Introduction: Hello my name is Javier Ramirez, and welcome back to my podcast. Today we are going to talk about the wonderful adventures that Stonewall Jackson experienced.

Stonewall Jackson had a very tough childhood. He has seen death at a very young age. His father and his sister died from a rare disease called typhoid fever. Typhoid fever is a rare fever that is developed in countries and this happens due to a multidrug resistance and a virulent form of Salmonella infection.. It is still a serious health threat in the developing world, especially for children. Around the age of two, he witnessed his father and his sister get typhoid fever, so he only had his mother as a kid. His mother had four kids and Stonewall was the third child. When his father died his mother had trouble getting money and to support her kids that she had left, so in 1830 she remarried a dude called Blake Woodson. Jackson and his siblings did not like the stepfather so they went to go live with is uncle Jackson Mill’s, year later his mother died trying to give birth to his step-brother. His step-brother, William Woodson, soon died of tuberculosis in 1841.

In 1842 Jackson enrolled in the U.S. Military Academy in the West Point in New York. He was the oldest one in his class but since his family was poor and for his modest education, his classmates would always make fun of him because of that. His determination went up to graduate because of the bullying. In 1846 he graduated from West Point, 17th in a class of 59 students. As soon as he graduated, he had to fight in the Mexican-American War. He got there and joined as a 1st U.S. Artillery as a 2nd lieutenant. In the field, he was brave and quick on his mind. During the war he met a person named Robert E. Lee. who would one day join the military during the American War. When the war ended, Jackson was promoted to the rank of brevet major and was considered a war hero.

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After the war, he continued to serve the military in New York and Florida. After a while, in 1851, he retired from the military and just wanted a civil life. He was offered a professorship at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. Jackson was a professor of natural and experimental philosophy as well as of artillery tactics. As a professor he was very unpopular with the students because of his way of teaching and how strighted-faced he was. Most of his students made fun of him with how odd he was, but even though he was odd, his knowledge was amazing. In 1853, Jackson met a woman called Elinor Junkin and got married with her. A year later in 1854, she died during childbirth. The child was a stillborn son. Later in 1857, Jackson remarried to a woman called Mary Anna Morrison. 10 months later, he and his wife had a daughter, but a month later she died. Stonewall reengaged back to the military and was a VMI officer. In 1862, he and his wife had another daughter named Julia. He named her after his mother.

Jackson's iconic nickname, Stonewall, was obtained at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, also known as the First Battle of Manassas. "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall," General Barnard E. Bee screamed as Jackson charged his men ahead to bridge a gap in the defensive line against a Union onslaught. Jackson was elevated to major general for his bravery and quick thinking on the battlefield, and the nickname remained. Jackson was shot by friendly fire from the 18th North Carolina Infantry Regiment on May 2, 1863. Jackson's arm was severed at a nearby field hospital. On May 4, Jackson was flown to Guinea Station, Virginia, to a second field hospital. On May 10, 1863, at the age of 39, he died there of complications after saying his final words, "Let us cross over the river and relax in the shade of trees."

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