rother-officer:

"Lieutenant Jackson's section of Magruder's battery was subjected to a
plunging fire from the Castle of Chapultepec. Horses were killed or
disabled, and the men deserted the guns and sought shelter behind wall
or embankment. Lieutenant Jackson remained at the guns, walking back
and forth and kept saying, 'See, there is no danger; _I_ am not hit!'
While standing with his legs wide apart, a cannon-ball passed between
them.... No other officer in the army in Mexico was promoted so often
for meritorious conduct, or made so great a stride in rank."

After peace was declared in 1848, he was stationed for two years at
Fort Hamilton, and six months at Fort Meade in Florida; in 1851 he was
elected Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and
Artillery Tactics in the Virginia Military Institute, situated in
Lexington, Va. In the decade succeeding this event, he was to the
casual eye the least striking figure in the group of professors who
taught the art of war in the beautiful mountain-girt "West Point of
the South."

"I should have said that he was the least likely of our family to make
a noise in the world," said his sister-in-law in 1862, when the
popular voice was ranking him with Bayard, Roland, Sidney, and
Napoleon.

"I knew that what I willed to do, I could do," he had said of his
recovery from physical weaknesses which made his acceptance of the
Lexington professorship of doubtful expediency, in the judgment of
friends.

He never willed to be eloquent in the lecture-room or brilliant in
society in his life as teacher, church official, and neighbor there
was no evidence of the personal magnetism which was to make him the
soul and genius of the Confederate army. While carrying into every
detail of daily existence the military law of system and fidelity, he
was aggressive in nothing. The grave, quiet gentleman who was never
late in class, never negligent of the minutest professional duty, who
was always punctual at religious services, and never missed a meeting
of the Faculty of the V. M. I., or of the deacons of the Presbyterian
Church, was reckoned a good Christian and upright citizen, exemplary
in domestic and social relations--perhaps a trifle ultra-conscientious
in some particulars. But for the prevalency of orthodoxy in "the
Valley" he would have been considered eccentric in his religious views
and practice. He established a Sunday-school for the negroes and
superintended it in person; h