the Union forces had been ejected from the state and
were far from Richmond.
For his services, Jackson was promoted to the
rank of lieutenant general and given command of the
II Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. With this
force, he was attacked by Union forces under General
Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg, Virginia (13 De-
cember 1862), but the strengthened Confederate army
repelled the offensive. The debacle at Fredericksburg
left the Union army with horrendous losses and no
ground to show for their efforts in a year of fighting.
Burnside was replaced by General Joseph hooker,
who waited until April 1863 to attack Southern posi-
tions around the Rappahannock River. Lee, with Jack-
son as his right-hand man, moved the main portion of
his 60,000-man force to Chancellorsville to head off
the attack by Hooker’s 120,000-troop army. At Chan-
cellorsville (2–4 May 1863), Lee held his main force
in reserve while Jackson’s forces attacked Hooker’s right
flank. The Union forces were taken by surprise by the
maneuver, and their entire XI Corps was forced to
withdraw with massive casualties. However, the victory
came at a high price for the Confederacy: That same
night, as he led his forces to attack the retreating Union
troops, some of his own men mistook him in the dark
for a Union officer, and Jackson was mortally wounded
in the shoulder. Carried back to the Confederate lines,
his left arm was amputated. Lee wrote to him, “I should
have wished for the good of the country to be disabled
in your stead.” Nine days later, on 10 May 1863, Jack-
son died of pneumonia while recuperating at Guiney’s
Station, just south of Fredericksburg. After his body lay
in state, he was buried with full military honors in Lex-
ington, Virginia.
The impact of the death of Thomas Jackson on the
eventual Confederate defeat is immeasurable. Histori-
ans agree that without Jackson, Lee and his army did
not have the tactical maneuverability which had charac-
terized Lee’s army in the past. Whether or not Jackson
would have staved off the ultimate end of the war is a
matter for argument. Regardless, his stature as “Stone-
wall” Jackson has remained untouched, even though his-
torians have recently come to believe that his nickname
was given to him not because of his heroism but because
of a lack of it. It is alleged that when General Barnard
Bee was wounded and needed Jackson to take control of
the situation, he later claimed that Jackson “stood there
like a stone wall” instead of acting. Whether or not this
is true, it might be irrelevant, as Jackson’s name and mil-
itary genius are forever preserved in American history.References: Arnold, Thomas Jackson, Early Life and Let-
ters of General Thomas J. Jackson, “Stonewall” Jackson, by
His Nephew, Thomas Arnold Jackson (New York: Fleming
H. Revell Company, 1916); Farwell, Byron, Stonewall:
A Biography of General Thomas J. Jackson (New York: W.
W. Norton, 1992); Henderson, George Francis Robert,
Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (London:
Longmans, Green and Company, 1898); Kallman, John
D., Jackson, “Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall,’ ” in Historical
Times Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Civil War, edited by
Patricia L. Faust (New York: Harper & Row, Publish-
ers, 1986), 391–392; Windrow, Martin, and Francis K.
Mason, “Jackson, Thomas Jonathan,” in The Wordsworth
Dictionary of Military Biography (Hertfordshire, U.K.:
Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1997), 141–142.Jellicoe, John Rushworth, Earl Jellicoe of
Scapa (1859–1935) British admiral
Born in Southampton, England, on 5 December 1859,
John Rushworth Jellicoe was the son of J. H. Jellicoe, a
captain in the mercantile marine. He received his educa-
tion at Rottingdean, in Sussex, after which he received
an appointment as a naval cadet and entered service in
the Royal Navy in 1872. He was given a commission as a
sublieutenant in 1880 and, two years later, saw action in
the war against Egypt. In 1883, he returned to England
as a student at HMS Excellent, the naval gunnery school
where he subsequently became an instructor (1884–85
and 1886–89). Promoted to the rank of commander in
1891, he was appointed to the HMS Victoria and was
injured when that ship collided with another English
vessel, HMS Camperdown. He later served under Ad-
miral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, and in 1897 he was
promoted to the rank of captain.
In 1898, Jellicoe was named to serve on the HMS
Centurion on the China station under Admiral Sir Ed-
ward Seymour. Two years later, he saw action at Beijing
(then called Peking) during the insurrection by the Chi-
nese rebels in the so-called “Boxer Rebellion” of 1900.
While in battle, he was wounded, and for his services
he was made a Commander of the Order of the Bath
(CB). He then returned to England, where he served
in several naval staff positions, including naval assistant
to the controller (1902–03), director of naval ordnanceJellicoe, John RuShwoRth, eARl Jellicoe oF ScApA