THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

Joesph Johnston : the man who befriened and forgave Sherman

Joseph Eggleston Johnston was an American career army officer, serving with distinction in the United States Army during the Mexican–American War and the Seminole Wars. After Virginia seceded from the Union, he entered the Confederate States Army as one of its most senior general officers.

Confederate General Joseph Eggleston Johnston (1807-1891) was the highest ranking United States officer to resign and serve the Confederacy. Member of the class of 1829 at West Point, he served in various capacities and saw action in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican American War. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed brigadier general in the Confederate States Army (he was a major general of Virginia volunteers) and then rapidly promoted to General. He commanded the Army of the Shenandoah at Harpers Ferry and led it at the Battle of First Bull Run. He began the defense of Richmond against McClellan in the Peninsula Campaign, but after his wounding at seven Pines, Robert E. Lee succeeded to command. From 1862 to 1863 he was commander of the Department of the West. From 1863 to 1864 and then again in early 1865 he commanded the Army of Tennessee. In the former command he presided over the steady retreat from northern Georgia to Atlanta, and in the latter over the surrender of the Army of Tennessee to Sherman in April 1865. He quarreled with Jefferson Davis throughout his service, and the publication of his memoirs in 1874 re-ignited controversies and animosities among senior Confederates. After the war he went into the rail road then the insurance business. He served one term in the US House of Representatives and also served as US Commissioner of Railroads.

The highest ranking United States officer to resign and serve the Confederacy, Joseph Eggleston Johnston was born February 3, 1807, near Farmville, Virginia, the seventh child, and seventh son, of Peter Johnston, who served during the Revolution in the brigade of Henry ("Light-Horse Harry") Lee, and Mary Valentine Wood, a niece of Patrick Henry. Information about Johnston's early life, spent in Abingdon, Virginia, is relatively scarce before his nomination to West Point by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun. In June 1825 he entered the United States Military Academy as a member of the class of 1829, which included Robert E. Lee, who graduated second to Johnston's thirteenth in a class of forty-six. At West Point Johnston excelled in the study of French and earned few demerits. He admired Lee greatly and served under him as a cadet officer when Lee was named Adjutant of the Corps, although his admiration for his classmate was mixed with competitive rivalry, as it would be throughout his career.

Upon graduation Johnston received his commission as second lieutenant in Company C, Fourth United States Artillery, and was assigned to Fort Columbus on Governor's Island in New York harbor until the summer of 1831. In the fall of 1831, in the aftermath of the slave rebellion led by Nat Turner, he was assigned to Fort Monroe, on the Virginia coast, where he was a student in the Artillery School of Practice. In June 1832 Company C of the Fourth U. S. Artillery left with General Winfield Scott for the Black Hawk War in Illinois, but Johnston did not see action in this conflict. Instead, he waited at Fort Dearborn (Chicago) while the war ended with the Battle of Bad Axe, August 1-2, 1832, fought in what later became Wisconsin. Having come back to Fort Monroe in November 1832, Johnston left again with Company C almost immediately, this time assigned to Charleston, South Carolina, during the nullification crisis, and returned to Fort Monroe in the spring of 1833. He spent the winter of 1834 in central Alabama to help keep the peace between Creeks and whites on the frontier, again without seeing action. Appointed to Winfield Scott's staff as aide-de-camp in January 1836, Johnston began active campaigning in March in the Second Seminole War. Promoted to first lieutenant in July 1836, he remained in Florida until the spring of 1837, when he resigned from the army. He hoped to become a civil engineer.

With the panic of 1837 many construction projects halted, and many engineers were unemployed. Finding work with the Topographical Bureau in Washington, Johnston returned to Florida in the fall, the only civilian in an expedition assigned to survey the coast from St. Augustine to Key West. In January 1838 the expedition, under the command of Navy Lieutenant Levin M. Powell, collided with Seminoles on the Jupiter River. Fighting as a civilian, Johnston received a wound on his scalp; he also distinguished himself with his courage and leadership. In March 1838 he became one of the first white men to enter the Florida Everglades, where he saw more fighting against the Seminoles. Having returned to Washington in April, he joined the army again in the summer, this time as first lieutenant in the Corps of Topographical Engineers, soon breveted to captain for his bravery and service during the Second Seminole War. Assigned to surveying projects along the international boundary between the United States and Canada (1840) and the Sabine River on the Texas-Louisiana border (1841), Johnston returned to Florida in 1842 as Assistant Adjutant General on the staff of William A. Worthen. On July 10, 1845, he married Lydia Mulligan Sims McLane, sister of his fellow officer Robert McLane and fifteen years younger than her new husband, in Baltimore. Their long marriage, the closest and most important relationship in Johnston's life, proved childless.