People From West Virginia

"Let your conduct towards men have some uniformity."

"Spare no effort to suppress selfishness, unless that effort would entail sorrow."

"Never speak disrespectfully of anyone without a cause."

"Endeavor to do well with everything you undertake."

"Sacrifice your life rather than your word."

"Disregard public opinion when it interferes with your duty."

"You may be whatever you resolve to be."

"Easy, Mr. Pendleton. Easy. Good to have your dander up, but it’s discipline that wins the day."

"Be content and resigned to God's will."

"Duty is ours; consequences are God's."

"We must make this campaign an exceedingly active one. Only thus can a weaker country cope with a stronger; it must make up in activity what it lacks in strength. A defensive campaign can only be made successful by taking the aggressive at the proper time. Napoleon never waited for his adversary to become fully prepared, but struck him the first blow."

"My duty is to obey orders."

"The Institute will be heard from today."

"Once you get them running, you stay right on top of them, and that way a small force can defeat a large one every time."

"Through the broad extent of country over which you have marched by your respect for the rights and property of citizens, you have shown that you were soldiers not only to defend but able and willing to defend and protect."

"War 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."

"Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible."

"Returning home on leave following my second year at West Point, I called on a great-uncle who had joined the Confederate Army at the age of sixteen and had fought in a number of major Civil War battles, including Gettysburg, and had been with Robert E. Lee at Appamatox. My Uncle White was the younger brother of my grandfather. He hated Yankees and Republicans, not necessarily in that order, and talked derisively about both. When I visited, he was seated in a wheel chair, in grudging acquiescence to the infirmities of age. Tobacco juice decorated his shirt and stains around a spittoon on the floor testified to the inaccuracy of his aim. Flies buzzed through screenless windows. "What are you doing with yourself, son?" Uncle White asked. I answered the old veteran with trepidation. "I'm going to that same school that Grant and Sherman went to, the Military Academy at West Point, New York." Uncle White was silent for what seemed like a long time. "That's all right, son," he said at last. "Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson went there too.""

"Jackson neither apologized for nor spoke in favor of the practice of slavery. He probably opposed the institution. Yet in his mind the Creator had sanctioned slavery, and man had no moral right to challenge its existence. The good Christian slaveholder was one who treated his servants fairly and humanely at all times."

"You are better off than I am, for while you have lost your left, I have lost my right arm."

"According to legend, Jackson's final words were, "Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees." Then he died peacefully. When Jackson's body was taken through Richmond, accompanied by Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet, thousands turned out to mourn. General Lee called Jackson the world's best executive officer and said, "Jackson lost his left arm, but in him I have lost my right." In two years Jackson went from being a colonel teaching at a small military school to being a general known and revered throughout the Confederacy. He is the best-known Civil War commander, after Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee."

"At the First Battle of Bull Run, three months after the opening of the war, Confederate troops were fleeing until Jackson took the field and not only stopped the retreat but ordered an attack. When he raised his left hand, it was shot through. He tied it up with a handkerchief and kept fighting. Soon the Union forces retreated, overrunning the spectators in carriages who had come out from Washington to "watch the war." Supposedly, General Barnard Bee pointed out Jackson and cried, "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Rally behind the Virginians." Thus Jackson acquired his nickname. After Bull Run, "Stonewall" Jackson was assigned to defend the Valley of Virginia, the "breadbasket of the Confederacy," a task he performed so brilliantly that military strategists still study his campaigns with awe. A strict disciplinarian, he drove his men almost to the breaking point, but after each battle he said prayers of thanksgiving and always reminded them that God was with them. In fact, Jackson's tactics were so effective that some military historians think that if the war had been fought only in Virginia, the Confederacy could have won. However, events elsewhere turned the tide. Jackson's part in the war lasted less than two years."

"In early 1861, Professor Thomas Jonathan Jackson was an unhappy, unpopular professor of artillery, optics, mathematics and astronomy at the Virginia Military Institute. Remarried after the death of his first wife, the deeply religious Jackson believed in predestination: Everything that happened to him was intended to happen. Conversely, one of his frequently stated maxims was, "You can be whatever you will." Guided by these two contradictory ideas, he became a fearless commander. If the Civil War had not happened, Jackson likely would have passed the rest of his life as a teacher, spending his spare time boning up on unfamiliar subjects, practicing his lectures, and spending time with his daughter. Instead, he was thrust into leadership positions. The Civil War changed his life forever, and his death changed the course of the war."

"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. … 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. ...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."

