>Stonewall Jackson
The successes of the Confederacy during the same period were also owed to the character of a single man: General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson. The character of his leadership was such that on numerous occasions he could rouse the men under his command from exhausted despair to unparalleled feats on the battlefield. It was not his exhortations, nor his pep talks, nor his provisioning of the commissary; it was his example as a leader that inspired his men to unswerving loyalty and dedication.
In that terrible winter’s march and exposure, Jackson endured all that any private was exposed to. One morning, near Bath, some of his men, having crawled out from under their snow-laden blankets, half-frozen, were cursing him as the cause of their sufferings. He lay close by under a tree, also snowed under, and heard all this; and, without noticing it, presently crawled out, too, and, shaking the snow off, made some jocular remark to the nearest men, who had no idea he had ridden up in the night and lain down amongst them. The incident ran through the little army in a few hours, and reconciled his followers to all the hardships of the expedition, and fully re-established his popularity.