Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

The Confederate government again called him a second time to take command of the Army of the Tennessee; but he was relieved on the 22nd day of July, 1863; and on the 3d of December, 1863, he was again instructed to lead the forces which were attempting to stem the advance of the invaders towards Atlanta, and the further progress of which, into the heart of Georgia, was regarded as an impending death blow to Confederate hopes.

General Johnston, with his knowledge of equipment, realized how inferior were those of his men to the armies that wore the blue, and most earnestly and insistently pleaded for better equipments and more troops. It must be said that he knew better than any living man the condition of the forces, which he was called to command. The failures of his predecessors only quickened his desire and hope, out of the wreck, to win victory, and it may be that a patriotic spirit, united with ambition, also pointed out to him in an attractive form the fact that he was to save Atlanta from the grasp of the Federal forces, and become the leader in the West that General Lee was in the East.

There must have been a feeling of intense satisfaction to General Johnston in the resolution of the Confederate government to appoint him anew to the second and most important command in the Confederate armies.

Those who put themselves in General Johnston’s place are bound to admit that he had some ground of justification for his feeling towards the Confederate authorities. We can look at these conditions more clearly after a lapse of nearly fifty years, and even the friends of the men who composed the War Department, and the friends of General Johnston, are forced to the conclusion that there were two sides to the controversy.

When, on December 27th, 1863, he assumed command of the Army of the Tennessee, General Johnston undertook a Herculean task. From all the reports of those connected with the department, it is shown that General Johnston made the best of the situation when matters were turned over to him. General Johnston had assumed a burden which would press hard upon his shoulders. Persistently and even fiercely, he called for more troops, more horses, more guns, more feed, more men in the infantry. It was his desire to be able to stop the invasion. He was not satisfied with the meagre resources of the government at Richmond, but asked more. When called to the command of the defeated army, it was with the understanding that he should make an offensive campaign. The authorities felt that a Fabian policy was the forerunner of ruin, and that Napoleonic methods, with even desperate odds and chances, was the only plan which suggested or held out the least show of victory. He had a right to expect such resources as would give him some sort of chance in the desperate battle which his country had called upon him to wage. He was facing an army twice as large as his own, probably the best equipped army that ever marched on the American continent, commanded by a general who, as even those who disliked him admitted, was a great soldier, who had behind him practically unlimited resources, against which General Johnston was to go with comparatively few and badly provided men, and he constantly and with increasing emphasis made demands on his government for more troops. The people at Richmond felt the crucial moment was at hand and the chances of battle must be risked even though the chances were very largely against the Confederate troops. They said, in substance, to the leader of the Army of the Tennessee:

He either fears his fate too much

Or his desert is small,

Who does not put it to the touch

And win or lose it all.

So soon as the rains of the spring had ceased and the roads had dried, the Federal general set out with a force of eighty-five thousand men to force his way down through Georgia to Atlanta; he had already gone through Chattanooga, he was well on his way from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and between him and his destination only stood Johnston with as brave men as ever faced a foe; men who were ready and willing to die, if needs be, to save their country. The fierce campaigns of the winter which had been imposed upon the cavalry had weakened their force, many of them were dismounted, and many more of them were poorly mounted, and in that depleted condition were not equal to the tasks that this important march was now to lay upon them.