Description
First edition of Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, inscribed by his widow, Mary Anna Jackson.
Quarto, xxiv, 647pp. Green cloth, spine and front cover stamped in gilt and black with title and illustrations. Floral endpapers. All illustrations present, including frontispiece portrait and 15 unnumbered plates. Binding solid, cloth and gilt bright. Spine ends and corners rubbed, bottom corner on rear cover lightly bumped, light shelf wear along edges of spine and bottom edge of boards. Light staining to verso of frontispiece and tissue guard, occasional finger marks, small closed tears on the bottom edge of three pages, faint offsetting of a pressed flower on pages 64 and 65. Inscribed on front flyleaf: “‘Sacrifice your life rather than your word.’ A motto adopted by Gen. Jackson in his youth. M.A. Jackson.” A handsome example of this scarce memoir by Stonewall Jackson’s widow.
Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson (1824-1863) graduated from West Point in 1846 and fought in the Mexican War from 1846-1848. In 1851, he resigned from the military and accepted a teaching position at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia. At the start of the Civil War, Jackson was appointed a colonel in the Confederate Army. In July 1861, he fought in the First Battle of Bull Run where he earned his nickname of “Stonewall.” Jackson participated in many of the military engagements in the Eastern Theater of the war, including the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, Second Battle of Bull Run and the Battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg. He received several promotions, becoming a lieutenant general in 1862. On May 2, 1863, Stonewall Jackson was wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville when he was mistakenly fired on by one of his own men. He was transferred to a nearby plantation where he died a few days later on May 10.
