Alfred Eugene Jackson

Jackson's war record has a bureaucratic wrinkle: his first brigadier general appointment, in October 1862, was canceled, and he was promoted again on February 9, 1863. In September 1863 his forces were attacked along the railroad he had helped found, and a year later his brigade helped defend Saltville, Virginia. The war left him poor, and he rented farmland across the line in Washington County, Virginia, until President Andrew Johnson pardoned him on November 16, 1865. He returned to Jonesborough, regained property and died there on October 30, 1889.

What the plaque says

Alfred Eugene Jackson Born January 1807, this native Tennessean became one of the area's most successful businessmen, achieving prominence as a financial agent for the East Tenn. & Va. Railroad, which he helped to found. During the Civil War he was appointed a brigadier general in the C.S. Army and assigned to duty in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, fighting with particular distinction at the Battle of Saltville in 1864. He died in 1889 and is buried in the Old Cemetery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Jonesborough Historic District — 0.6 mi
  Tennessee's oldest town, chartered in 1779, where Elihu Embree printed The Emancipator in 1820 and a hay wagon by the courthouse started the National Storytelling Festival in 1973.
• Unicoi County Heritage Museum and the Erwin Rail Yard — 10 mi
  A museum in the old fish hatchery superintendent's house in Erwin, a Clinchfield railroad town where the elephant Mary was hanged in 1916 and Black residents were driven out in 1918.
• Rocky Mount Museum — 11 mi
  William Cobb's log house at Piney Flats, where Governor William Blount ran the Southwest Territory from 1790 to 1792, now a living-history museum set in 1791 with a reconstructed cabin for the enslaved.
• Sycamore Shoals State Historic Park — 13 mi
  A shoal on the Watauga River where the Transylvania Company bought about 20 million acres from the Cherokee in March 1775, Dragging Canoe refused, and the Overmountain Men mustered in 1780.

More markers nearby

• Jonesboro: Oldest Town in Tennessee — steps away
• First Abolition Publications — steps away
• Alfred Martin Ray, Buffalo Soldier — 0.3 mi
• Christopher Taylor House — 0.3 mi