USA > Virginia > Virginia and Virginians; eminent Virginians, executives of the colony of Virginia, Vol. I > Part 27
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the latter. His military carcer was distinguished and his promotion rapid. He was engaged in the siege of Vera Cruz, March 9-29, 1847 : the battle of Cerro Gordo, April 17-18; skirmish of La Hoya, June 20; skirmish of Oka Laka, August 16, 1847. Shortly after the battle of Cerro Gordo, Jackson was assigned to the light field battery of Captain John B. Magruder. He participated in the battle of Contre- ras, August 19-20, 1847 and was promoted to the rank of First Lieu- tenant, and brevetted Captain August 20 for " gallant and meritorions conduct in the battles of Contreras and Churubusco." In the last named engagement Magrnder's First Lieutenant, Johnstone, was killed and Jackson thus became second in command, and took charge of a section of the battery. He was engaged in the battle of Molino del Rey, September 7; the storming of Chapultepec, September 13, 1847, where for his conspicuous gallantry he was brevetted Major, a promotion, it is said, then unprecedently rapid. In the battle of Cha- pultepee Jackson with his section found himself placed unexpectedly in the presence of a strong Mexican battery, at so short a range that in a few moments a majority of his horses were killed and his pieces nearly unmanned by the terrific storm of grape-shot to which they were subjected, whilst seventy men out of two regiments of infantry with difficulty maintained their position in his rear. General Worth perceiving the desperate position of Jackson's guns, sent him word to retire. He replied that it was more dangerous to withdraw his pieces than to hold his position. Magruder, who moved rapidly to the sup- port, having his horse killed under him as he did so, found that Jack - son had lifted by hand a single gun across a deep ditch to a position from which it could be effective, and this gun he was rapidly loading and firing with the assistance of a Sergeant alone, the remainder of his command being either killed, wounded or cronching in the ditch. Another gun was now quickly put in position, and in a few moments the Mexicans were driven from their battery, which was turned upon the flying enemy. Years afterwards, whilst a quiet professor, with the sobriquet of " Old Jack," accorded because of his grave and seri- ous demeanor-when asked by his pupils why he did not run when his command was so disabled, he placidly replied : " I was not ordered to do so," and to the query if he was not alarmed when he saw so many of his men falling around him, answered, "No;" that his only fear was lest the danger would not be great enough for him to distinguish himself as he desired. Major Jackson participated in the closing scene of the war, the assault and capture of the City of Mexico, September 13-14, 1847. He served in garrison at Fort Co- lumbus, New York, in 1848, in Fort Hamilton, New York, 1849-51, and in the Florida hostilities against the Seminole Indians in 1851. The ardnons service he had undergone impaired his naturally delicate constitution, and in consequence he resigned his commission in the
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** STONEWALL" JACKSON,
From a portrait said by his widow to be the best likeness of him in existence.
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army February 29, 1852, and returning to Virginia, was elected Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and Instructor of Artillery Tactics in the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, which position he usefully filled until the breaking out of our late un- happy civil war. Immediately after the secession of Virginia, April 17, 1861, the Corps of Cadets was ordered to Richmond by Governor Letcher. They were marched thither under the command of Major Jackson, and stationed for some time at the State Agricultural Fair Grounds (converted into a camp of instruction, and called " Camp Lee"), as drill masters to the troops arriving there. Jackson was now commissioned by Governor Letcher, Colonel, and on the 3d of May, 1861, took command of the small " Army of Observation " sta- tioned near Harpers Ferry. The prescribed limits of this sketch prevent a detailed account of the glorious career of Colonel Jackson, and a brief recapitulation must suffice here. Promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General Jure 17, he encountered the advance of the Federals under General Patterson at Falling Waters July 2, checked him and brought off without loss forty-five prisoners. He bore a dis- tinguished part in the battle of Bull Run Angust 21, where in the language of the gallant and lamented General Barnard E. Bee he " stood like a stone-wall." October 7th following he was promoted to the rank of Major-General and assigned to the command of the forces in and around Winchester. In January, 1862, he conducted an expedition against Bath and Romney, which in the suffering and ex- posure to cold which it entailed surpassed the privations of Valley Forge of the Revolution. It resulted in the capture of a large quantity of supplies. March 23, 1862, the battle at Kernstown, with the Federals under Shields, was fought, which was so far successful as to recall to Win- chester large bodies of Federal troops which had been sent from thence.
