CENTRVILLE VA.,
February 3, 1862.
Major-General Jackson:
MY DEAR FRIEND: I have just read, and with profound regret,
your letter
[of January 31] to the Secretary of War, asking to be relieved from your
present command either by an order to the Virginia Military Institute or the
acceptance of your resignation. Let me beg you to reconsider this matter. Under
ordinary circumstances a due sense of one's own dignity, as well as care for
professional character and official rights, would demand such a course as
yours, but the character of this war, the great energy exhibited by the
Government of the United States, the danger in which our very existence as an
independent people lies, requires sacrifices from us all who have been educated
as soldiers.
I receive my information of the order of which you have such
cause to complain from your letter. Is not that as great an official wrong to
me as the order itself to you? Let us dispassionately reason with the
Government on this subject of command, and if we fail to influence its
practice, then ask to be relieved from positions the authority of which is
exercised by the War Department, while the responsibilities are left to us.
I have taken the liberty to detain your letter to make this
appeal to your patriotism, not merely from warm feelings of personal regard,
but from the official opinion which makes me regard you as necessary to the
service of the country in your present position.
Very truly, yours,
J. E. JOHNSTON.
SOURCES: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of
the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume
5 (Serial No. 5), p. 1059-60; Mary Anna Jackson, Life and Letters
of General Thomas J. Jackson (Stonewall Jackson), p. 230
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