Albert Sidney Johnston

• 1. Introduction

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  Albert Sidney Johnston died at the Battle of Shiloh on the 6th of April 1862. He was the highest-ranking officer killed on either side in the entire Civil War. The bullet entered behind his right knee, clipping part of his popliteal artery. His boot filled slowly with blood. Johnston had sent his personal surgeon away earlier that afternoon to tend to wounded men on both sides. When his staff noticed him slumping in the saddle, no doctor could be found in time.

  Confederate President Jefferson Davis believed the loss "was the turning point of our fate." Before Robert E. Lee had made his name, Davis considered Johnston the finest general the Confederacy possessed. Johnston was born in Kentucky in 1803 and spent 34 years in uniform. What drove a man of such evident ability to ride so far forward that his own surgeon could not reach him?

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• 2. Texas Made Him

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  At Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, Johnston first encountered Jefferson Davis, a student two years his junior. Both were later appointed to West Point. In 1826, Johnston graduated eighth in a class of 41 cadets. He was commissioned as a brevet second lieutenant in the 2nd U.S. Infantry.

  Johnston was assigned to posts in New York and Missouri. In 1829, he married Henrietta Preston, sister of the Kentucky politician William Preston. He resigned his army commission in April 1834 to care for his wife, who had contracted tuberculosis. She died in August 1835. Shortly after, an agent from the Republic of Texas requested Johnston's help in defending the country against Mexican invasion.

  In the summer of 1836, Johnston moved to Texas. He did something unusual for a man of his experience: he enlisted as a private in the Texian Army. The Texas War of Independence from Mexico had just concluded. By the 5th of August 1836, he had been named Adjutant General with the rank of colonel. On the 31st of January 1837, he became the army's senior brigadier general. Five days later, a fellow general shot him.

  On the 5th of February 1837, Johnston fought a duel with Brigadier General Felix Huston. Huston had been acting commander of the army and saw Johnston's promotion as a personal insult from the Texas government. Johnston was shot through the hip and severely wounded, forcing him to give up his post during his recovery.

  Johnston later described the decision to fight as "a public duty," adding that he had "little respect for the practice of dueling." He believed the safety of the republic required obedience to lawful command. Huston, in his view, embodied "the lawless spirit in the army, which had to be met and controlled at whatever personal peril." Many years later, Huston came to agree. He called the episode "a shameful piece of business" and said he would not repeat it. "That one act blackened all the good ones of my life," Huston admitted. "But I couldn't challenge Congress."

  On the 22nd of December 1838, President Mirabeau B. Lamar of the Republic of Texas appointed Johnston Secretary of War. In 1839, Johnston campaigned against Native Americans in northern Texas during the Cherokee War. At the Battle of Neches, both Johnston and Vice President David G. Burnet were cited "for active exertions on the field." In February 1840, Johnston resigned, returned to Kentucky, and married for the second time. He purchased a plantation in Brazoria County, Texas, named "China Grove," leased it out, and moved his family to Galveston. Six years later, when the United States declared war on Mexico, Johnston rode 400 miles from his home in Galveston to Port Isabel to volunteer.

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• 3. A Regiment of Future Generals

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  At the Battle of Monterrey in 1846, Johnston's commanding officer, Brigadier General William O. Butler, was wounded and removed from the field. Johnston assumed active leadership of the division. Future U.S. general Joseph Hooker witnessed the result. "It was through Johnston's agency, mainly, that our division was saved from a cruel slaughter," Hooker wrote. The coolness Johnston displayed, Hooker added, "left an impression on my mind that I have never forgotten." General Taylor later called Johnston "the best soldier he had ever commanded."

  Johnston had entered the Mexican War as colonel of the 1st Texas Rifle Volunteers. His regiment's enlistments expired before the advance on Monterrey. Johnston persuaded a handful of his former soldiers to stay on and fight, and Taylor appointed him inspector general of Butler's division. After the battle, Johnston resigned from the army. He had promised his wife Eliza that he would serve only six months.

