Some members of the Maryland Legislature, a body whom it was important to conciliate, visited Harper’s Ferry during his tenure of command.  They were received with the utmost politeness, and in return plied the general with many questions.  His answers were unsatisfactory, and at length one more bold than the rest asked him frankly how many men he had at his disposal.  “Sir,” was the reply, “I should be glad if President Lincoln thought I had fifty thousand.”  Nor was this reticence observed only towards those whose discretion he mistrusted.  He was silent on principle.  In the campaign of 1814, the distribution of the French troops at a most critical moment was made known to the allies by the capture of a courier carrying a letter from Napoleon to the Empress.  There was little chance of a letter to Mrs. Jackson, who was now in North Carolina, falling into the hands of the Federals; but even in so small a matter Jackson was consistent.

“You say,” he wrote, “that your husband never writes you any news.  I suppose you mean military news, for I have written you a great deal about your sposo and how much he loves you.  What do you want with military news?  Don’t you know that it is unmilitary and unlike an officer to write news respecting one’s post?  You couldn’t wish your husband to do an unofficer-like thing, could you?”

And then, the claims of duty being thus clearly defined, he proceeds to describe the roses which climbed round the window of his temporary quarters, adding, with that lover-like devotion which every letter betrays, “but my sweet little sunny face is what I want to see most of all.”

Careful as he was to keep the enemy in the dark, he was exceedingly particular when he visited his distant posts on the Potomac that his presence should be unobserved.  Had it become known to the Federal generals that the commander at Harper’s Ferry had reconnoitred a certain point of passage, a clue might have been given to his designs.  The Confederate officers, therefore, in charge of these posts, were told that Colonel Jackson did not wish them to recognise him.  He rode out accompanied by a single staff officer, and the men were seldom aware that the brigadier had been through their camps.

Never was a commander who fell so far short of the popular idea of a dashing leader.  This quiet gentleman, who came and went unnoticed, who had nothing to say, and was so anxious to avoid observation, was a type of soldier unfamiliar to the volunteers.  He was duty personified and nothing more.

But at the same time the troops instinctively felt that this absence of ostentation meant hard work.  They began to realise the magnitude of the obligations they had assumed.  Soldiering was evidently something more than a series of brilliant spectacles and social gatherings.  Here was a man in earnest, who looked upon war as a serious business, who was completely oblivious to what people said or thought; and his