These remarkable successes had established Jackson’s reputation as a commander of unusual merit; he was promoted to lieutenant-general, and Lee came to rely upon him more and more.  He had, too, by a certain high courage and charm of character, won the complete devotion of his men; to say that they loved him, that any one of them would have laid down his life for him, is but the simple truth.  No other leader in the whole war, with the exception of Lee, who dwelt in a region high and apart, was idolized as he was.  But his career was nearly ended, and, by the bitter irony of fate, he was to be killed by the very men who loved him.

On the second day of May, 1863, Lee sent him on a long flanking movement around Hooker’s army at Chancellorsville.  Emerging from the woods towards evening, he surprised and routed Howard’s corps, and between eight and nine o’clock rode forward with a small party beyond his own lines to reconnoitre the enemy’s position.  As he turned to ride back, his party was mistaken for Federal cavalrymen and a volley poured into it by a Confederate outpost.  Several of the party were killed, and Jackson received three wounds.  They were not in themselves fatal, but pneumonia followed, and death came eight days later.

There was none to fill his place—­it was as though Lee had lost his right arm.  The result of the war would have been in no way different had he lived, but his death was an incalculable loss to the Confederacy.  It was Lee’s opinion that he would have won the battle of Gettysburg had he had Jackson with him, and this is more than probable, so evenly did victory and defeat hang in the balance there.  But, even then, the North would have been far from conquered, and its superior resources and larger armies must have won in the end.  Perhaps, after all, Jackson’s death was, in a way, a blessing, since it shortened a struggle which, in any event, could have had but one result.

Another heavy loss which the Confederacy suffered even earlier in the war was that of Albert Sidney Johnston, killed at the battle of Shiloh.  Jefferson Davis said the cause of the South was lost when Johnston fell, but this was, of course, only a manner of speaking, for Johnston could not have saved it.  Johnston had an adventurous career and saw a great deal of fighting before the Civil War began.  Graduating at West Point in 1826, he served as chief of staff to General Atkinson during the Black Hawk war, and then, joining the Texan revolutionists, served first as a private and then as commander of the Texan army.  He commanded a regiment in the war with Mexico, and in 1857, led a successful expedition against the rebellious Mormons in Utah.