It has already been explained that military genius shows itself first in character, and, second, in the application of the grand principles of warfare, not in the mere manipulation of armed masses.  It cannot well be denied that Jackson possessed every single attribute which makes for success in war.  Morally and physically he was absolutely fearless.  He accepted responsibility with the same equanimity that he faced the bullets of the enemy.  He permitted no obstacle to turn him aside from his appointed path, and in seizing an opportunity or in following up a victory he was the very incarnation of untiring energy.  He had no moments of weakness.  He was not robust, and his extraordinary exertions told upon his constitution.  “My health,” he wrote to his wife in January 1863, “is essentially good, but I do not think I shall be able in future to stand what I have already stood;” and yet his will invariably rose superior to bodily exhaustion.  A supreme activity, both of brain and body, was a prominent characteristic of his military life.  His idea of strategy was to secure the initiative, however inferior his force; to create opportunities and to utilise them; to waste no time, and to give the enemy no rest.  “War,” he said, “means fighting.  The business of the soldier is to fight.  Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time.  This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end.  To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war.”

That he felt to the full the fascination of war’s tremendous game we can hardly doubt.  Not only did he derive, as all true soldiers must, an intense intellectual pleasure from handling his troops in battle so as to outwit and defeat his adversary, but from the day he first smelt powder in Mexico until he led that astonishing charge through the dark depths of the Wilderness his spirits never rose higher than when danger and death were rife about him.  With all his gentleness there was much of the old Berserker about Stonewall Jackson, not indeed the lust for blood, but the longing to do doughtily and die bravely, as best becomes a man.  His nature was essentially aggressive.  He was never more to be feared than when he was retreating, and where others thought only of strong defensive positions he looked persistently for the opportunity to attack.  He was endowed, like Massena, “with that rare fortitude which seems to increase as perils thicken.  When conquered he was as ready to fight again as if he had been conqueror.”  “L’audace, l’audace, et toujours l’audace” was the mainspring of all his actions, and the very sights and sounds of a stricken field were dear to his soul.  Nothing had such