For Dr. Jonathan M. Jackson, Sr., the American Civil War is not a distant subject. It is family. A direct descendant of soldiers who fought in the conflict — most notably Lt. Roland Jackson — he has spent decades turning his ancestors' wartime accounts into rigorously researched history, and this season he brought that work to the reenactment field alongside his team.
Better known to some readers by his fiction pen name Alexius Rex, Jackson is an author, legal professional, and historian whose work is anchored in primary-source research. He earned his Juris Doctor in 1980 and practiced law for decades, all while quietly pursuing a lifelong interest in historical research and creative writing.
A memoir carried across generations
His signature book, I Rode with Morgan, now in an expanded 20th Anniversary Edition, is a 499-page immersive account tracking the front-line experiences of Lt. Roland Jackson and Lt. Mitchell L. Stewart II under Confederate General John Hunt Morgan. Drawn from wartime memoirs and the author's own genealogy, it reads as both history and inheritance.
"This began as my family's story," Jackson has said of the work that grew into a career. "The research just kept demanding to be told accurately."
Inside the book
Rather than survey the war from a general's map, I Rode with Morgan keeps its focus on the saddle-level experience of two cavalrymen: the long rides, the raids, the boredom between engagements, and the sudden violence that punctuated them. Jackson stitches together their memoirs, muster records, and correspondence so the reader follows Morgan's famous mounted raids as the men themselves lived them — mile by mile and camp by camp.
The result is a book that works on two levels at once. As documentary history it preserves first-hand testimony that might otherwise have been lost; as narrative it carries the momentum of a memoir, letting Roland Jackson and Mitchell Stewart speak in something close to their own voices. The expanded Second Edition adds context, corrected records, and supporting material that deepen the primary accounts without smoothing over their rough edges.
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Living history
Because of that lineage, Jackson is an active voice in historical outreach. He speaks regularly with Civil War interest groups — including scheduled presentations with the Civil War Round Table Congress — and has appeared on history networks such as the Addressing Gettysburg podcast. His reenactment work, pictured here with his team in full period uniform, is an extension of the same mission: to make the past precise, tangible, and human.
Beyond the Morgan memoirs, Jackson's bibliography balances heavily researched military travel guides, including The Raids of John Hunt Morgan: A History and Travel Guide, with imaginative historical fiction ��� a range that keeps one foot in the archive and the other in the story.
