Such training was undoubtedly the very best foundation for the intellectual side of a general’s business.  War presents a constant succession of problems to be solved by mental processes.  For some experience and resource supply a ready solution.  Others, involving the movements of large bodies, considerations of time and space, and the thousand and one circumstances, such as food, weather, roads, topography, and morale, which a general must always bear in mind, are composed of so many factors, that only a brain accustomed to hard thinking can deal with them successfully.  Of this nature are the problems of strategy—­those which confront a general in command of an army or of a detached portion of an army, and which are worked out on the map.  The problems of the battle-field are of a different order.  The natural characteristics which, when fortified by experience, carry men through any dangerous enterprise, win the majority of victories.  But men may win battles and be very poor generals.  They may be born leaders of men, and yet absolutely unfitted for independent command.  Their courage, coolness, and common sense may accomplish the enemy’s overthrow on the field, but with strategical considerations their intellects may be absolutely incapable of grappling.  In the great wars of the early part of the century Ney and Blucher were probably the best fighting generals of France and Prussia.  But neither could be trusted to conduct a campaign.  Blucher, pre-eminent on the battle-field, knew nothing of the grand combinations which prepare and complete success.  If he was the strong right hand of the Prussian army, his chief of staff was the brain.  “Gneisenau,” said the old Marshal, “makes the pills which I administer.”  “Ney’s best qualities,” says Jomini, who served long on his staff, “his heroic valour, his quick coup d’oeil, and his energy, diminished in the same proportion that the extent of his command increased his responsibility.  Admirable on the field of battle, he displayed less assurance, not only in council, but whenever he was not actually face to face with the enemy.”  It is not of such material as Ney and Blucher, mistrustful of their own ability, that great captains are made.  Marked intellectual capacity is the chief characteristic of the most famous soldiers.  Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Marlborough, Washington, Frederick, Napoleon, Wellington, and Nelson were each and all of them something more than mere fighting men.  Few of their age rivalled them in strength of intellect.  It was this, combined with the best qualities of Ney and Blucher, that made them masters of strategy, and lifted them high above those who were tacticians and nothing more; and it was strength of intellect that Jackson cultivated at Lexington.

So, in that quiet home amidst the Virginian mountains, the years sped by, peaceful and uneventful, varied only by the holiday excursions of successive summers.  By day, the lecture at the Institute, the drill of the cadet battery, the work of the church, the pleasant toil of the farm and garden.  When night fell, and the curtains were drawn across the windows that looked upon the quiet street, there in that home where order reigned supreme, where, as the master wished, “each door turned softly on a golden hinge,” came those hours of thought and analysis which were to fit him for great deeds.