  Politics also played a role in blocking a longer career. President James K. Polk's administration filled every new officer commission with Democrats. No Whig was appointed regardless of battlefield record. Johnston, perceived as a Whig through his brother's close association with Henry Clay, received nothing. General Taylor urged Polk to give Johnston command of a new regiment. The letter, according to a contemporary account, was never answered.

  In December 1849, Zachary Taylor, now the 12th president, appointed Johnston as a paymaster for a Texas district. The district stretched from the upper Colorado River to the upper Trinity River. Johnston made six tours of the frontier annually, covering more than 4,000 miles each year. In 1855, 14th president Franklin Pierce gave Johnston command of the newly formed 2nd U.S. Cavalry. Johnston organized it from the ground up. Robert E. Lee served as his lieutenant colonel, and William J. Hardee and George H. Thomas served as his majors.

  The other officers in the regiment included Earl Van Dorn, Edmund Kirby Smith, John B. Hood, Nathan G. Evans, and George Stoneman. Within six years, all of them would command significant forces in the Civil War. In March 1857, Brigadier General David E. Twiggs was appointed permanent commander of the Department of Texas, and Johnston returned to the regiment. His next orders would take him to the high mountains of Utah.

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• 4. Utah and the Mountains

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  In November 1857, Johnston took command of the United States forces dispatched to suppress what the government called a Latter-day Saint rebellion in Utah Territory. The objective was to install Alfred Cumming as governor, replacing Brigham Young, and restore U.S. legal authority in the region. Johnston had replaced Brigadier General William S. Harney in command, joining the force only after it had already departed for Utah. His arrival transformed the army's mood.

  Major Fitz John Porter, Johnston's adjutant general and a future Civil War general, described the change firsthand. "Experienced on the Plains and of established reputation for energy, courage, and resources," Porter wrote, Johnston's "presence restored confidence at all points." The long chain of wagons, Porter recalled, had been "kinked, tangled, and hard to move." After Johnston arrived, they "uncoiled and went forward smoothly."

  Johnston spent the following months maintaining his army through a harsh winter at Fort Bridger, Wyoming. Porter urged those he wrote to that no one be placed over Johnston. "Don't let anyone come here over Col. Johnston," Porter told an associate. "It would be much against the wishes and hopes of everyone here, who would gladly see him a Brigadier General." The Salt Lake City Deseret News, a Mormon-run publication, acknowledged Johnston's skill from its own vantage point. "It takes a cool brain and good judgment," the paper wrote, "to maintain a contented army and healthy camp through a stormy winter."

  Johnston and his troops had hoped the campaign would end in battle. They had learned of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and wanted to hold the Mormons accountable for it. Instead, a peaceful resolution was negotiated. In late June 1858, Johnston led the army through Salt Lake City without incident and marched on to establish Camp Floyd, some 50 miles distant.

  Johnston did not let the peaceful outcome pass without a formal accounting. He filed a report with the War Department describing what his forces had found. He wrote of "horrible crimes" of "a magnitude and of an apparently studied refinement in atrocity" that had "gone unwhipped of justice." In the summer of 1859, he organized wagons and an armed escort to transport 18 children who had survived the Mountain Meadows Massacre on their journey back east.

  During his time in the territory, Johnston worked to build relationships with several Native tribes. Major Porter noted that Johnston "took every occasion to bring the Indians within knowledge and influence of the army." The Utes, Pi-Utes, and Bannocks all visited Johnston's camp and left, according to Porter, expressing satisfaction. Johnston used these connections to reduce Mormon influence over the tribes and to secure safe passage for emigrant trains heading to California and Oregon. In August 1859, parts of Johnston's Army of Utah were implicated in an alleged retaliatory attack at Spring Valley. Johnston addressed the incident in a November 1859 report, describing the attacks on emigrant trains as the work of wandering bands whose chiefs denied any involvement.

