Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson (1824–1863) was a celebrated Confederate general in the American Civil War. Born in Virginia, Jackson graduated from West Point and served in the Mexican-American War. He resigned his commission in 1851 to take a position as a professor at the Virginia Military Institute. When Virginia seceded in 1861, Jackson remained loyal to the state and was commissioned as a Confederate colonel. He was soon promoted to brigadier general and took part in the First Battle of Bull Run. There, his...

Robert Smalls (1839–1915) was a slave who became a Union naval hero of the Civil War. Born into slavery, Smalls was hired out to work on the Confederate steamship Planter in 1861. In May 1862, he led a group of African Americans in seizing the ship and piloting it to a Union naval blockade. Smalls turned over the ship and its cargo and documents to the Union, which earned him both admiration and freedom. He was given command of the Planter, making him the first black captain of an American service vessel. During...

The mythologizing of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), which began almost immediately after his assassination, placed him in the pantheon of American heroes alongside George Washington. But behind the legend of “Honest Abe”—country raconteur, log cabin president, compassionate father figure, and, finally, national martyr—was a shrewd legal mind, astute politician, and adept student of human psychology. Though he lost his first senatorial election to Stephen Douglas in 1858, the Republican Lincoln outmaneuvered Douglas during the campaign by...