stonewall

I watched a History Channel DVD about Stonewall Jackson last night. One of the talking head historians noted that when Jackson met his first wife, he was in his early thirties. She was the daughter of some colleague of his and they formed a fast friendship, but he didn't realize he was in love. One of his friends had to explain it to him, that the pains he was feeling whenever he was near her were the pains of falling in love. Can you imagine a man so simple, so serious and so stoic that he doesn't know when he's falling in love? And yet, when I think back on all I've read, Jackson is the only Civil War era general of whose personal life is so rarely written. His life was military. His life was war and battle and artillery. I think we cannot imagine such a man in the modern world.