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JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON.
A General whose Supreme Capacity was
Constantly Kept Established by the
Blunders of His Government and
His Subordinates. —His Career
the Most Remarkable An
omaly in
Annals.
BY I. W. AVERY,
Colonel Fourth Georgia Cavalry.
The military career of General Jo
seph E. Johnston, in the Confederate
service, presents features so extraordi
nary as to be well worthy of a critical
and dispassionate review. This officer
was one of the two men that took the
foremost lead in the active operations
of the great civil war on the southern
side, the other being General Robert
E. Lee. Both were continuously iden
tified with the important movements
and decisive events of the struggle.
Both stood the admitted leaders of the
Confederate armies, the authors of Con
federate strategy, and the executive
spirits of Confederate warfare. Both
were Virginians, both men of distin
guished service and reputation before
the war, both individuals of lofty per
sonal character, but they were in the
qualities of their genius and the details
of their service, fame and career, dur
ing the bloody contest, strikingly un
like.
The death of Lee has left his illustri
ous colleague the most famous and bril
liant leader of the South. Like Lee,
Johnston was an hereditary soldier
and statesman. His family, for gen
erations, had been connected in illus
trious capacity with Virginia history.
The two names rang in the annals of
the State with clarion fame, illuminat
ing its soldierhood, diplomacy and
statesmanship. They were names rep
resenting virtue, courage, capacity and
patriotism. And the two descendants
of a noble lineage have preserved the
stainless manhood of their ancestral
character.
THE ANOMALY’ OF JOHNSTON’S CAREER.
In summing up Johnston’s career in
the late war it is not an exaggeration
to say that it perhaps presents the most
remarkable anomaly of military an
nals. From the beginning to the end
he was distrusted and depreciated by
the Confederate authorities; yet he
held from first to last the confidence
and admiration of armies and people.
And every effort of the several made
to retire him to obscurity but strength
ened him in popular esteem, and re
sulted in calling him to new exaltation
of power, new display of genius and
increase of fame. It seemed impossi
ble to dispense with him. The public
outcry for his installation in responsi
ble leadership was irresistible. His
genius was openly decried, and his
administration condemned by his su
periors, yet it was utterly in vain so
far as the public confidence was con
cerned. The people stubbornly be
lieved in him, and the soldiers clam
ored for his Generalship, and fought
under it with an unshakable trust and
a loving enthusiasm. And while he
labored under a continuous censure
from the Confederate rulers he enjoyed
a constant triumph of praise from the
masses of the people. It certainly
presents a strange incident of the
war, this incongruity of Johnston’s
connection with the struggle.
johnston’s ante-war record.
It is only necessary to make the
brief statement that General Johnston,
before the war, won distinction in the
old army, and was the ranking officer
of the old West Point graduates that
came to the South. He had been dis
tinguished in the Florida war and in
Mexico. He had an acknowledged
reputation for soldierly heroism and
military genius. He was a Brigadier
General when the war commenced and
Quartermaster General of the United
States. He was commissioned in the
Confederate service as one of the five
Generals created, the others being
Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney John
ston, Robert E. Lee, and G. P. T.
Beauregard. General Joseph E. John
ston, was placed third in rank. The
esprit of the soldier places high value
upon the right rank in military pro
motion. The true Knight, imbued
with the spirit of chivalry, and edu
cated in the code of the warrior, is
jealous of military privilege, and tena
cious of the tenure of an honorable and
legitimate seniority of commission.
General Johnston, under the inspira
tion of this natural spirit of the self
respecting soldier, addressed a letter to
Mr. Davis respectfully representing
the injustice of ignoring his previous
rank in the assignments of Confederate
commissions. In his narrative of mil-
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itary operations General Johnston’states
that it was understood that this 1 ’ letter
was the beginning of the implacable
opposition that Mr. Davis persistently
showed to him.
JOHNSTON THE MASTER MIND OF THE
SOUTH.
In passing judgment upon General
Johnston’s extraordinary record as a
Confederate General, one must esti
mate what he counseled that was not
followed as well as what he did. In
nothing was Johnston more remarka
ble than in his grasp of the great
strategic questions of the war and his
prevision of results. In every leading
movement with which he was connect
ed he mapped out unerringly the prop
er plan of operations, and in every
case he was strikingly confirmed,
though in several instances his opinion
was dissented from at the start to be
signally vindicated afterward. The
fact is, that Johnston, so far as a com
prehension of the line of military con
duct proper to be pursued was con
cerned, was unquestionably the mas
ter mind of the South. And this
great fact will be established in the
following pages.
MANASSAS.
General Johnston at the beginning
C o
THE KENNESAW GAZETTE.
