Publishers Weekly
05/06/2019
In this complex contemplation, former Virginia park ranger Cleary follows the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson’s wartime trail in a quest to understand both the maddeningly secretive man and the cultural value of studying a 150-year-old war. That Jackson had marched down Cleary’s childhood road sparked an early, intense interest in the Confederate leader, seemingly at odds with Cleary’s egalitarian beliefs. Throughout the narrative, Cleary reflects honestly on lessons he learned from teaching African-American teens in juvenile prison while struggling to understand Jackson, who started a Sunday school for black children but fought with passion for the slaveholding South. This dichotomy results in engaging depictions of war, including discussions of Jackson’s military genius and jaw-dropping mistakes (such as vindictively court-martialing a fellow officer for allowing his ammunitionless unit to retreat from a battle), alternating with contemplations of recent events including the racially motivated Charleston church shooting. Beginning with the First Battle of Manassas, Cleary retraces Jackson’s steps in chronological order, visiting preserved battlefields and others turned into highways, commercial development, and subdivisions. Cleary enlists National Park Service experts to help him navigate lesser-known places and access isolated private properties, some of which allow easy visualization of the war’s events amidst thick undergrowth. While he finds no resolution, Cleary provides a thoughtful, accessible look into both Jackson and the continued relevance of the Civil War. (July)
From the Publisher
"Ben Cleary's decades-long fascination with the Civil War was stoked in part by his awareness that Stonewall Jackson and his soldiers had marched past the site of Cleary's Virginia home in 1862. Intrigued by Jackson's military genius and baffling personality, he set forth on a quest to understand both and to probe the meaning of the war by following in Jackson's footsteps. Civil War experts and neophytes alike will find the results of his quest to be a rewarding reading experience."—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Battle Cry of Freedom
"It takes a particular kind of courage to launch an admiring portrait of a Confederate icon into today's political climate. Happily, Ben Cleary's SEARCHING FOR STONEWALL JACKSON is thoughtful, nuanced, and sensitive to the political realities, then and now."—John Strausbaugh, award-winning author of Victory City and City of Sedition
"In Searching for Stonewall Jackson, historian Ben Cleary proves that a complicated past is always more fascinating and thought-provoking than one without controversy. Thomas Jonathan Jackson was an American both remarkable and tragic: A West Point graduate, a Mexican War hero, and a deeply religious slave owner who led Confederate armies in one victory after another. And while there are those today who would prefer to erase all evidence of Jackson's existence, Cleary's absorbing personal journey into the Southern general's legacy shows us that Jackson is as firmly fixed in our historical consciousness as he and his Virginians were at Bull Run some 158 years ago. Like it or not."—Mark Lee Gardner, award-winning author of Rough Riders: Theodore Roosevelt, His Cowboy Regiment, and the Immortal Charge Up San Juan Hill
"More than a century and half after its end, the Civil War and its legacy continues to arouse passionate debate. How today's Americans memorialize our nation's bloodiest conflict have caused heated disagreements and even violent confrontations. In Searching for Stonewall Jackson, Ben Cleary revisits those places where one the war's most famous warriors fought his battles and earned his renown. Along the way, the author offers us a finely written, thoughtful, and needed portrait of both that terrible struggle and its controversial meaning. It is a journey worth taking for contemporary Americans who are mindful of our shared past."—Jeffry D. Wert, author, A Glorious Army: Robert E. Lee's Triumph 1862-1863
"Ben Cleary not only knows history, he feels it. His new book is rife with fresh details on General Jackson's campaigns, resulting in a strikingly original take on the Confederate States Army — and the modern South. Both are vividly real in Searching for Stonewall Jackson."—Julie M. Fenster, bestselling author of Jefferson's America
"Cleary provides a thoughtful, accessible look into both Jackson and the continued relevance of the Civil War."—Publishers Weekly
"Cleary...is both sensitive and sensible, and readers along the way will learn both of Jackson's gallantry and the essential wrongness of the enterprise for which he died. An honest, searching book sure to tread on the toes of supremacists and iconoclasts alike."—Kirkus
"Part biography, military history, a psychological exercise and an endeavor to discover the many faceted characteristics of [Jackson]...[A] colorful tapestry. Cleary masterfully combines historic narratives with his own perspective...walking the paths and battlefields trod a century and a half earlier by the Confederate general."—li.li1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 17.0px; font: 14.7px Times; color: #323130; -webkit-text-stroke: #323130}ul.ul1 {list-style-type: disc}Wilford Kale, Virginia Gazette
Kirkus Reviews
2019-05-12
Virginia-based writer and teacher/historian Cleary takes on a thorny modern issue: How do we commemorate those dead who fought for the Confederates?
Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson spent a decade teaching at Virginia Military Institute, a job for which he was perhaps not entirely suited. "Then suddenly, with the war," writes the author, "he came into his own: commanding, organizing, fighting." Beloved of his soldiers and honored by foe Ulysses S. Grant as "a gallant soldier and Christian gentleman," he fought doggedly for the Confederate cause in what he called "our second War of Independence" while, as Cleary notes, never apologizing for or openly supporting slavery. (Jackson did, however, own six slaves.) The author's investigation into Jackson's life and times begins with our own, with a Virginia monument that park rangers called "Stonewall on steroids," which was sculpted just before World War II and has the feel of an anti-Axis superhero. While an antihero to many, Jackson is revered in the South, especially among Virginians. On that score, Cleary gamely recalls a showdown with a New York academic who disparaged Southern boorishness: "My assertion that I was a Virginian—which to a southerner would have stopped her diatribe immediately—did nothing to check the flow." Yet, of course, that New Yorker had a point to make. Furthermore, writes the author, who spent many years teaching mostly African American students in the juvenile justice system and laments the "consequences of poverty and neglect, the legacy of the slavery that Johnson was fighting to defend," that point needs to be heard out in Southern quarters. Cleary, who observes that "interest in the Civil War is a middle-aged white guy kind of thing," is both sensitive and sensible, and readers along the way will learn both of Jackson's gallantry and the essential wrongness of the enterprise for which he died.
An honest, searching book sure to tread on the toes of supremacists and iconoclasts alike.
