Thomas Jonathon Jackson (January 21, 1824 – May 10, 1863)

Aside from Robert E. Lee, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was the most esteemed of all Confederate commanders during and after the American Civil War. Jackson graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1846 and served in the Mexican-American War. In 1851, Jackson resigned his commission in the U.S. Army and accepted a faculty position at the Virginia Military Institute, where he taught until the outbreak of the Civil War. Jackson emerged to become Lee's most trusted commander before his untimely death at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863.