S.C. Gwynne's book Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, came out in 2015, just before the academic discussion about what to do with Confederate monuments became a mainstream, raging debate.

In researching the book, the Texas nonfiction author came to see some aspects of the war through the eyes of the legendary general. Even so, Gwynne says he is not a defender of Jackson, and he offers no argument for keeping the monuments to Confederate generals.

Let's talk about your book. You spent several years and wrote 562 pages about the brilliant 24-month military career of a general who is described on the book jacket as a "remarkable American hero." In 2017, it's still possible to talk about leaders of the Confederacy as American heroes.

Jackson went to the United States Military Academy. He came out and he served his country with distinction, extreme distinction, in the Mexican War. He then served his country in, really, I mean, in outposts that you wouldn't have wanted to be in, in places like Florida, and served his country well. He then was a teacher at a military school. When the Civil War came, he tried everything — he was a pacifist and he was Unionist — to do everything he could to stop the war. He tried very hard to organize a national day of prayer to stop the war, which he thought was going to be very, very bad. He was never a defender of slavery.

Now, at some point, I mean, does he sound like a traitor? I mean, I don't think so, right? We're right up to the moment of the war when he decides to fight for Virginia.

Let's talk about that.

Yes, he fought for the Confederacy and he became a famous general in the Confederacy, and many people consider him a traitor for doing that. But we all kind of deal with the circumstances that we face. I never saw him in the way of some fire-breathing, pro-slavery fighter, either, or one of those, you know, kind of Jeff Davis types from Mississippi.

But to answer your larger question, I don't know that there's any defending any of these guys anymore. When the people who are defending you are the extreme alt-right and white supremacists and Nazis and KKK, I think it's very hard to defend.

On a personal note, that's where I came down. I felt like taking some of these statues down was premature or maybe too simplistic, but in the end I just decided: I don't want to be on the same side as the guys that have rallied around them.

Exactly.

Then I think you start to understand the harm that it does and has done to African-Americans for us to continue to revere people like [Robert E.] Lee and others for their rebellion. Of course, Jackson didn't get a chance to do this, but there's lots of Confederate warriors who then went on to distinguish themselves in other fields as Americans. They can be honored, I think, for that subsequent service, as opposed to what they did in the war.

Right, and I'll finish that thought of yours. People always say: So wait a second, what about Washington? And Jefferson was a slave owner. He had sex with his slaves. But people say: Yeah, yeah, yes, OK but Jefferson, he was a founder of the country and he did a really good thing and that offsets the thing.

OK, on that basis then, Thomas Jonathan Jackson was a very pious, religious man who really did a lot of wonderful things in his life. We start to play these games about, how good are you morally? Or how good are you tainted? How much is Jefferson tainted? How much is Washington? I mean, Ulysses S. Grant was a slave owner. They say: Well, yeah, OK, but you know.

I think the difference is somebody like Jefferson, what is he honored for? It's his Enlightenment brilliance, writing of the Declaration, all the things that we're familiar with. Nobody is honoring him for being a slave owner. In fact, they honor him in spite of it, and he has taken quite a hit to his reputation. Whereas Jackson ...

And he's going to take more, too. I think we're going to end up, at the end of this tunnel — I know we're digressing now — but at the end of this tunnel, we're going to end up without a Jefferson. This guy's going down fast, and I think he's an example of how you can't defend him.

Back to Jackson. One of the reasons your book is so interesting is that he's somebody who desperately wanted to avoid the war. But after it began, he quickly advocated for "total war" and a "black flag" war — that is, a strategy of killing all captives and burning cities like Philadelphia. He defended this by saying the Union would encourage slaves to murder their owners' families if the war persisted.

How did you reconcile those conflicts?

I'm not a defender of Jackson. The book wasn't some shining defense of Jackson. I'm a historian. I'm observing things. I want to make it clear here that I'm not an advocate. This isn't a book of advocacy. It's just a book where I think it's interesting to look at the war through different ways.

But if you look at Jackson's point of view, especially in the early war, Jackson was an advocate of, I guess you could call it total war. Certainly a highly destructive war.

Jackson expected the war to be absolutely horrendous with millions of casualties, and he thought that if you took it to the North, burning everything in the way as he went [the war would be over sooner].

People in the Confederate war office reacted with horror at this. They said: You're crazy. You're out of your mind. Crossing into the North, burning everything as you go, making them feel the hard hand of war, this is insane.

It's not at all. Marching in with a wide swath and burning all of the crops and burning everything? That's exactly what Sherman and Sheridan did [later in the war, for the North]. Nobody likes the idea of black flag, and he only said that once, but his idea of bringing an extremely hard war to them was a way to end the war.

Would it have shortened the war had he been given permission to do that, or was it just a miscalculation on his part?

Would it have worked? I don't think so. Abraham Lincoln, it's conceivable, but with Lincoln as president, I don't think it ever would have worked.

So after spending all this time with Jackson and seeing him whole, the good and the bad, is there something to hold up about the Confederates, either all of them or just him or others, that is worth celebrating or worth honoring? Or must they all be kind of seen as black hats?

I don't know. It surprised me when I did my research that there were abolitionist newspapers that came out after his death saying that they admired them. There were chapel bells that rang in New Hampshire and places like that.

They thought he was on the wrong side. They thought he was an extremely brave and resourceful soldier. They believed that he was wrong in his convictions, but that he was a humble and decent religious man who also happened to be one of the greatest generals America ever produced.

I definitely think he fought for the wrong side and slavery is this gigantic evil wrapped around the core of our country, but I also maybe agree with some of the North, that there are things we can salvage here about him that make him not, you know, Mephistopheles or something.

Lincoln is admired in part because of his charity toward the South, his "with malice toward none" approach. In the current climate, have we lost the ability to say that yeah, we disagree, and yes, this was a monstrous evil, but there was evil on both sides? The North's earlier complicity in the slave trade, for instance. And in any case, we did have to come together after the war as one nation.

I think we have. I mean, what happened at Appomattox, and in a way because the war was extraordinary, it just puts my jaw on the ground what they did. At that moment, Lee, none of those guys, knew what was going to happen to them. They didn't know. They figured Grant would maybe arrest the generals and execute them. Nobody really knew.

This idea that you would just let them lay down their arms and walk away back to their farms was so extraordinary, essentially saying: OK, you fought a good fight, now go back. In effect, ignoring or forgiving these other sins.

Lincoln did that, so Lincoln's just so extraordinary. So yeah, I do think that is something we're losing. Charity, right. A certain amount of charity for all, and kindness toward your enemy and understanding of your enemy. Any other country, a lot of those guys would have been shot. Certainly all the general officers would have been shot or put in jail.

After all your research, what do you think of the current debate over removing statues that honor the Confederate heroes like Jackson, Lee and the rest?

You have to take them down. If there ever was a time to defend those statues, that time has passed.

This Q&A was conducted, edited and condensed by Dallas Morning News editorial board member Michael Lindenberger. Email: mlindenberger@dallasnews.com

S.C. Gwynne is an author and journalist in Austin and a former reporter for The Dallas Morning News. Website: scgwynne.com