* Cooke page 28.)

“As exact as the multiplication table, and as full of things military as an arsenal,” was the verdict passed on Jackson by one of his townsmen, and it appears to have been the opinion of the community at large.

Jackson, indeed, was as inarticulate as Cromwell.  Like the great Protector he “lived silent,” and like him he was often misunderstood.  Stories which have been repeated by writer after writer attribute to him the most grotesque eccentricities of manner, and exhibit his lofty piety as the harsh intolerance of a fanatic.  He has been represented as the narrowest of Calvinists; and so general was the belief in his stern and merciless nature that a great poet did not scruple to link his name with a deed which, had it actually occurred, would have been one of almost unexampled cruelty.  Such calumnies as Whittier’s “Barbara Frichtie” may possibly have found their source in the impression made upon some of Jackson’s acquaintances at Lexington, who, out of all sympathy