1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [64]
Jackson, Thomas “Stonewall” (1824–1863) When his bold stand at the First Battle of Bull Run turned the tide toward a Confederate victory, this Virginia general earned the sobriquet “Stonewall” and emerged in successive actions as the most innovative and skilled tactician of the Civil War. In the Shenandoah Valley, he was able to use a minimal number of men to pin down huge Union forces, and at Chancellorsville he was instrumental in achieving a crushing Union defeat. Wounded by friendly fire on May 2, 1863, he died eight days later. Robert E. Lee declared: “I have lost my right arm.”
James, Frank (1843–1915) Raised with his brother on a Missouri farm, James joined William Quantrill’s notorious band of Confederate guerrillas during the Civil War. After the war, he and his brother formed an outlaw gang, robbing banks, stores, stagecoaches, and trains from 1866 until 1881, when Jesse was killed. Frank surrendered a few months later, but no jury would convict him. Ruthless though they were, he and his brother had attained the status of latter-day Robin Hoods. Frank retired quietly, as the legend of him and his brother continued to grow.
James, Henry (1843–1916) Henry James was the son of a theologian and the brother of philosopher-psychologist William James. He devoted his life to the writing of fiction, creating fascinating variations on a single question: What happens when the exuberant if clumsy innocence of the New World meets the sophistication and corruption of the Old? The exploration of this theme led to the creation of complex and infinitely nuanced novels examining culture, society, and human emotion. A literary craftsman of painstaking skill, his example inspired generations of American novelists after him. James lived much of his life in Europe and became a British subject shortly before his death.
James, Jesse (1847–1882) Like his older brother Frank, Jesse James joined a Confederate guerrilla gang during the Civil War. After the war, he teamed up with Frank as co-chief of what became the most notorious outlaw gang in the American West. During its long criminal career, the James Gang chiefly robbed banks, stagecoaches, and railroads, gaining a reputation as latter-day Robin Hoods—even though, after robbing the rich, they by no means gave to the poor. The gang’s career ended when Jesse, living incognito in St. Joseph, Missouri, as “Thomas Howard,” was shot in the back of the head by a new gang member, Robert Ford, who betrayed him for the reward money. Ford was publicly castigated, whereas Jesse (and, to a lesser extent, Frank) was elevated to the pantheon of American folk heroes.
James, William (1842–1910) A pioneering Harvard psychologist, James emerged as the nation’s leading philosopher when he published in 1907 Pragmatism: A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking, which proposed that the meaning as well as the truth of any idea is a function of its practical outcome. Pragmatism was born of an American culture of action and enterprise and, in turn, exerted a major intellectual influence on subsequent American thought and ethics.
Jaworski, Leon (1905–1982) Born to Polish and Austrian immigrants, Jaworski was a prominent Texas attorney who, on November 1, 1973, was appointed to replace Archibald Cox after Cox had been fired at the behest of President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate scandal. Jaworski pursued the Watergate investigation vigorously, engaging in a protracted constitutional battle with the White House to secure tape recordings of Oval Office conferences that implicated the president in illegal surveillance and the illegal attempt to cover up various covert White House operations.
Jay, John (1745–1829) This founding father became the first chief justice of the Supreme Court (1789–1795) and, as such, established many judicial precedents that shaped the laws of the new United States as well as the nature and function of the high court. Jay was also a great diplomat of the early