The even tenor of this calm existence was broken, however, by an incident which intensified the bitter feeling which already divided the Northern and Southern sections of the United States.  During the month of January, 1859, Jackson had marched with the cadet battalion to Harper’s Ferry, where, on the northern frontier of Virginia, the fanatic, John Brown, had attempted to raise an insurrection amongst the negroes, and had been hung after trial in presence of the troops.  By the South Brown was regarded as a madman and a murderer; by many in the North he was glorified as a martyr; and so acute was the tension that early in 1860, during a short absence from Lexington, Jackson wrote in a letter to his wife, “What do you think about the state of the country?  Viewing things at Washington from human appearances, I think we have great reason for alarm.”  A great crisis was indeed at hand.  But if to her who was ever beside him, while the storm clouds were rising dark and terrible over the fair skies of the prosperous Republic, the Christian soldier seemed the man best fitted to lead the people, it was not so outside.  None doubted his sincerity or questioned his resolution, but few had penetrated his reserve.  As the playful tenderness he displayed at home was never suspected, so the consuming earnestness, the absolute fearlessness, whether of danger or of responsibility, the utter disregard of man, and the unquestioning faith in the Almighty, which made up the individuality which men called Stonewall Jackson, remained hidden from all but one.

To his wife his inward graces idealised his outward seeming; but others, noting his peculiarities, and deceived by his modesty, saw little that was remarkable and much that was singular in the staid professor.  Few detected, beneath that quiet demeanour and absent manner, the existence of energy incarnate and an iron will; and still fewer beheld, in the plain figure of the Presbyterian deacon, the potential leader of great armies, inspiring the devotion of his soldiers, and riding in the forefront of victorious battle.

CHAPTER 1.4.  SECESSION. 1860 TO 1861.

1861.

Jackson spent ten years at Lexington, and he was just five-and-thirty when he left it.  For ten years he had seen no more of military service than the drills of the cadet battalion.  He had lost all touch with the army.  His name had been forgotten, except by his comrades of the Mexican campaign, and he had hardly seen a regular soldier since he resigned his commission.  But, even from a military point of view, those ten years had not been wasted.  His mind had a wider grasp, and his brain was more active.  Striving to fit himself for such duties as might devolve on him, should he be summoned to the field, like all great men and all practical men he had gone to the best masters.  In the campaigns of Napoleon he had found instruction in the highest branch of his