  U.S. Army Commander-in-Chief Major General Winfield Scott recommended Johnston for promotion as a direct result of the campaign. "Colonel Johnston is more than a good officer," Scott wrote to the War Department. "He is a God send to the country thro' the army." The Senate confirmed Johnston's promotion to brevet brigadier general on the 24th of March 1858.

  In late February 1860, Johnston received orders recalling him to Washington for a new assignment. Before he departed Utah, an Indian chief proved his goodwill by running on foot beside Johnston's wagon for several days, keeping pace with the mules. Johnston gave the chief a patchwork quilt as a parting gift. Johnston spent much of 1860 in Kentucky before sailing for California on the 21st of December to take command of the Department of the Pacific.

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• 5. Slavery and Secession

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  Johnston's eldest son recalled that his father held views on slavery that were "generally held in the South." By 1846, Johnston owned four slaves in Texas. In 1855, he discovered that one of them was stealing from the Army payroll. Johnston refused to have the man physically punished. Instead, he sold him for $1,000 to recover the losses. "Whipping will not restore what is lost," Johnston explained. The man had failed to respond to "a lifetime of kind treatment," he added, so further punishment served no purpose.

  In 1856, Johnston wrote to his son calling abolitionism "fanatical, idolatrous, negro worshipping." He feared that abolitionist pressure would incite a slave revolt in the Southern states. Upon moving to California, Johnston's situation changed in a specific way. He sold one slave to his son and freed another, Randolph Hughes, known as Ran. Ran agreed to continue with the family under a $12-per-month contract for five more years. He would accompany Johnston through the remainder of the general's life.

  Rumors spread in early 1861 that Johnston intended to hand Federal military installations in San Francisco to Southern paramilitary organizations. California's Governor John G. Downey visited Johnston to address the allegations directly. Johnston's response left no ambiguity. He told Downey: "I have spent the greater part of my life in the service of my country." While he held his commission, Johnston added, he would serve it "honorably and faithfully." Johnston transferred 10,000 muskets and their ammunition from the Benicia arsenal to the more secure fortress on Alcatraz Island. He strengthened garrisons and ordered heightened surveillance of San Francisco Harbor.

  Johnston personally opposed secession. Nevertheless, when Texas left the Union, he resigned his commission. The War Department accepted the resignation on the 6th of May 1861, effective the 3rd. Johnston moved to Los Angeles, where his wife's brother, Dr. John Griffin, lived. News of the shelling of Fort Sumter and the mobilization of 75,000 Union volunteers compelled him to act. "It seems like fate that Texas has made me a Rebel twice," he told his wife. On the 27th of May 1861, Johnston enlisted in the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles as a private.

  The unit's trek across the Southwestern deserts was led by Alonzo Ridley, Undersheriff of Los Angeles. On the 4th of July 1861, Johnston's party crossed the Colorado River into the Confederate Territory of Arizona. He reached Richmond, Virginia, on the 5th of September. Two days earlier, Confederate generals had made a blunder in Kentucky that had already complicated the situation he was about to inherit.

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• 6. Holding the West

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  On the 10th of September 1861, Johnston was assigned to command the Confederacy's entire western theater. The area stretched from the Allegheny Mountains to the Mississippi River and beyond. Only Adjutant General Samuel Cooper outranked him in the Confederate States Army. His appointment had been backdated to rank from the 30th of May 1861, making him the second-highest-ranking general in the Confederate force. The situation had already been complicated. Two days before his arrival in Richmond, Generals Polk and Pillow had occupied Columbus, Kentucky. The move drove the state toward the Union and gave U.S. forces an opening at Paducah.

  Johnston had fewer than 40,000 men to defend Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri. Ten thousand of those were in Missouri under Major General Sterling Price and largely unavailable to him. The Confederate government, focused on armies in the East, sent Johnston minimal reinforcements and inadequate supplies of arms and ammunition. Johnston was permitted to call on the governors of Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi for new troops, but politics largely blocked this authority.

