From the Author:

The journal of Sgt. William Green Jackson is a 
work of fiction based on fact.  William Green 
Jackson was My great-grandfather.  He was a Civil 
War Veteran of the 4th Texas Infantry.  He joined 
the CSA in Navasota, Texas after coming to Texas 
from Sparta, Georgia where he was born and 
baptized. The records of that baptism are still 
in the little church outside Sparta. WG was 
wounded at Chattanooga and discharged from the 
service to return home.  On his way, he briefly 
rode with elements of William Clark Quantrill's 
Raiders.  Finding their mission unsavory, he left 
them to go back to Texas.  He came home with a 
Sharps .50 Rifle.  He never told where he got it.

The descriptions of battle were purposely kept 
brief.  In the real journals of WG there were 
few words written about such.  The journals, like 
those of thousands of combat veterans, spoke of 
friendships and what good times there were.  The 
grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors 
were on purpose also.  The journals of WG were 
much more literate than I have written these. To 
my ancestor I apologize.  The dialect, and other 
errors were so the elementary students who read 
the entries would have a better feel for the
times and the way many people spoke then.

Other variations from the actual story were made.  
While my great-grandfather married, it actually 
occurred after he returned home.  He and his wife 
lost some children as was common in that time, 
and  my Grandfather, the real Sidney Jackson, was 
born in 1877 one of the last of the brood.  Much 
of the information about WG came from my 
grandfather and my father.  Sidney Jackson died 
when I was 14 years old at the ripe old age of 89.  

My father still lives and operated a business at 
83 years of age.  The Jackson family is Scott Irish 
and the men do not marry until they are established 
in life.  None who survived childhood have lived 
less than 80 years except WG.  He was near 70 when 
he joined the celestial lodge in Heaven.  Of the 
rest of the Jackson family we know little.  There 
is not a lot of information available to me about 
the survivors from Sparta if there were any.

The rest of William Green Jackson's life was not 
dull, although he might have wished it to be.  
While little actual fighting occurred in Texas,
Reconstruction was a hard time that left bitter 
feelings through-out the former Confederate 
States. Through some course of action, WG wound 
up owning a small freight business in San Saba, 
Texas after the War.  He and a cousin ran freight 
to the famous Fort Concho. Sometime after that 
business fell through, he relocated to an area 
near Marshall, Texas.  The family still owns and 
lives on land in that area.  My father has 
twenty-five acres of the original one hundred 
and sixty that he grew up on with six siblings.

Richard Jackson
Corrigan, TX