een no more of military
service than the drills of the cadet battalion. He had lost all touch
with the army. His name had been forgotten, except by his comrades of
the Mexican campaign, and he had hardly seen a regular soldier since
he resigned his commission. But, even from a military point of view,
those ten years had not been wasted. His mind had a wider grasp, and
his brain was more active. Striving to fit himself for such duties as
might devolve on him, should he be summoned to the field, like all
great men and all practical men he had gone to the best masters. In
the campaigns of Napoleon he had found instruction in the highest
branch of his profession, and had made his own the methods of war
which the greatest of modern soldiers both preached and practised.
Maturer years and the search for wisdom had steadied his restless
daring; and his devotion to duty, always remarkable, had become a
second nature. His health, under careful and self-imposed treatment,
had much improved, and the year 1861 found him in the prime of
physical and mental vigour. Already it had become apparent that his
life at Lexington was soon to end. The Damascus blade was not to rust
upon the shelf. During the winter of 1860-61 the probability of a
conflict between the free and slave-holding States, that is, between
North and South, had become almost a certainty. South Carolina,
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, had
formally seceded from the Union; and establishing a Provisional
Government, with Jefferson Davis as President, at Montgomery in
Alabama, had proclaimed a new Republic, under the title of the
Confederate States of America. In order to explain Jackson's attitude
at this momentous crisis, it will be necessary to discuss the action
of Virginia, and to investigate the motives which led her to take the
side she did.

Forces which it was impossible to curb, and which but few detected,
were at the root of the secession movement. The ostensible cause was
the future status of the negro.

Slavery was recognised in fifteen States of the Union. In the North
it had long been abolished, but this made no difference to its
existence in the South. The States which composed the Union were
semi-independent communities, with their own legislatures, their own
magistracies, their own militia, and the power of the purse. How far
their sovereign rights extended was a matter of contention; but,
under the terms of the Constitutio