Stonewall Jackson

[stohn-wawl]

noun

1. nickname of Thomas Jonathan Jackson.

Jackson, “Stonewall”

1. Thomas J. Jackson, a general in the Confederate army during the Civil War. He got his nickname at the First Battle of Bull Run, where he and his men “stood like a stone wall.” He and General Robert E. Lee led the South to victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville. In the evening after the battle was won, however, Jackson was fatally shot by Confederate troops who mistook him and his staff for Union officers.

Jackson's dying words, “Let us cross the river and rest in the shade of the trees,” are much remembered.

In the poem “Barbara Frietchie,” by John Greenleaf Whittier, Stonewall Jackson orders his men not to harm Barbara Frietchie or the Union flags she is holding (see Shoot, if you must, this old gray head).

Example Sentences

A detail of the horse’s nostril on Kara Walker’s reimagined Stonewall Jackson sculpture.

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The centrepiece of the show is "Unmanned Drone" – a completely reconstructed sculpture of Stonewall Jackson by artist Kara Walker, who transformed the horse and its rider heading into battle into a headless, zombie-like creature.

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My little joke about the press interviewing Stonewall Jackson during the Civil War could very well have appeared in The Onion at some point.

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“I really don’t identify with any of the ideals nor really any of what Stonewall Jackson stood for.”

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At the same event, he called Virginia “the state of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.”

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