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Book Review

Book Review

The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston:

Embracing His Services in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States

By William Preston Johnston,
with introduction by Charles P. Roland

Review by Robert Nieman

William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston: Embracing His Services in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States (Austin, Texas: State House Press, 1997). 755 pages, 12 photographs, ISBN 1-880510-48-0. $45, hardcover.

This book has not been seen since it was originally published in 1878. Historians and history buffs owe State House Press a great debt of gratitude for reprinting William Preston Johnston’s excellent biography of his father, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston.

William Preston Johnston served briefly on his father’s staff before working on Jefferson Davis’s organization during the Civil War. After the war, he became a professor and then president of Tulane University in New Orleans. As the son of General Johnson, he had more than a passing knowledge of military strategy and tactics. He also had possession of and access to family papers available nowhere else, and many of the general’s fellow soldiers provided memories that they might not have given to anyone else.

For a man who packed so much into his fifty-nine years, 755 pages seem almost too few for General Albert Sidney Johnston. Born in Kentucky in 1803, he was an 1826 graduate of West Point. He participated in the Black Hawk War and barely missed the Texas Revolution by arriving in that state just after the Battle of San Jacinto. When he did arrive, he wasted no time before volunteering for the Republic of Texas Army as a private. Being a West Point graduate, he soon found himself in an almost impossible position as the adjutant general in the army of a country that faced the unattainable situation of supporting itself. By 1838, he was the republic’s Secretary of War. In this position, he led the expedition against Chief Bowl’s Cherokee tribe, an action which ended with the expulsion of the Cherokees from Texas.

During the Mexican War, Johnston became a regular officer in the United States Army. After the conflict, he remained in the Army and led troops in Utah after the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 120 innocent men, women, and children by Mormons and Paiute Indians.

By the outbreak of the Civil War, he was stationed in California. General Winfield Scott, commander of all Union armies, offered Johnston the rank of second in command, but Johnston refused. Instead, he took control of the Confederate Western Department. With a woeful lack of men, he tried vainly to create a defensive line that ran from Columbus, Kentucky, to Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee and ended in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Union General U. S. Grant shattered this line with his victories at Forts Henry and Donelson. Left with no choice, Johnston moved his army south to the Tennessee River around a small rural church called Shiloh. On the first day of the battle, the Confederates were driving the Union forces back toward the water when Johnston was hit in the leg, thus severing an artery. For the want of a simple tourniquet to stop the bleeding, possibly the best military mind in the Confederacy was lost, and history was changed forever.

To this day, the debate among Civil War historians continues. What would have happened if Johnson had not been killed? As darkness approached, would he have kept attacking the Union Army, thus driving the Union forces into the river? How different would things have been for the Confederate Army of Tennessee, one of the greatest but worst led armies in history? Of course, history cannot prove what did not happen.

From the time he arrived in Texas, Albert Sidney Johnston was a Texan. He insisted that he be buried in that state when he died. Today, he rests in the State Cemetery in Austin.

The material in this book is fascinating. Of course, none of this information would be of much value if not presented in a readable and professional manner, which William Preston Johnston has done.