About S.C. Gwynne

S.C. Gwynne is the author of Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson and The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football. His book Empire of the Summer Moon was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He spent most of his career as a journalist, including stints with Time as bureau chief, national correspondent, and senior editor, and with Texas Monthly as executive editor.

The Astounding Transformation of Stonewall Jackson

By |2021-06-24T18:57:57-05:00January 21st, 2021|Categories: Civil War, Quotation|

As an instructor at the Virginia Military Institute, Thomas Jonathan Jackson was a poor professor, given to memorizing his lectures and delivering them in a monotone voice to his classes, word-for-word. His students teased him behind his back and fired spitballs at each other during classes, with little fear of their wooden, seemingly hapless teacher. [...]

War Makes a Mockery of Death

By |2022-08-08T17:48:35-05:00October 11th, 2017|Categories: Christianity, Civil War|

Eighteen months after the first shot at Fort Sumter, there were certain truths that the soldiers had come to know. Death in war was neither picturesque nor peaceful, and dying bravely didn’t make you any less dead, or mean that you would not be dumped into the cold earth of a mass grave with everyone [...]

Why Stonewall Jackson & Virginia Chose Secession

By |2021-01-30T12:49:54-06:00August 24th, 2016|Categories: Books, Civil War, Quotation|

Jackson had remained generally aloof from national politics. As a slaveholder, he was aware of the congressional debate over slavery in the territories, but not deeply versed in it. He was like many ordinary Virginians of his day: a moderate states’-rights Democrat who favored keeping Washington’s nose out of Virginia’s business and working within the [...]

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