“Because he had already memorialized Stonewall Jackson in a powerful sermon after the general’s death in 1863, and because he was both a relative and a former member of Jackson’s staff, Mary Anna Jackson asked Dabney to write a biography of the Confederate chieftain. Dabney spent the rest of the war on his Life of Jackson — researching the battles, visiting Mrs. Jackson, securing Jackson’s remaining papers, and writing the manuscript. The resulting biography was Dabney’s longest-standing literary monument and one of his chief glories” (Sean Michael Lucas, Robert Lewis Dabney, 128).