Early in May, 1862, Jackson again assumed the offensive, and by a rapid march cut off a detached body at Front Royal and compelled the Federals under Banks to retreat hastily to the Potomac. From the quantity of stores massed at Winchester by Banks and captured by General Jackson, the former has been derisively termed "Jack- son's Commissary General." Fremont and McDowell attempted to cut Jackson off, but ho succeeded in eluding them by a display of energy, decision, and fertility of resource, which gained for him the distinction of one of the great commanders in the world's history. Hastening his forces to Richmond, his timely arrival at Gaines Mill gave the victory to the Confederate arms; on the 29th ho engaged MeClellan's rear guard at Fraziers Farm; and July Ist was engaged at Malvern Hill. He next moved his corps against General Pope, and on the 9th of August fought the sanguinary battle of Cedar Run with the force of General Banks. General Lee having joined Jackson, the latter was dispatched, Angust 24th, to gain the rear of General
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Pope, which he did, capturing at Manassas prisoners, cannon and stores. Lee came to his support, and on the 30th was fought the second battle of Manassas. Jackson took part in the invasion of Maryland. September 15th, captured Harpers Ferry with 11,000 prison- ers, and rejomed Lee at Antietam in time to do the severest-fighting at that battle. October 11, 1862, Jackson was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General, and December 13th following witnessed the important battle of Fredericksburg. By Jackson's flank movement at Chancellorsville, May 2, 1863, the Eleventh Corps ot Hooker's army was routed and compelled to fall back, but in the darkness as he re- turned with his staff to the rear he was fired upon by his own men and received wounds from which he died on Sunday, May 10, 1863. He died as became a Christian and a soldier. Shortly before he ex- pired, on being told of his hastening dissolution, he responded feebly but firmly: " Very good; it is all right." A few moments before he died he cried out in his delirium: "Order A. P. Hill to prepare for action ! pass the infantry to the front rapidly ! tell Major Hawks-" then stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished. Presently a smile of ineffable sweetness spread itself over his pale face, and he said quietly and with an expression as if of relief: "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees;" and then, without pain or the least struggle, his spirit passed from earth to the God who gave it.
The remains of " Stonewall" Jackson lie in an unpretentious grave at Lexington, Virginia. It may be of interest to note that the favorite war steed of General Jackson, "Old Sorrel," lived many years and was affectionately cared for, an honored pensioner of the Virginia Military Institute. General Jackson was twice married, first to a daughter of Rev. George Junkin, D. D., and secondly to a daughter of Rev. Dr. Morrison, of North Carolina. A sister of Mrs. Jackson is the wife of General Daniel II. Hill, late Confederate States Army. Only one child of General Jackson, by his second marriage, survives --- Miss Julia Jackson -who, with her mother, has been the object of the most respectful attentions throughout this country. The graciousness of their reception during a visit to Massachusetts is noteworthy, as a generous expression of the people of that State, and it is held in connection therewith as a somewhat curious exempli- fication that the most marked attentions were at the hands of the then Chief Magistrate of the State, General Benjamin Franklin Butler.
A bronze statue of General Jackson, executed by J. IL. Foley, R. A., and presented to the State of Virginia by English admirers of the great soldier, stands in the Capitol grounds at Richmond, Virginia. It is shown in Vol. II. from a special photograph taken for this work. It was unveiled with appropriate ceremonies, October 26, 1875, Gov. Kemper and Rev. M. D. Hoge, D. D., delivering addresses.
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MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY-PHILOSOPHER OF THE SEAS.
In the lineage of Matthew Fontaine Maury there was commingled a double strain of the conscientious Huguenot blood with meritorious Virginia springs. He was seventh in descent from John de la Fou- taine, born about 1500 in the province of Maine, near the borders of Normandy ; commissioned in the household of Francis I., of France ; served continuously during the reigns of Henry II., Francis II., and until the second year of Charles IX., when he resigned ; martyred as a Protestant in 1563. His grandson, Rev. James Fontaine, pastor of the United Churches of Vaux and Royan ; born in 1658 ; married A. F. Boursiquot; fled to Great Britain from religious persecution. His daughter, Mary Anne, born in Taunton, England, 1690, married in Dublin, Ireland, in 1716, Matthew Maury, a Huguenot refugee (died in 1752), and they emigrated to Virginia in 1718. Their sou, Rev. James Maury, born 1717, died 1767, a learned and beloved minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church, married Elizabeth Walker, of es- timable Virginia lineage. Their son, Richard Maury, married Diana Minor, of worthy descent. They had issue nine children, of whom the seventh, and the third son, was the subject of this sketch, Matthew Fontaine, born 16th of January, 1806, in Spotsylvania County, Vir- ginia. His father removed to Tennessee in young Matthew's fourth year, and established himself near Nashville. In his sixteenth year young Maury entered Harpeth Academy. In 1825 he was appointed Midshipman in the United States Navy, making his first cruise in the frigate Brandywine, on the coast of Europe and in the Mediterranean. The voyage across the Atlantic was rendered memorable by tempest- uous weather and the presence of General Lafayette, a return passen- ger to France. In 1826 Maury was transferred to the sloop of war Vincennes, for a cruise around the world. Having passed with credit the usual examination, he was appointed, in 1831, Master of the sloop of war Falmouth, then fitting out for the Pacific, but was soon trans- ferred to tho schooner Dolphin, serving as acting First Lieutenant, until again transferred to the frigate Potomac, in which he returned to the United States in 1834. He then published his first work, Maury's Navigation, which was adopted as a text-book in the navy. He was now selected as astronomer, and offered the appointment of hydrographer to the exploring expedition to the South Seas, under the command of Lientenant Wilkes, but declined these positions. In 1837 he was promoted to the grade of Lieutenant, and not long after- wards met with the painful accident by which he was lamed for life. For several years, unable to perform the active duties of his profession, he devoted his time to mental culture, to the improvement of the navy, and to other matters of national concern. His views, forcibly stated, were published first and mainly in the Southern Lit- erary Messenger, over the nom de plume of Harry Bluff, and under the general caption of "Scraps from the Lucky Bag." To the influence of
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these essays has been justly ascribed the great reforms then made in the navy, as well as the establishment of a naval academy. He also advocated the establishment of a navy yard at Memphis, Tennessee; which was done by act of Congress. Under his directions were made, at that point, by Lieutenant Marr, the first series of observations upon the flow of the Mississippi. He proposed a system of observations which would enable the observers to give information, by telegraph, as to the state of the river and its tributaries. He advocated the en- largement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, that vessels of war might pass between the gulf and the lakes. He suggested to Congress efficacious plans for the disposition of the drowned government lands along the Mississippi. In the interest of commerce, he brought for- ward and successfully advocated the " warehousing system."
In 1842 he was appointed Superintendent of the Depot of Charts and Instruments, at Washington. Up to this time the field in which Maury labored was limited to his own country. Placed in a position which afforded the means necessary to the full employment of his powers, he speedily developed the plans which he had previously cherished and so earnestly advocated. The simple Depot for Charts and Instruments was transformed into an Observatory. Surrounded by such men as Fergusson, Walker, Hubbard, Coffin, Keith, and other faithful workers, whom he inspired with his own enthusiasm, he made the Naval Observatory national in its importance and relations to the astronomical world. This accomplished, he added to those labors of the astronomer, fruitful of results for future years, the task of unray- eling the winds and currents of the ocean, and collected from the log- books of ships of war long stored in the government offices, and from all other accessible sources, the material suited to his purpose. By numerous assistants, it was tabulated, and by him discussed, thus yielding for the guidance of the mariner on a single route, the com- bined experience of thousands. Yet Maury's first bart to navigators, with his new route, which he was wont to afterwards delightedly call his " Fair Way to Rio," was as first doubted and declined as being opposite to all previous tending, but its accuracy being triumphantly demonstrated by Captain Jackson, commanding the W. H. D. C. Wright, of Baltimore, the maratime world hastened to acknowledge the beneficence conferred, and to contribute aid to the speedy and complete application of Maury's system to all seas.