  Johnston's answer was a strategy of deception. He conducted raids and other operations designed to make his forces appear far larger than they were. One Confederate officer later recalled that Johnston had inherited "an army of hastily levied volunteers, badly equipped, miserably clad." More than half, the officer noted, were "stricken down by disease." With these men, Johnston had "held at bay a force of the enemy of fully 100,000 men." The strategy so thoroughly confused U.S. Brigadier General William Tecumseh Sherman in Kentucky that Sherman began to show signs of mental collapse.

  Sherman wrote to his wife that he found himself "riding a whirlwind unable to guide the storm." He worried that the situation was making him "nearly crazy." On the 9th of November 1861, Sherman was relieved of command by Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell.

  At the Battle of Mill Springs on the 19th of January 1862, Confederates attacked U.S. forces under Brigadier General George H. Thomas. They had marched through the rain all night. Zollicoffer was killed in the fighting. The Confederate force of 4,000 suffered 533 casualties, and a Union bayonet charge drove the survivors from the field. Crittenden's conduct was so poor that his own subordinates accused him of being drunk. After the defeat, Jefferson Davis sent Johnston reinforcements. These included a brigade under Brigadier General John B. Floyd, a former Governor of Virginia. Davis also sent General P. G. T. Beauregard, expected to attract recruits and serve as a capable subordinate. Fort Henry would be under attack within weeks.

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• 7. The Fall of the Forts

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  Fort Henry sat in a flood plain on the Tennessee River. The hills on the Kentucky side of the river commanded it from above. Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland, was better situated but carried too little heavy artillery to resist Union gunboats. Johnston had inherited both forts as part of his western command.

  Johnston had sent engineer Lieutenant Joseph K. Dixon to inspect both forts and determine what should be done. Dixon recommended maintaining and strengthening them, even in their imperfect locations. Johnston accepted the assessment. He would have preferred Major Alexander P. Stewart in command of the forts, but President Davis appointed Brigadier General Lloyd Tilghman instead. Johnston ordered Tilghman to fortify the high ground near Fort Henry. Tilghman did not act quickly enough.

  On the 6th of February 1862, U.S. gunboats attacked Fort Henry. Unusually heavy rainfall that winter had flooded the fort's lower works. Tilghman sent nearly all of his 3,000-man garrison to Fort Donelson and remained at the fort himself with only 94 artillery men. Several Confederate guns exploded or were destroyed during the engagement. Tilghman surrendered Fort Henry.

  The following day, Johnston met with Beauregard and Hardee at Covington House in Bowling Green. They concluded that the Union gunboats were essentially invincible and that Fort Donelson could not be held. Johnston began moving his personal command toward Nashville on the 11th of February.

  Buckner's intelligence reports, arriving in the days that followed, changed Johnston's assessment. They indicated that Grant's army numbered only around 12,000 men. Other officers described the Union ironclads as having taken considerable damage at Fort Henry. On the 12th of February, Major General Braxton Bragg noted in correspondence that Johnston "feels confident of holding Fort Donelson." Johnston ordered Floyd, Pillow, and Buckner to concentrate their combined force of 16,000 at Fort Donelson.

  Floyd, Pillow, and Buckner squandered an early opportunity to defeat Grant when Confederate and Union forces were roughly equal in size. Large Union reinforcements arrived on the night of the 13th of February and the Confederate commanders became despondent. A breakout attempt on the 15th of February failed. The following morning, Buckner surrendered the fort, after Floyd and Pillow had abandoned their commands. Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest escaped with his cavalry force of about 700 men before the surrender.

  The Confederates suffered around 1,500 casualties at Fort Donelson. An estimated 12,000 to 14,000 men were taken prisoner. U.S. losses were 500 killed, 2,108 wounded, and 224 missing. Nashville fell to U.S. forces under General Buell on the 25th of February 1862. Johnston had been forced to pull his own troops south just two days earlier to avoid encirclement.

