The comparison of the characters of Johnston and Lee is most interesting. Born in the same year, entering West Point at the same time and graduating in the same class (that of 1829), they both saw their first active military service under General Scott. Johnston accompanied Scott on his arduous campaign in the Florida Indian war, and later to Mexico. While Lee was engaged in boundary work in Texas, Johnston was performing a similar work for his government on the Canadian line. From early manhood they were fast friends and were bound together by the same associations, the same surroundings and the same interests throughout all their lives. Both came from the Mexican War with the title of colonel. Both were opposed to secession, but both resigned their commissions in the United States army and entered the service of the Stars and Bars with the rank of colonel. Both supported, with consummate ability and unfaltering courage, the cause they held dear, and when this cause went down in defeat both met the verdict with quiet dignity. Both refused safety and honors abroad, preferring to give their abilities to rebuilding a united nation, and both lived to have abundant proof of the respect and esteem in which all people held them.
It would be useless to seek to measure the relative capacity of these two classmates. The circumstances surrounding their operations were not the same, the generals opposing them were unlike and their methods of campaign were necessarily different. It is safe to say that both applied, as far as possible, the tactics and principles of war taught them at their alma mater. “Johnston’s Narrative,” which he wrote and published in 1875, explains his tactics and his reasons for adopting them and have been held in high repute by students of military art on both sides of the ocean ever since their publication.
Like Lee, Johnston never failed to gain the respect and confidence of his men. “Although,” says Mr. Hughes in his admirable biography, “Johnston was never allowed to retain command of one army long enough to achieve the great results which only flow from long association ... he never failed to win the love of his men. They trusted him because they knew that their blood would not be wasted.... They admired him because they knew he would not ask them to go where he would not go himself. His order was ‘Follow,’ not ‘Go.’... They called him their Game Cock, because of his gallantry and martial bearing, and strove to emulate him in courage and coolness.”
“Farewell, old fellow,” was the parting salute of one of his men, “we privates loved you because you made us love ourselves.”
Johnston’s personal character was no less admirable than his public career. Unselfishness, modesty, purity, courtesy, charity, devotion to home and family ties ever characterized him in public and in private.
After his surrender to Sherman at Durham’s Station, North Carolina, he retired to Savannah, Georgia, putting the war and its issues behind him, using his great influence to renew the national allegiance and to cultivate a new patriotism that should embrace the whole country. In 1877 he returned to Richmond, and in the following year was elected to the House of Representatives. On the expiration of his term he was appointed Commissioner of Railroads by President Cleveland and continued to reside in Washington until his death. He met here both Grant and Sherman, and, as already said, became fast friends with his former foes and acted as pallbearer at the funeral of each.
I sat with Jo Johnston in the Forty-sixth Congress of the United States. I was young and he was ripe in years and experience. I sought him and cultivated him and never tired of listening to the story from his lips of his maneuvers in the last days of the Confederacy. He was small of stature, square built, and straight as an arrow, with a big round bald head and keen gray eyes that glittered like stars. Congress was not congenial to him—he was not an orator but a soldier; he was not a statesman, but a general. He knew how to wield an army but was helpless on the battlefield of argument. During the fiercest fights of the two great contending parties on the floor of the house, he daily walked to and fro like a caged lion, his head up, his eyes sparkling and his whole attitude one of excitement, yet taking no part in the struggle. But he was a faithful representative of his people, and was loved by all who knew him.
In 1887 he received a crushing blow in the death of his wife. Their childlessness and her invalidism and the long years of army life had drawn them together in an unusual degree, and he was never able to recover his old time joy in life after his loss.
Naturally the distinguished veteran was in great demand on the occasion of re-union and memorial exercises. Always averse to anything savoring of publicity, he attempted to fill these engagements in an unobtrusive way, but at times the enthusiasm of his old followers put all his efforts to naught. This was shown at the memorial exercises at Atlanta in the spring of 1890, of which an Atlanta paper gives the following account: