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His own kin lie nearest, of course. Both wives, both surviving daughters, a son-in-law, their son (the grandson) a U.S. Army brigadier general; with a cenotaph for his son (the great-grandson) buried in France fighting Nazis as a U.S. Army colonel. The United States owes this family a debt of gratitude and honor.
Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, 1846 West Point graduate, with distinguished service at Chapultepec in the Mexican War, taught military cadets for a decade before spending the rest of his life as a principal bulwark against Union invasions of Virginia. The tactical genius still studied today, the battlefield heroism, the tragic friendly-fire conclusion: all this is well known and need not detain here. Stroll out of this sacred high ground at the south end of the old town and turn north.
Originally a frontier village, beset on all western sides with ever fresh news of Indian wars and skirmishes: in 1778, Lexington, Virginia's naming honored Massachusetts' Revolutionary spark. By 1851, when Major Jackson arrived, a college thriving on bequest by George Washington himself stood there - and a cornerstone for magnificent cadet barracks, though Union shelling in 1864 destroyed the first drafts.
Everyone knows the only house Jackson ever owned still sits about four blocks north from the cemetery along Main and a block east on Washington. Some would still rather not discuss the slaves working there; but untreated wounds end infected. "Marse Major" acquired Hetty, Cyrus, and George by marriage. His Wikipedia paints every appearance of a perfect Christian gentleman: two other slaves - Albert and Amy - even separately asked him to buy them, one with an eye toward eventually purchasing freedom. Emma, a four-year-old orphan with a learning disability, rounded out the sum total of slaves Jackson ever bought into his household.
Simon Legree would not approve such sentimental squandering of capital; but Simon Legree is a fictional character and Stonewall Jackson a real person and devoted Presbyterian. He reportedly befriended a wide circle of black Lexingtonians - both slave and free - even apparently flouting Virginia law to teach reading for Bible study. People eager to condemn slave-holders en masse may widen perspective to a deeply-rooted, millennia-long global cultural problem worth solving over time.
Arguments from ignorance are all built on sand.
Both Old and New Testaments feature specific slave upkeep instructions; Moses, David and Solomon all owned slaves, after all. Antiquity everywhere shrugged and tolerated widespread slavery, serfdom, and inhumane caste restrictions for thousands of years: until Wilberforce, Brissot, and Lincoln finally shamed the Eurocentric world out of it, 200 years ago. The task today (and any day) is not to demonize people long dead, but to continue building a future where none ever need be demonized - or enslaved.
One definitely advancing such a cause walked Lexington's dusty streets at least 15 years before Stonewall - and repeatedly over the next 30 years, through the War. Settled actually 75 miles to the north, near Broadway, John Kline gave organizational hemoglobin to the blood of German Baptist Brethren all up and down the western valleys of Virginia - and in seven counties destined later to join West Virginia. Decade after decade, he rode 3-6 thousand miles every year on horseback - ministering not just in Virginia, but in parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York, as well.
John Kline delivered hundreds of funeral sermons across his career: those many for little children the most heart-rending. In 1838, one single family lost a 15-, a 13-, and a 9-year-old in ten days; in 1845, it happened again elsewhere similarly. "All three bright, promising, happy children," Kline observed in his diary then. During the War, diptheria stalked the valleys relentlessly. At the beginning of March 1863, yet another hapless family lost three little children in the space of a fortnight; and at the end of that same month, an entirely different family elsewhere suffered precisely the same fate. Hard truths for anyone prone to badmouth the blessings doctors, nurses, scientists and engineers bring into the world by their wisdom and work.
As early as 1847, Kline bemoaned Brethren difficulty convincing Virginians east of the Blue Ridge, in the Piedmont:
We can preach the Gospel to the poor, and they are ready to hear it. But there is one barrier between us and the wealthy classes which will continue, God only knows how long; and that barrier is African slavery. Many, seemingly good and reasonable people, in this country justify themselves in their own eyes, even on scripture grounds, for taking part in and encouraging the holding of slaves. I fear, however, that the god of this world has blinded their eyes, so that seeing they see not, and hearing they understand not....I do believe that the time is not far distant when the sun will rise and set upon our land cleansed of this foul stain, though it may be cleansed with blood.In 1856, "decided in council that every slaveholder coming into the church must give up his or her slaves as property; and yet not turn them off houseless and homeless, but allow them to remain, and labor, and be fed and clothed as usual, until suitable and lawful provisions can be made for their complete emancipation." The next year, "the Methodist preacher at Israel Methodist church [in Randolph County]....suffered himself to run into an absurd abuse of us, as if we might be doing much harm by our close adherence to the teachings and examples of Christ and his apostles."
To his wife, in 1856, he wrote that "slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country." But he also had a full laundry list of reasons for maintaining it:
The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.So, apparently God - not Man - bore responsibility for what John Kline called "the sin of holding three millions of human beings under the galling yoke of involuntary servitude[.]" Even more galling, Lee's "painful discipline ... necessary for their instruction as a race" openly collapses against freeborn Revolutionary War veteran John Chavis, whose 1790s included study at what would later become Princeton - and at Liberty Academy (later W&L) in Lexington. Eventually a Presbyterian minister, Chavis' cross-racial renown as teacher of - among other things - Greek and Latin nicely highlights Lee's seeming ignorance about African-American instructability and genius.