  Johnston took the blame for the disaster and absorbed public calls for his removal. He said nothing to the press that would reveal the full extent of Confederate weakness in the West. With barely 17,000 men under his personal command, he retreated south toward Corinth, Mississippi. His only remaining hope was to concentrate enough force there for a counterattack before Union armies could combine against him.

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• 8. Shiloh

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  'I would fight them if they were a million,' Johnston told Beauregard as the Confederate army moved into position near Pittsburg Landing in the first days of April 1862. Beauregard believed the offensive could not succeed. Johnston replied with action. On the 29th of March, he had officially taken command of a combined Confederate force of roughly 40,000 to 44,669 men. He set the army in motion on the 3rd of April, intending to surprise Grant's force the following day.

  Two-thirds of his soldiers had never fired a shot in battle. Drill, discipline, and staff work were all poor, and the different divisions kept stumbling into each other on the march. Johnston drove them forward anyway. By the evening of the 5th of April, the army had reached a position within a mile or two of Grant's force, entirely undetected.

  When the assault began at dawn, Confederate forces overran the Union camps along the Tennessee River. Johnston rode up and down the line personally rallying his troops. At one point, he found soldiers breaking from the advance to loot the captured camps. A young lieutenant was among them. "None of that, sir," Johnston roared at the officer. Realizing he had embarrassed the man, Johnston picked up a tin cup from a table in a captured camp. "Let this be my share of the spoils today," he announced, and directed his army forward.

  At about 2:30 in the afternoon, Johnston was struck near the area of the battlefield known as the Peach Orchard. Isham G. Harris, the Governor of Tennessee, was riding with Johnston's staff. Harris had largely ceased to function as governor after Abraham Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson as military governor of the state. He noticed Johnston's condition. "General, are you wounded?" Harris asked. Johnston replied in a weak voice: "Yes... and I fear seriously."

  Harris and other staff officers carried Johnston to a small ravine near the area of the battlefield called the Hornets Nest. They could not locate the fatal wound. Harris sent for Johnston's surgeon, who could not be reached in time. Johnston died there, having lost consciousness, before any doctor arrived.

  Modern neurosurgeons who later examined the case found that a tourniquet had been discovered in Johnston's pocket. The question of whether its use could have saved him proved difficult to settle. Their conclusion was equivocal. The blood loss from the wound may already have been fatal by the time Johnston's staff moved him to safety. Moving him on horseback, with his leg extended and bleeding, had taken time he did not have.

  Beauregard pressed the assault through the remainder of the day, pushing U.S. forces back toward the Tennessee River. With daylight fading and his army exhausted, he called off the attack around 1900 hours, intending to finish the job the next morning. During the night, General Buell arrived with 20,000 fresh troops. Grant launched a counterattack the following day and drove the Confederates from the field.

  The direction of the bullet that killed Johnston raised a question that historians never fully settled. A bullet had entered from the rear of his leg, which some interpreted as evidence of friendly fire from Confederate soldiers. The historian Timothy B. Smith offered a measured response. A horseman on a spirited and wounded mount could be facing any direction at any moment. Alonzo Ridley of Los Angeles, who commanded Johnston's bodyguard unit known as the Guides, was at his side when he fell.

  As the Confederate army retreated to Corinth, Johnston's body was taken to the home of Colonel William Inge, his former headquarters. It was covered in the Confederate flag and lay in state for several hours. Johnston was initially buried in New Orleans. In 1867, his remains were moved to the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, following a joint resolution of the Texas Legislature. Forty years after that, the state commissioned sculptor Elisabet Ney to design a monument. It was installed at the grave site in 1905.

  Johnston Street, Hancock Street, and Griffin Avenue in northeast Los Angeles were named for Johnston and members of his family. They mark the neighborhood where Johnston's widow and children settled permanently, far from the battlefields where his reputation had been built.

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