He entered on the duties of his new and important field—complaining, peevish, sulking.
On the day before his departure Mrs. Davis visited his wife and expressed to General Johnston the earnest wish of her heart for her husband's success.
"I sincerely hope, General," she said cordially, "that your campaign will be brilliant and successful."
The General pursed the hard lines of his mouth.
"I might succeed if I had Lee's chances with the army of Northern Virginia."
From the moment Johnston reached his field he began to quarrel with his generals and complain to the Government at Richmond. He made no serious effort to unite his forces for the defense of Vicksburg and continuously wrote and telegraphed to the War Department that his authority was inadequate to really command so extended a territory. He made no effort to throw the twenty-four thousand men he commanded into a juncture with Pemberton who was struggling valiantly against Grant's fifty thousand closing in on the doomed city.
On May eighteenth, Johnston sent a courier to Pemberton and advised him to evacuate Vicksburg without a fight! Pemberton held a council of war and refused to give up the Mississippi River without a struggle. Johnston sat down in his tent and left him to his fate.
Grant closed in on Vicksburg and the struggle began. Pemberton could not believe that Johnston would not march to his relief.
Women and children stood by their homes amid the roar of guns and the bursting of shells. Caves were dug in the hills and they took refuge under the ground.