Click 👉Today in History (general history), Jan. 21.
ON THIS DAY IN CONFEDERATE HISTORY, Jan. 21.
Lieutenant General Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson was born on this day in 1824 in Clarksburg, Virginia. Of humble origins, Jackson was of Scotch-Irish heritage and both of his parents, Julia Beckwith Neale Jackson and Jonathan Jackson, an attorney, were dead by the time he was seven. He was raised by an uncle, Cummins Jackson. Thomas was admitted to West Point and graduated with the Class of 1846 ranking 17th out of 56 cadets. Jackson was assigned as a second lieutenant in Co. K, 1st U.S. Artillery and compiled an outstanding record in the Mexican American War, rising to the rank of brevet major. He fought at the Siege of Vera Cruz, and the battles of Contreras, Chapultepec, and Mexico City. After the war, he reverted to first lieutenant and served in the Second Seminole War and frontier duty. He resigned because he could not get along with his commanding officer. Jackson then got a professorship at the Virginia Military Institute. During this period, he married Elinor Junkin Jackson who died from childbirth along with the baby boy. His second wife Martha Anna Morrison Jackson had one child, Julia, both of whom survived Jackson. After the War for South Independence started his military genius soon became apparent and he rose quickly from brigadier general to lieutenant general and commander of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. Jackson gained his nickname "Stonewall" at First Manassas in 1861. Jackson then amazed the world with his victories, including the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862, the Seven Days Battles, Cedar Mountain, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville in 1863, where he was mortally wounded. He died May 10, 1863, at Guinea Station, Virginia. Stonewall Jackson was buried in Lexington, Va. His fame is enduring, and his military tactics were admired and used by a number of World War II generals.
Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson
1863: Confederate cotton-clad gunboats Uncle Ben and Josiah Bell, with Lt. Dick Dowling's artillery company, Co. F, 1st Texas Heavy Artillery, and Capt. George O'Brien's Company E, 11th Bn. Tex. Vols. as sharpshooters, chased two Federal blockaders, Morning Light and Velocity, for 30 miles in the Gulf of Mexico off Sabine Pass, Texas. A sharp sea battle was fought and both Yankee ships were captured. This was the third battle won by the Confederates in Texas in January. The other two were the Battle of Galveston on Jan. 1, 1863, and the sea battle between the CSS Alabama commanded by Captain Raphael Semmes, and the USS Hatteras in the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston.
Major Richard W. "Dicks" Dowling
(LLMVC, Hill Mem. Lib., LSU)
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