who still live to tell what they saw, and a conscientious study of his life and campaigns as recorded by many who have written about him.
With the true English belief in genealogy, Colonel Henderson has not been satisfied to present the distinguished soldier upon the stage as one born in armor, but goes back infinitely further than General Jackson would have gone, or any one would have gone for him, but for the marvelous change in the part he played in the affairs of his nation, to show of what sturdy stock he came. He is not content to treat his subject with the eye of a sculptor. It was not his intention merely to give to his subject a lively and express image. His task was to dissect the character and achievements of General Jackson to their inmost recesses, and to lay bare before us all the springs of motion and all the causes of his great superiority as a man in the walks of civil and military duty.
To the Southern people, and especially to his cotemporaries, this delineation of General Jackson will stand as a monument. Coming as it does from a highly accomplished officer of the English army, it is a distinction won by no other soldier of either Federal or Confederate forces. We have often wondered that some Northern military writer, who excels in the treatment of commanders and armies—Mr. John Codman Ropes, for instance—has not taken upon himself, from his point of view, the treatment of some such strong character as General Jackson. We believe that such a writer, animated as he evidently is by the spirit of the historian rather than of the eulogistic biographer, could fill a void in the history of the greatest shock this nation has ever felt. W T e believe it is almost without precedent for the life of the idol of one side to be written by a hostile hand, and just for this reason would it be the more interesting. The public mind likes nothing better than to hear the other side, and so it happens that Colonel Henderson has assumed what is almost the duty of some Northern writer. It is safe to say that a review of General Jackson, even from the pen of an enemy, would be read with the greatest interest.
We all, moved by various reasons for so doing, turn Back to the early days of those who reach the high points among men. Curiosity perhaps is the main incentive. The vicissitudes of life
