the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), in Lexington, Virginia. He became Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, or Physics, and Instructor of Artillery. Parts of Jackson's curriculum are still taught at VMI, regarded as timeless military essentials: discipline, mobility, assessing the enemy's strength and intentions while attempting to conceal your own, and the efficiency of artillery combined with an infantry assault. Though he spent a great deal of time preparing in depth for each class meeting, Jackson was unpopular as a teacher. His students called him "Tom Fool". He memorized his lectures and then recited them to the class; any student who came to ask for help was given the same explanation as before. And if a student asked for help a second time, Jackson viewed him as insubordinate and punished him. For his tests, Jackson typically had students simply recite memorized information that he had given them. The students mocked his apparently stern, religious nature and his eccentric traits. In 1856, a group of alumni attempted to have Jackson removed from his position. The founder of VMI and one of its first two faculty members was John Thomas Lewis Preston. Preston's second wife, Margaret Junkin Preston, was the sister of Jackson's first wife, Elinor. In addition to working together on the VMI faculty, Preston taught Sunday School with Jackson and served on his staff during the Civil War. Slavery Little known as he was to the white inhabitants of Lexington, Jackson was known by many of the African Americans in town, both slaves and free blacks. In 1855, he organized Sunday School classes for blacks at the Presbyterian Church. His second wife, Mary Anna Jackson, taught with Jackson, as "he preferred that my labors should be given to the colored children, believing that it was more important and useful to put the strong hand of the Gospel under the ignorant African race, to lift them up". The pastor, Dr. William Spottswood White, described the relationship between Jackson and his Sunday afternoon students: "In their religious instruction he succeeded wonderfully. His discipline was systematic and firm, but very kind. ... His servants reverenced and loved him, as they would have done a brother or father. ... He was emphatically the black man's friend." He addressed his students by name and they referred to him as "Marse Major". Jackson owned six slaves in the late 1850s. Three (Hetty, Cyrus, and George, a