Maury also instituted the system of deep-sea sounding, rendering casy of accomplishment all operations of that character since under- taken, and leading directly to the establishment of telegraphic com- munication between the continents by cable, on the bed of the ocean. In these labors he was effectively assisted by Colonel John M. Brooke (now a professor in the Virginia Military Institute), then on duty in the Naval Observatory, and whose deep-sea sounding apparatus first brought up specimens, whilst it fathomed the depths of the ocean.
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But to these immediately practical and beneficial results there was something to be added. The investigations, of which they were the first fruits, presented materials for a work to make clear to landsmen as well as mariners, the wonderful mechanism of the sea, with its cur- rents and its atmosphere, "The Physical Geography of the Sea," which, translated into various languages, is an enduring monument to the genius and usefulness of its author. By Humboldt, Maury was declared to be the founder of a new and important science. The principal powers of Europe recognized the value of his services to mankind. "Frauce, Austria, Russia, Prussia, Denmark, Belgium, Por- tugal, Sweden, Sardinia, Holland, Bremen, and the Papal States, be- stowed orders of kuighthood and other honors. The Academies of Science of Paris, Berlin, Brussels, St. Petersburg and Mexico conferred the honor of membership.
When Virginia, seceding from the Union, called upon her sons, he promptly resigned from the Federal Navy to take part in the defense of his native State, declining, from a sense of duty, highly honorable positions, which he was invited to fill in Russia and France severally. He was selected as one of the Conneil of Three appointed by the Gov- ernor of Virginia in the important crisis, and so served until its army and navy were incorporated with those of the Confederacy, when he was sent abroad by the Southern Government, invested with suitable powers of provision for its material naval wants. This trust he duly filled until the close of the war.
Then, in anticipation of a large emigration from the Southern States to Mexico, with the view of aiding his countrymen there, he went thither. He was cordially received by the Emperor Maximilian, who appointed him to a place in his Cabinet. Thence he was sent on a special mission to Europe. The revolution terminating his relations with Mexico, he was left in straitened circumstances, when he resumed, as a means of support, his scientific and literary labors. He made ex- perim ental researches in new application of electricity, in which he was eminently successful, and prepared his Manual of Geography, subsequently published in America. During this period the Univer- sity of Cambridge conferred on him the degree of LL.D .; and the Emperor of the French invited him to the superintendeney of the Imperial Observatory at Paris. He patriotically preferred to accept the chair of Physics in the Virginia Military Institute. Whilst serving here, he prepared his latest work, the Physical Survey of Virginia.
Stricken with a gastric complaint in October, 1872, he died at Lex- ington, Virginia, February 1, 1873. His remains rest beneath a monument of native James river granite in Hollywood Cemetery, near Richmond. Commodore Maury married in early life, Anne, daughter of Dabney and Elizabeth Herndon, of Fredericksburg, Virginia (the sister of a devotedly heroie brotherhood). Their issue was five daughters and three sons.
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HISTORY OF VIRGINIA.
INTRODUCTORY.
In the study of the history of a commonwealth, be it empire, state or kingdom, it is necessary that we understand something of the causes which have acted in producing and advancing, or destroying and retard- ing, the various institutions-civil and otherwise-of that particular com- monwealth. Then, in order that the history of Virginia be properly understood, it is essential that we examine the causes which led to its settlement and organization as a State.
In the year 1492 Christopher Columbus lifted the veil which hung over the stormy waters of the Atlantic, and exposed the American continent to the view of Western Europe. This was the first practical discovery of America. That the continent was seen by white men as early as the tenth century, there can no longer remain a doubt. The examination of Ice- landic records and documents preserved in the archives of the Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, by recent historians, put at rest the long-doubted claim that the Northmen were the first discoverers of America. Even so great an authority as Humboldt says, after having examined the records, "The discovery of the northern part of America by the Northmen can not be disputed."
A Norse navigator, in the year 986 A. D., while sailing in the Green- land sea, was caught in a storm and carried westward to the coast of Labrador. Several times the shore was sighted, but no landing attempted. The shore was so different from the well-known coast of Greenland that it was certain that an unknown land was in sight. Upon reaching Green- land Herjulfson, the commander, and his companions told strange stories of the new land seen in the west.
