In the first battle in which Jackson took part, the confused
struggle at Bull Run, he gained his name of Stonewall from the
firmness with which he kept his men to their work and repulsed
the attack of the Union troops. From that time until his death,
less than two years afterward, his career was one of brilliant
and almost uninterrupted success; whether serving with an
independent command in the Valley, or acting under Lee as his
right arm in the pitched battles with McClellan, Pope, and
Burnside. Few generals as great as Lee have ever had as great a
lieutenant as Jackson. He was a master of strategy and tactics,
fearless of responsibility, able to instil into his men. his own
intense ardor in battle, and so quick in his movements, so ready
to march as well as fight, that his troops were known to the rest
of the army as the "foot cavalry."

In the spring of 1863 Hooker had command of the Army of the
Potomac. Like McClellan, he was able to perfect the discipline of
his forces and to organize them, and as a division commander he
was better than McClellan, but he failed even more signally when
given a great independent command. He had under him 120,000 men
when, toward the end of April, he prepared to attack Lee's army,
which was but half as strong.

The Union army lay opposite Fredericksburg, looking at the
fortified heights where they had received so bloody a repulse at
the beginning of the winter. Hooker decided to distract the
attention of the Confederates by letting a small portion of his
force, under General Sedgwick, attack Fredericksburg, while he
himself took the bulk of the army across the river to the right
hand so as to crush Lee by an assault on his flank. All went well