Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson

At the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, when Union forces seemed on the verge of breaking Confederate lines, a Virginia general held his brigade so firm under fire that a fellow officer cried out, "There stands Jackson like a stone wall!" The nickname stuck, and so did the legend. Thomas Jonathan Jackson became the most celebrated field commander the Confederacy produced — a master of speed, deception, and aggression who routinely outmaneuvered forces twice his size.

Born in western Virginia in 1824, Jackson was an unremarkable student at West Point who graduated through sheer determination, then proved his mettle in the Mexican-American War. A decade of teaching at the Virginia Military Institute followed — his cadets found him odd, rigid, and humorless — before secession gave him the stage he was made for. His 1862 Shenandoah Valley Campaign is still taught in military academies: with 17,000 men, he tied down 60,000 Union troops and prevented their deployment against Richmond.

Jackson's death at Chancellorsville in May 1863 was one of the war's great ironies — shot accidentally by his own men in the dark after a daring flanking maneuver. He survived the amputation of his left arm but died of pneumonia eight days later. Robert E. Lee, who called him his right arm, never replaced him. The Army of Northern Virginia would fight for two more years, but it never fought the same way again.

His personal life was as unusual as his battlefield genius. He was deeply, rigorously Calvinist — he refused to read mail or fight on Sundays when he could avoid it — sucked on lemons obsessively, and kept one arm raised in battle, believing it balanced his blood. He was a study in contradictions: austere and eccentric in peace, brilliant and ferocious in war.