Children of Abraham, take just a sliver of dharmic wisdom and reflect your own Sacred Scripture in it. "[T]he joy of Brahman, knowing both good and evil, transcends both," Taittiriya Upanishad declares; endless furious outcry against Evil achieves no good end. For Vedantic Hinduism, Evil doesn't even really exist, per se: evil is only a manifestation of Ignorance, in one form or another: ignorance of the righteous path's dharma and ignorance of God.
And arguments from ignorance are all built on sand.
To explain Sin in a way even an atheist might endorse, start with something John Kline himself preached at Orkney Springs, in 1838:
But every human being has a twofold nature. He has a spiritual body as well as a natural body. Paul says: "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body." Man's natural or physical organization consists of flesh and blood. Paul calls this the "outer man." This is man's animal or sensuous nature. Man's spiritual body consists of will and understanding. Paul calls this the inner man; because it is the interior, "hidden man of the heart." This is capable of becoming the higher, nobler, better part of man, because it is the "house" of his affections and thoughts, of his loves and enjoyments.Materialism might interpret thus: life on this planet began blind, deaf and dumb, barely conscious enough to apprehend will to live. Over several billion years, mutation and selection gradually molded animal bodies, adding by fits and starts ever more subtle sense perception improving survivability of any particular species. Consciousness went along for the ride, also seeming gradually subtler and cleverer as sense perception sharpened.
Finally, humanity burst on the scene: apparently first in many long lines of earth-creatures to apprehend importance contemplating the heavens - and our place among them. We are only evolved animals; but our spirits call to the skies: we must transcend our natural bodies to go there, for "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Human conscience indulging the animal - with all its lust, selfishness, and violence - is root of Sin.
God isn't seething with rage that anyone, anywhere strays one jot or tittle off a purity code clearly intended for priests, monks, contemplatives, and any otherwise specifically called to purity. Everyone's animal within needs taming; that's all: preferably with love. And endless inexhaustible unconditional uninterrupted surging Love everywhere is exactly what God is all about: "for God is love." Conscious beings are well advised to attend.
After the War, Lee assumed Presidency of Washington College in Lexington. Ballooning its endowment by capitalizing his fame, radically enlarging curriculum and laying firm foundation for what would eventually become Washington and Lee University, he earned respect and love among many. You may walk on the campus today and leave an apple or carrot for his horse Traveller, though only enterprizing squirrels likely profit.
Kline's wartime experience differed from Lee's. Quite apart from suspicion Abolitionism drew toward the Brethren, their long-established and strict pacifism also rankled; "to bear arms in war ... is the greatest of all earthly evils," one Brother Henry Kurtz said in 1845. The Confederate government expected big redemption bounties from them and annual harvests into state control.
Doubtless many loving warnings whispered, but John Kline continued his itinerant Church career, openly crossing front lines many times in service to the body of Christ. Combatants on both sides understandably assumed him a spy; and he was detained multiple times in Virginia on suspicion: on 17 April 1862, he was in custody in Harrisonburg as Stonewall's army retreated through from the Kernstown defeat toward Elkton. Over two years later, in 1864:
He went to a blacksmith's shop a few miles away from home; had Nell shod; and on his return was killed by, it is supposed, some concealed person or persons on a ridge of timber land a few miles away from home.
The Marshall Plan deservedly earned him a Nobel Prize.
A rich palette of potential heroes confronts guardians of Virginia's heritage; choose and balance among them wisely. Generals Jackson and Lee rightly well-sung for valor and genius in battle also serve as shining examplars of moral perplexity in slave-based societies. Madison, Jefferson, and Washington suffer the same criticism; only their legacy also includes "a model for the protection of man in a state of freedom and order."
Three of the five briefly discussed here were military men; two of those died in their beds, one in a tragic wartime accident - not from hostile fire. The only actual hostile-fire victims among them were the two men of God: Reverend John Chavis, apparently beaten to death in his own home at 75, in 1838; and the pacifist abolitionist preaching love Above and equality on Earth across battle lines. "[T]he only true basis of civil government[,]" Elder John Kline wrote in 1862, "....from its lowest bottom to its highest level, is love, or 'good will toward men.' Government founded upon any other basis is tyranny or despotism[.]"
Lexington boasts much to inspire, principally two eminent institutions of higher learning: one a paragon of the Law, the other a temple of discipline and study stiffening the backbone of the US military over nearly two centuries. Anyone who served before the Draft ended knows boys from former Confederate states were fiercely accomplished warriors, numerous, and frequently volunteers in every modern war. Martial virtues go only so far, however, and best aim toward lasting peace.
Widening perspective to the whole Shenandoah Valley, the Brethren and Mennonites - together with Quakers, Amish, Jains, and all the world's pacifist faithful - form brilliant diamonds in global conscience's crown. With them, Virginia might finally fully awaken from the long nightmare pall slaveocracy and its legacies cast over her fields, redeeming Madison and Jefferson as sharpened heroes a whole species can admire and understand. In the global market of political theorizing they can more than hold their own.
Only arguments from ignorance are all built on sand.
"Perhaps the most important single factor [guaranteeing long continued peace,]" George C. Marshall, Jr., wrote, "will be a spiritual regeneration to develop goodwill, faith, and understanding among nations."
Great single endeavors like a League of Nations, a United Nations, and undertakings of that character, are of great importance and in fact absolutely necessary, but they must be treated as steps toward the desired end.Let those words be prophetic.
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