In fact, a cold
occasioned by lending his cloak to one of his staff, a night or two
before Chancellorsville, was the primary cause of the pneumonia, which,
setting in upon his exhausting wounds, terminated his life.
Jackson was himself a bad disciplinarian. Nor had he even average
powers of organization. He was in the field quite careless of the
minutiae of drill. But he had a singularly happy faculty for choosing
men to do his work for him. He was a very close calculator of all his
movements. He worked out his manoeuvres to the barest mathematical
chances, and insisted upon the unerring execution of what he prescribed;
and above all be believed in mystery. Of his entire command, he alone
knew what work he had cut out for his corps to do. And this was carried
so far that it is said the men were often forbidden to ask the names of
the places through which they marched. "Mystery," said Jackson,
"mystery is the secret of success in war, as in all transactions of
human life."
Jackson was a professing member of the Presbyterian Church, and what is
known as a praying man. By this is meant, that, while he never
intentionally paraded or obtruded upon his associates his belief in the
practical and immediate effect of prayer, he made no effort to hide his
faith or practice from the eyes of the world.
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