In the year 1001 the actual discovery of the continent was made by Lief Ericson, who sailed west from Greenland, and landed on the coast of America in 413º north latitude. It was the spring of the year, and from the luxuriant vegetation that everywhere adorned the coast the North- men named it Vineland (the land of vines). These adventurers on the deep continued to visit these shores during the eleventh, twelfth and thir- teenth centuries; it was as late as A. D. 1347, that the last voyage of the Northmen to America was made. Says Ridpath: "An event is to be
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weighed by its consequences. From the discovery of the western world br the Norsemen nothing whatever resulted. The Icelanders themselves for- got the place and the very name of Vineland." Europe never heard of such a land or such a discovery. The curtain was again stretched from sky to sea, and the New World lay hidden in its shadows.
He that was to announce to Europe the existence of the American con- tinent was to come from the classic land of Italy, and the sunny land of Spain,-the country under whose patronage the discovery was to be made. Christopher Columbus was the name of him whose discoveries, considered in all their bearings upon human history, are the grandest recorded in the annals of the world. "A name around which, as time rolls away, will gather the wreaths of imperishable fame.
No sooner had the existence of a trans-Atlantic continent been made known than all nations from Scandinavia to the Strait of Gibraltar be- came frenzied with excitement. A new world, as it were, was to be added to the old. Monarchs, discoverers and adventurers at once rushed for- ward in quest of the " Eldorado" to be found somewhere beyond the west- ern seas.
Spain at once prepared for the conquest of her newly acquired posses- sions, and with a series of splendid triumphs in the south, the civilization of the Incas and Montezumas perished from the earth. France was not slow to profit by the discoveries of Columbus. Far away, hundreds of miles toward the Arctic Circle, she took possession of the country lying along the St. Lawrence and around Lake Champlain, and hastened to plant colonies in the same. Between the Spanish possessions on the south and those of France on the north, lay a territory extending from the thirty-fourth to sixty-eighth parallels of north latitude, and from the Atlantic on the cast to the Pacific on the west. England laid claim to all this region, and based that claim upon the discoveries of John and Se- bastian Cabot, who were the first to explore the eastern coast of Amer- ica, they having sailed from Salvador to the Capes of Virginia as early as the year 1498. Nearly an hundred years had passed away, and no perma- nent settlement had been made in all this vast domain. From the ever- glades of Florida to the pine-clad hills of Nova Scotia, no white man had ever landed on these shores. It was in the year 1583 that a young noble- man, whose life and tragie death were to become familiar to every student of English history, first appeared at the English court-it was none other than Sir Walter Raleigh, an English gallant, who had taken part in the French Protestant wars, and who now appeared at the British court to make application for assistance in fitting out an expedition for the pur- pose of planting a colony in North America. He hoped thus to prevent the Spanish monarchy and the equally intolerant French court from gain- ing possession of the entire continent to the exclusion of England and her interests. Queen Elizabeth was then upon the British throne. Raleigh
PRINC POW HATANI IMP. VI
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RGINTA
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AIS REBECCA. FILIA P
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POCAHONTAS,
From the DePass picture in Capt. John Smith's "General Historie."
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was young, rich, handsome and fascinating in his address. He soon became a great favorite of the maiden queen, and she gave him a com- mission making him lord of all the continent of North America lying between Florida and Canada.
The whole of that part of the continent claimed by Great Britain with- out any well defined boundaries, was called Virginia, in honor of the virgin queen. Two ships were sent out to make discoveries. They were commanded by experienced officers, and sailed from London in April, 1584, and in July reached the coast of North Carolina, on which a landing was effected. Here they remained until September, when they returned to England, and gave such a glowing description of the country which they had visited, that seven ships were immediately fitted out, conveying one hundred and eighty men, who sailed as colonists to the New World. As the ships neared the Carolina coast, they came within sight of the beautiful island of Roanoke. Charmed with the climate, with the friend- liness of the natives, and with the majestic growth of the forest trees, far surpassing anything they had seen in the Old World, they decided to locate on this island. Most of the colonists were men unaccustomed to work, and who expected that in some unknown way, in the New World, wealth would flow in upon them like a flood. Not realizing their fond hope, they became disheartened, and when the supply ships arrived bringing abundant sup- plies, they crowded on board and returned to England. Fifteen, however, consented to remain and await the arrival of fresh colonists from the mother country.
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