AS Johnston and The Lost Cause
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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The American Civil War, unlike most American conflicts, engendered a mythology that has survived almost all attacks. An element of that mythology depends on what some call “alternate history,” the “what if’s” of the history hobby and, regrettably, of some professionals who claim that “counterfactuals” are useful tools…somehow. Two well-known "what-ifs" of the war suggest that the conflict would have had a different result if Albert Sidney Johnston or Thomas Johnathan Jackson, or both, had survived their wounds, or had not been wounded at all.
While we know much about “Stonewall” Jackson’s (overstated) military prowess, we do not know AS Johnston’s. In fact, Johnston’s martial skills seem to emerge from what he might have done someday, but clearly failed to do in his first action as an army or theater commander.
Albert Sidney Johnston, Gentleman of the South
Born in Kentucky on 2 February 1803 into a middle-class physician’s family, Johnston met Jefferson Davis at Transylvania University and attended West Point two years ahead of Davis, graduating in 1826. Throughout his formative years, Johnston’s friends and acquaintances all remembered his gracious charm and gentility, traits he would maintain all his life. He served in three different armies: the US Army, the Texas Army, and the Confederate States Army. Johnston met and came to know many future luminaries of the 19th Century US Army and later of the CS Army. All of them recalled his gentlemanly bearing, courtesy, and consistently gentle manner. His first conflict was the Blackhawk War (1832), where Lieutenant Johnston served as chief of staff to Henry Atkinson, who remembered Johnston for:
[T]alents of the first order, a gallant soldier by profession and education, and a gentleman of high standing and integrity.
Admirable, but not quite the praise one might want in a fighter. After resigning from the US Army in 1834 to care for his dying first wife, Johnston joined the Texas cause in 1836, leaving two young children in the care of family members in Kentucky. While he would pine for them often, he would see them seldom, and it is unclear how well he provided for them on his irregular salary.
Albert Sidney Johnston, Champion of Texas
Johnston served as a Private in the Texas forces until, through the influence of his many admirers, the Texicans promoted him to Colonel and Adjutant General of that force; five months later he was the senior Brigadier General in the Texas Army. History has never clarified why these massive promotions happened, other than that he possessed administrative skills from his time in the US Army and he had many admirers—he has had few major biographical treatments; most are hagiographic. Because of this meteoric rise, Johnston fought a duel that, though both parties survived, would have fatal consequences for Johnston. In 1838, Mirabeau Lamar named Johnston his Secretary of War, and he took to the field in another brief conflict, the Cherokee War (1838-39), winning praise “for active exertions on the field” and “having behaved in such a manner as reflects great credit upon [him].” Again, not really an endorsement as a field commander. Once again, Johnston quit, this time as Secretary of War because the pay wasn’t that good.
Albert Sidney Johnston, Failed Businessman
While Johnston owned several properties in his time and worked one well enough to subsist, he didn’t seem to have much of a head for business. The China Grove property in Texas was heavily in debt when he bought it. It never earned enough to bail it out; his adult son had to save his father from financial embarrassment. Real estate he owned in Kentucky earned rents but not much more. Johnston spent much of his adult life hand-to-mouth, trying to earn a living and support five (three from his second wife) children. Not unusual for soldiers, but for a Southern Gentleman of his exalted standing, embarrassing.
Albert Sidney Johnston, United States Army
Most of Johnston’s jobs/appointments came from friends and admirers based on his reputation as a gent and administrator, not as a combat soldier and certainly not as a businessman. He again flocked to Texas when the war with Mexico started. When their commander was wounded, Johnston assumed command of a division of volunteers at Monterrey in 1846, winning praise for his coolness and courage in that desperate fight. Then, once again, he quit. He did a five-year bit as an Army paymaster in Texas as a Major from 1849 to 1854 before being appointed Colonel of a newly formed cavalry regiment in 1855, thanks to his friend and then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. Leading the march to Utah in 1857, Johnston felt disappointed that he had no one to fight after his six-month march, only logistical hassles. Ordered to command the Department of the Pacific and arriving by ship in 1861, Johnston again had authority but no one to fight.
Albert Sidney Johnston, Confederate States Army
Johnston quit his job once again in May 1861, after most of the Confederacy had left the Union, and made his way back east via Texas. In Richmond, his good friend President Jefferson Davis appointed him a full General that September, second in seniority only to Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, and sent him to command everything Confederate west of the Alleghenies. After US Grant captured Forts Henry and Donelson, cutting Tennessee in half and forcing the evacuation of Nashville in February 1862, Johnston pulled together every man and gun he could lay his hands on and devised a plan to strike Grant at Pittsburg Landing. Beginning on 1 April, Johnston commanded a rare but slight manpower advantage during a miserable five-day approach march with an army that hadn’t even done a pass-in-review. Surprising Grant’s army in the early morning hours of 6 April, Johnston’s untrained host pressed their advantage for the first six hours, isolating two wings but leaving a hole that might have been as much as a mile wide that Johnston didn’t think to look for. Early that afternoon, while watching one of at least thirteen futile attacks on the Federal left flank, something hit the pit of Johnston’s left knee, clipping his popliteal artery. But because of that old dueling wound, he probably thought little of it until he became faint from the loss of blood shortly before he fell off his horse and bled to death.
Albert Sidney Johnston, Wild Card of the Lost Cause
Johnston was the highest ranking officer of either army to be killed in combat in the Civil War, and though the praise of the gallant and brave administrator was fulsome at the time and since, it’s hard to see why some commentators insist that, had he survived Shiloh he might have won the war for the Confederacy. His one major combat command before Shiloh was Monterrey—praiseworthy, but brief. Johnston did a great deal of quitting in his time and had a hard time supporting the family he had in between jobs/assignments. But in his way, Johnston is a perfect wild card in the deck of Lost Cause Mythology and its endless stream of counterfactuals and “but if” arguments that end up nowhere.
The Lost Cause depends on its wild cards because it has no aces in its deck.
The Devil’s Own Day: Shiloh and the American Civil War
Johnston’s best known battle—the only one where he commanded over five thousand men—was against a man who would best all the rest. Johnston’s legend is better known than his accomplishments.
And Finally...
On 8 August:
1918: The Battle of Amiens breaks the German Army's morale in France, beginning what historians call the Hundred Days’ campaign that ended WWI in Europe. Called the “Black Day of the German Army,” it was when the German high command realized their war was effectively over.
1922: Rudi Gernreich, designer of the topless monokini swimsuit and the mini-skirt, is born in Vienna, Austria. After fleeing Europe in 1938, Gernreich landed in California and became immersed in both dance and fashion design, developing fashions that encouraged movement.
And today is NATIONAL DOLLAR DAY, commemorating this day in 1786 when the US Congress adopted a decimal money system roughly modeled after Spain’s. There would be many more discussions and acts before the money started flowing, though, because the states were still issuing scrip, and the federal government had to buy them all up. Feels like we’re still paying for it.