"Jackson fought for the constitutional rights of the South, and any one who imagines he fought for slavery knows nothing of Jackson."

"As for Lee, long afterward in speaking of Gettysburg, he is reported to have remarked that he thought he could have carried the day if Stonewall Jackson had been at his side."

"Stonewall Jackson was an intensely religious man. Once when arms were not forthcoming from Ordnance, Jackson suggested that greater trust was needed in God, whereupon an irreligious soldier proclaimed that there were more prayers in Jackson's camp than muskets. When Lee congratulated him on the course of events at Chancellorsville, Jackson replied, "The General is very kind, but the praise belongs to God." There were those who remembered him as a stern disciplinarian, a driving drill master. But all respected him as a military leader and as a man. Wearing a battered old flat-topped forage hat that everybody knew, he would bring new heart to those who, upon seeing him, would shout to their fellows over the din of battle, "Here comes Old Jack!""

"Lee, of course, was Lee. A South which had respected him, then come to adore him, now worshiped him. He was a man who grew in stature even as the cause for which he fought became less prosperous. The intensely religious Stonewall Jackson cared little for the glamor and trappings of war but believed in its righteousness with a fierceness that almost frightened those who did not know him. Comparatively, Lee was a gentle man with a mind that could not help seeing both sides of all controversies. Jackson first had to "see the right," then hell's fury could not deter him. Different as these two men were, they got along well, and each had great respect for the other. And when Lee was to hear of the wound to Jackson that later proved fatal, he wrote: "You have lost your left arm, but I have lost my right.""

"In the ranks and among the officers there had been heavy losses at Bull Run, the most grievous of which was that of General Bee whose claim to fame, aside from his bravery, comes from his rallying cry to his men during the battle: "There stands Jackson like a stone wall..." And from then on, it was as though Jackson had shed his rightful name of Thomas Johnathan to become forever "Stonewall"."

"There stands Jackson like a stone wall — rally round the Virginians!"

"Make it a rule never to accuse without due consideration any body or association of men."

"Never engross the whole conversation to yourself. Say as little of yourself and friends as possible."

"Always look people in the face when addressing them, and generally when they address you."

"Good-breeding is opposed to selfishness, vanity, or pride. Never weary your company by talking too long or too frequently."

"Be kind, condescending, and affable. Any one who has anything to say to a fellow-being, to say it with kind feelings and sincere desire to please; and this, whenever it is done, will atone for much awkwardness in the manner of expression."

"Good-breeding, or true politeness, is the art of showing men by external signs the internal regard we have for them. It arises from good sense, improved by good company. It must be acquired by practice and not by books."

"A man is known by the company he keeps."

"It is man's highest interest not to violate, or attempt to violate, the rules which Infinite Wisdom has laid down. The means by which men are to attain great elevation may be classed in three divisions — physical, mental, and moral. Whatever relates to health, belongs to the first; whatever relates to the improvement of the mind, belongs to the second. The formation of good manners and virtuous habits constitutes the third."

"Nothing justifies profanity."

"My dear pastor, in my tent last night, after a fatiguing day's service, I remembered that I failed to send a contribution for our colored Sunday school. Enclosed you will find a check for that object, which please acknowledge at your earliest convenience and oblige yours faithfully."

"Yesterday we fought a great battle and gained a great victory, for which all the glory is due to God alone. Although under a heavy fire for several continuous hours I received only one wound, the breaking of the longest finger of my left hand; but the doctor says the finger may be saved. It was broken about midway between the hand and knuckle, the ball passing on the side next to the forefinger. Had it struck the centre, I should have lost the finger. My horse was wounded, but not killed. Your coat got an ugly wound near the hip, but my servant, who is very handy, has so far repaired it that it doesn't show very much. My preservation was entirely due, as was the glorious victory, to our God, to whom be all the honor, praise, and glory. The battle was the hardest that I have ever been in, but not near so hot in its fire."

"Then, Sir, we will give them the bayonet!"

"If the general government should persist in the measures now threatened, there must be war. It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. They do not know its horrors. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils."

"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon; and when it does come my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard."

"I am more afraid of King Alcohol than of all the bullets of the enemy."

"I like liquor — its taste and its effects — and that is just the reason why I never drink it."

"Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees."

"I see from the number of physicians that you think my condition dangerous, but I thank God, if it is His will, that I am ready to go. … It is the Lord's Day; my wish is fulfilled. … I have always desired to die on Sunday."

"My men have sometimes failed to take a position, but to defend one, never!"

"Who could not conquer with such troops as these?"