Zzzactive service.
‘Upon leaving West Point he entered the regular army, and soon saw active service in the Mexican war. His gallantry won him promotion, and at the end of the war he was placed in command of the garrison at Fort Hamilton, and afterward at Tampa Bay. At these places he spent two years, but his health failing, he resigned his commission and came back to his old home here. After remaining here for some time he tired of inaction, and wanted something to do. A new professorship had been created in the Military Institute of Virginia, at Lexington, and through the efforts of influential friends Jackson was appointed to the place. He remained there a successful teacher of young men until the opening of the war called him to a broader field of action.’ “I first met Stonewall Jackson when he was a professor and I a student at Lexington, and afterward when he was a commander and I an officer in the army of Virginia. He was one of the grandest men it has been my good fortune to claim as a friend.” The speaker was Colonel George H. Moffatt, formerly of Buckhannon, this State. It was while passing an afternoon with him not long ago that I persuaded him to give me his recollections of General Jackson, which fittingly supplemented those of Mr. Arnold. “During the years I spent at college in Lexington,” continued Colonel Moffatt,I made my home with the wife of Dr. Estelle. She was a warm-hearted southern woman, and a close friend of Jackson's, then a professor of mathematics at the Military Institute. [162] He often called at our house, and it was there that I came to know him in the autumn of 1859. I shall never forget the first time I met him. As a boy I had heard of his struggles as a cadet at West Point and his services with General Scott in Mexico. In imagination I had created an ideal which made my first meeting with him a keen disappointment. Instead of the handsome polished gentleman I had pictured, I found him awkward in appearance, severely plain in dress, and stiff and constrained in bearing, but when he began to talk my disappointment passed away. His voice was soft, musical and singularly expressive, while in conversation his eyes of gray would light up in a way that showed that through the man's nature ran a vein of sentiment tender as that of a woman's. Listening to his terse, well rounded sentences, always instructive and full of meaning, boy that I was, I felt that he possessed power, which, in stirring times, would make him a leader among his fellows. When in later years I saw his appearance on a battle-field give renewed courage to veterans who had faced death in a dozen forms, I knew that my conviction was not a mistaken one. General Jackson was a profoundly devout man, and labored constantly to bring himself and those to whom he held the relation of teacher to the highest idea of manhood. He was superintendent of a Sunday-school in Lexington, made up of colored children. My chum was a teacher in the school, and once during his absence I took charge of his class. It was a Sunday in summer, and the room was filled with children, ranging from six to fifteen years of age. Scattered among them were several white ladies and gentlemen, who acted as teachers. Just as the clock was striking three the superintendent called the school to order with prayer, earnest and full of feeling. The manner in which he handled the lesson of the day, touching upon all the points that would interest his youthful hearers, was admirable; his way of stating old truths, charming in its freshness and simplicity. Some of the aristocratic people of Lexington looked with disfavor upon this undertaking of Jackson's, but his heart was in the work, and then, as ever, he did what he believed to be his duty. The success of the school was always dear to him. Even after the war had broken out, and he had left Lexington, his letters constantly expressed the desire that it should be kept up as of old.
