American Men of Action

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

His training, then, and an experience greater than any other commander in the Civil War started out with, fitted him for brilliant work from the very first. At the outbreak of the war, he was put by the Confederate government in command of the departments of Kentucky and Tennessee, and on April 6, 1862, swept down upon Grant's unprotected army at Shiloh. That battle might have ended in a disastrous defeat for the North but for the accident which deprived the Confederates of their commander. About the middle of the afternoon, while leading his men forward to the attack which was pressing the Federals back upon the river, he was struck by a bullet which severed an artery in the thigh. The wound was not a fatal, nor even a very serious one, and his life could have been saved had it been given immediate attention. But Johnston, carried away by the prospect of impending victory and the excitement of the fight, continued in the saddle cheering on his men, his life-blood pulsing away unheeded, until he sank unconscious into the arms of one of his officers. He was lifted to the ground and a surgeon hastily summoned. But it was too late.

Johnston's death left the command of the army to General Pierre Beauregard, who had had the somewhat dubious honor of firing the first shot of the war against Fort Sumter and of capturing the little garrison which defended it. Beauregard was a West Point man, standing high in his class, and his work, previous to the war, was largely in the engineer corps. When the war began, he was superintendent of the academy at West Point, but resigned at once to join the South. After the capture of Sumter, he was ordered to Virginia and was in practical command at the first battle of Bull Run, which resulted in the rout of the Union forces. After that, he was sent to Tennessee, as second in command to Albert Sidney Johnston, and he succeeded to the command of the army on Johnston's death at Shiloh.

The first day's fighting at Shiloh had resulted in a Confederate victory, but Beauregard was not able to maintain this advantage on the second day, and was finally compelled to draw off his forces. Grant pursued him, and Beauregard was forced to retreat far to the south before he was safe from capture. Two years later, he attempted to stop Sherman on his march to the sea, but was unable to do so, and, joining forces with Joseph E. Johnston, surrendered, to Sherman a few days after Appomattox.

Joseph E. Johnston had been a classmate of Lee at West Point, and had seen much service before the Civil War began. He was aide-de-camp to General Scott in the Black Hawk war; and in the war with the Florida Indians, was brevetted for gallantry in rescuing the force he commanded from an ambush into which it had been lured, the fight being so desperate that, besides being wounded, no less than thirty bullets penetrated his clothes. In the war with Mexico he was thrice brevetted for gallantry, and was seriously wounded at Cerro Gordo and again at Chapultepec. At the beginning of the Civil War, he was quartermaster-general of the United States army, resigning that position to take service with the South.

When McDowell advanced against Beauregard at Bull Run, Johnston, who was at Winchester, hastened with his army to the scene of battle, and this reinforcement, which McDowell had endeavored vainly to prevent, won the day for the Confederates. He remained in command at Richmond, opposing McClellan's advance up the peninsula, but was badly wounded at the battle of Seven Pines, and was incapacitated for duty for several months, Lee succeeding him in command of the army.

Johnston was never again to gain any great victories, for he had in some way incurred the ill-will of Jefferson Davis, and was placed in one impossible position after another, sent to meet an enemy which always outnumbered him, and refused the assistance which he should have had. The last of these tasks was that of stopping Sherman's march to the sea, but Sherman had sixty thousand men to his seventeen thousand, and a battle was out of the question.

After Lee's surrender, Davis fled south to Greensboro, where Johnston found him and advised that, since the war had been decided against them, it was their duty to end it without delay, as its further continuance could accomplish nothing and would be mere murder. To this Davis reluctantly agreed, and Johnston thereupon sought Sherman and made terms of surrender for his army and Beauregard's. The terms which Sherman granted were rejected by Congress as too liberal, and another agreement was drawn up, similar to the one which had been signed between Grant and Lee. It is worth remarking that the Union generals in the field were disposed to treat their fallen foes with greater charity and kindness than the politicians in Congress, who had never seen a battlefield, and who were concerned, not with succoring a needy brother, but with wringing every possible advantage from the situation.

To two other southern commanders we must give passing mention before turning from this period of our history. First of these is James Longstreet, who had the reputation of being the hardest fighter in the Confederate service, whose men were devoted to him, and called him affectionately "Old Pete." The army always felt secure when "Old Pete" was with it; and, indeed, he did not seem to know how to retreat. He held the Confederate right at Bull Run, and the left at Fredericksburg; he saved Jackson from defeat by Pope, at the second battle of Bull Run; he was on the right at Gettysburg, and tried to dissuade Lee from the disastrous charge of the third day which resulted in Confederate defeat; he held the left at Chickamauga, did brilliant service in the Wilderness, and was included in the surrender at Appomattox. A sturdy and indomitable man, the Confederacy had good reason to be proud of him.

The second is J.E.B. Stuart, as a cavalry leader second only to Jackson, and Sheridan, but with his reputation shadowed by a fatal mistake. He was a past master of the sudden and daring raid, and on more than one occasion carried consternation into the enemy's camp by a brilliant dash through it. One of his most successful raids was made around McClellan's army on the peninsula, shaking its sense of security and threatening its communications. On another occasion, he dashed into Pope's camp, captured his official correspondence and personal effects and made prisoners of several officers of his staff, Pope himself escaping only because he happened to be away from headquarters. The one shadow upon his military career, referred to above, was his absence from the field of Gettysburg.

He was directed to take a position on the right of the Confederate army, but started away on a raid in the rear of the Federals, not expecting a battle to be fought at once, and he did not get back to the main army until the battle of Gettysburg had been lost. The absence of cavalry was a severe handicap to the Confederate army, and Lee always attributed his defeat to Stuart's absence; but Stuart maintained that he had acted under orders, and that the mistake was not his. He was killed in a fight with Sheridan's cavalry at Yellow Tavern, Virginia, a short time later.