This spring marks the 160th anniversary of the War Between the States.

I’m always amazed by how many generals, North and South, had colorful nicknames. Consider these 3.

“Stonewall” Jackson

His birth name was Thomas Jonathan Jackson. His classmates at West Point (and the cadets he later taught at Virginia Military Academy) called him “Old Jack.” And so he was known … until a blazing hot Sunday in July 1861. The Battle of First Manassas (or First Bull Run to the Yankees) was underway near Washington, DC. Jackson was there as colonel of the 1st Virginia Brigade.

Things were going badly for the Southerners, who kept getting pushed back by the boys in blue. South Carolina Confederate General Bernard Bee pointed to Jackson’s men and said, “There stands Jackson like a stone wall.” From that moment on, he was Stonewall Jackson and the unit was the Stonewall Brigade.

But here’s the mystery: Was Bee being complimentary or sarcastic? He’d been urging Jackson to attack, which the Virginian refused to do. Some historians, plus Bee’s adjutant who was there, claim the phrase “stands like a stone wall” was a snide putdown, not praise for Jackson’s grim resistance.

We’ll never know what Bee meant. Because he was wounded soon after speaking those words and died a few days later. His intention went to the grave with him. (Jackson followed 22 months later.)

“Fighting Joe” Hooker

If the Civil War had a party boy, it was Joe Hooker. Sandy haired and blue eyed, he knew how to have a good time. A really good time. One prudish Bostonian smugly wrote Hooker’s headquarters was “a place where no self-respecting gentleman liked to go, and no decent woman could go.”

In 1862, he telegraphed a report to the brass in Washington signed, “I am still fighting – Joe Hooker.” But the message was garbled en route. It became “I am still, Fighting Joe Hooker.” Newspapers reporters –then as now eager for a good angle– seized on it. A nickname was born.

Hooker was an aggressive fighter with a great love of the spotlight. But ironically, this publicity hound hated the name that was pinned on him. He said “Fighting Joe” made him sound reckless, or stupid or, worst of all, “like a common bandit.” Like it or not, the nickname stuck … even after he was humiliated by Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Chancellorsville.

There’s also a widely repeated but utterly false story that Hooker’s name became a nickname for someone else. Many people say the term “hooker” was inspired by Joe Hooker’s frequent use of prostitutes. Not true. In fact, “hooker” appeared in print to connote practitioners of the world’s oldest profession well before Joe Hooker’s Civil War fame. However, the general did turn a blind eye to army regulations and allowed prostitutes to follow the army, claiming it was good for morale. Those women were nicknamed “Hooker’s Division,” and it certainly helped popularize the term. So indirectly, Joe Hooker was associated with “hookers.”

Jeb “Beauty” Stuart

This general actually had two nicknames. He began life as James Ewell Brown Stuart, and as a boy fashioned a nickname from the first initial of his first three names: Jeb. And people called him that. But some called him something less flattering, too.

Stuart had a soft, weak chin as a teenager that gave his face an almost feminine quality. A classmate said the chin was “so short and retiring as positively to disfigure his otherwise fine countenance.” His chum quickly devised this snarky nickname: “Beauty.”

Stuart responded the only way he could: immediately after graduating from mandatorily required clean-shaven West Point, he grew a beard. A fellow officer said Stuart was “the only man he ever saw that [a] beard improved.”

The weak chin was hidden from view, but the nickname “Beauty” stayed with him. In a way, Stuart got the last laugh. The beard he sported for the rest of his short life was long, red and wavy; it, coupled with his reputation as a dashing cavalryman and the ostrich plume he wore in his hat, made him attractive to the fair sex. Stuart was an unapologetic ladies man who loved basking in their attention.

And there you have it. How sarcasm, a typo and snarkiness conspired to create three nicknames that are still remembered 160 years later.

Have comments, questions or suggestions you’d like to share with Mark? Message him at jmp.press@gmail.com.