long as a hundred of us
are left alive," said the signatories, "we will never in any degree
be subjected to the English. It is not for glory, or for riches, or
for honour that we fight, but for liberty alone, which no good man
loses but with his life." More than five hundred years later, for the
same noble cause and in the same uncompromising spirit, the people of
Virginia made appeal to the God of battles.

CHAPTER 1.5. HARPER'S FERRY.

1861.

Immediately it became apparent that the North was bent upon
re-conquest Jackson offered his sword to his native State. He was
determined to take his share in defending her rights and liberties,
even if it were only as a private soldier. Devotion to Virginia was
his sole motive. He shrank from the horrors of civil strife. The
thought that the land he loved so well was to be deluged with the
blood of her own children, that the happy hearths of America were to
be desecrated by the hideous image of war, stifled the promptings of
professional ambition. "If the general Government," he said, "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 methods he resorted to in order that the conflict might be
averted were characteristic. He proposed to the minister of his
church that all Christian people should be called upon to unite in
prayer; and in his own devotions, says his wife, he asked with
importunity that, if it were God's will, the whole land might be at
peace.

His work, after the Ordinance of Secession had been passed, was
constant and absorbing. The Governor of Virginia had informed the
Superintendent of the Institute that he should need the services of
the more advanced classes as drill-masters, and that they must be
prepared to leave for Richmond, under the command of Major Jackson,
at a moment's notice.

The Lexington Presbytery was holding its spring meeting in the church
which Jackson attended, and some of the members were entertained at
his house; but he found no time to attend a single service--every
hour was devoted to the duty he had in hand.

On the Saturday of that eventful week he expressed the hope that he
would not be called upon to leave till Monday; and, bidding his wife
dismiss from her thoughts everything pertaining to the war and his
depar