GEN. JOSEPH E. JOHNSToN
of the war was ordered to take com
mand of the forces around Harper’s
Ferry, the purpose of the administra
tion being to make this the basis of
operations. Johnston addressed a let
ter to the Secretary of War, that in
the light of subsequent events, reads
like an inspired prophecy. He showed
that Harper’s Ferry was an untenable
point, and also that it was out of the
main line of advance that the Federals
would make. He stated that in his
judgment, the theatre of operations
would be in the vicinity of Manassas,
and his troops should be held fcr co
operation with Beauregard’s, who com
manded the forces there. Events hap
pened precisely as be predicted. The
main battle occurred at Manassas, and
the Confederates who gained that bril
liant and memorable victory, would
have been overwhelmed but for John
ston’s forecasting of the campaign, his
preparation on his own responsibility
for co-operation with Beauregard, and
his timely arrival on the battle-field in
the very crisis of the conflict which he
turned in favor of the Confederates.
This is a very striking instance of
Johnston’s military sagacity.
It has been a much mooted point,
hotly discussed, whether the Confed
erate army should and could have fol
lowed up the victory by an immediate
attempt upon Washington. Much ir
relevant censure has been freely ad
ministered by various parties about
this matter, and the controversy over
it has been a very angry one. John
ston, in his narrative, coolly takes the
whole responsibility. The truth is, as
he well states, that, without ammuni
tion, provisionsand transportation,the
movement was absolutely impractica
ble, while the impassable Potomac riv
er, interposing its broad current, ren
dered the attempt simply impossible.
ANOTHER TRIUMPH OF JOHNSTON’S
JUDGMENT.
Johnston predicted that the next
movement of the Federal forces would
be a formidable one, in large numbers,
direct upon Richmond, Mr. Davis of
fered him command in Western Vir
ginia, buthe declined, desiring to con
duct the operations at this point. In
various instances he evinced the unerr
ing military perception that marked
his genius. The Administration not
only concentrated large supplies at the
fiout, but established a meat factory
there. Johnston protested against this
policy, urging that the position must
be given up, and the accumulation of
supplies at this important point would
but embarrass operations and result in
the loss of the supplies, all of which
happened precisely as he predicted.
Johnston had a crowning vindica
tion of his superlative soldiery acumen
in this campaign. With his accustom
ed breadth of grasp and insight into
the situation, he urged upon the Ad
ministration a gathering of all the avail
able Confederate troops in Virginia,
the Carolinas and Georgia in a grand
army before Richmond, as the proper
plan of operations. Mr. Davis was
for making the peninsula the arena of
conflict. A council of war was held.
General Johnston said emphatically
that the peninsula campaign was im
practicable, and it was better to do im
mediately what must be speedily and
inevitably done, —give up Yorktown
and transfer the contest to the front of
Richmond. He was overruled. Even
the wise Lee was against him. But
Johnston’s triumph of judgment came
swiftly and inexorably. The result
followed precisely as Johnston said it
would. The peninsula was untenable.
Yorktown had to be given up. The
troops had to retire from the peninsu
la and gather before Richmond. The
battle of Seven Pines was fought when
Johnston would have punished the en
emy badly but for his being wounded
and disabled in the very hour of suc
cess. Lee succeeded him. Johnston’s
policy of concentration of troops before
Richmond was fully adopted, and in
the masterly execution of this policy,
which he at first opposed, and which
Johnston alone had the prescience and
wisdom to discover, and urge, Lee won
his brightest fame, while Johnston had
the glory of seeing his condemned ideas
vindicated to the letter, and his re
jected suggestions recognized as the
true necessity of the situation.
JOHNSTON AGAIN VINDICATED BY A
FAILURE.
Johnston was wounded in the battle
of Seven Pines, on the 3d of May,
1862. He returned to active service
November, 1862. During his whole
career he seemed fated to the evil for
tune of being wounded. In the Flor
ida war of 1836, he was struck upon
the head by a ball. In the Mexican
war he was shot by three balls before
Cerro Gordo, and again at Chapulte
pec. General Scott said of him that
he was “a great soldier, but has an
unfortunate knack of getting himself
shot in nearly every engagement.” His
rare personal intrepidity always led
him to too free exposure of his life.
General Johnston was ordered to the
West to command three departments.
This was an unwieldy impracticable
sort of Grand Department, not homo
geneous at all. It included Bragg’s
army in Middle Tennessee, Pember
ton’s army in Mississippi and Maury’s
army in Alabama, with a supervision
over the Trans-Mississippi Department,
under Smith and Holmes.
Johnston, in this command, as in
every other, evinced the keen accura
cy of his military comprehension, and
illustrated that remarkable fatality of
his, of having his judgment thwarted
by others, with the result of its signal
vindication. Everywhere that he
commanded he seemed destined to su
preme verification of his genius by the
blunders of others. He counseled uni
ty of operations and of
forces in the Mississippi Valley. Hrs
wise vision took in the true needs of
that large field of conflict.
It will not be in the purview of this
criticism of a career to go into the de
tails of this disastrous campaign. Ev
ery movement Johnston proposed was