In a significant contribution to interpretive Civil War
scholarship, Symonds (History/US Naval Academy) paints an
engrossing portrait of one of the most enigmatic and important
figures of the war. Contemporaries regarded Joseph E. Johnston as
one of the greatest military talents in the Confederacy, in some
estimates outranking even Johnston's friend and West Point
classmate Robert E. Lee. Nonetheless, posterity remembers him only
for commanding Confederate armies in a few inconclusive battles,
including some nominal Southern victories - First Manassas (1861),
Seven Pines (1862), Kennesaw Mountain (1864), and Bentonville
(1865) - and for his failure to stop Grant at Vicksburg and Sherman
at Atlanta. Johnston lacked Lee's brilliance, and his victories
were more the result of careful planning and diligence than of
genius. Yet without endorsing Johnston's tactic of avoiding battle
with superior Union forces, Symonds articulates the case for
Johnston's strategy: Johnston's army suffered considerably fewer
losses than Lee's, and but for Jefferson Davis's giving the
aggressive but foolhardy John Bell Hood command of the western army
after the fall of Atlanta (which caused disastrous Confederate
defeats at Franklin and Nashville), Johnston's Army of Tennessee
would have remained intact longer than Lee's Army of Northern
Virginia. While Symonds shows that the intensely reserved Johnston
enjoyed close friendships with his brother officers, he also
recounts the general's tragic failure to work harmoniously with the
prickly Davis, which resulted in open enmity by the end of the war.
Symonds relates how Johnston entered into the unseemly "Battle of
the Books" after the war, denouncing Hood and Davis (whom
Southerners regarded as a martyr) in his memoir and suffering
denunciations in turn. A stimulating and absorbing biography of an
undeservedly neglected warrior. (Kirkus Reviews)
"Riveting. . . . A thoughtful biography." —New York Times Book Review General Joseph E. Johnston was in command of Confederate forces at the South's first victory—Manassas in July 1861—and at its last—Bentonville in April 1965. Many of his contemporaries considered him the greatest southern field commander of the war; others ranked him second only to Robert E. Lee.
But Johnston was an enigmatic man. His battlefield victories were never decisive. He failed to save Confederate forces under siege by Grant at Vicksburg, and he retreated into Georgia in the face of Sherman's march. His intense feud with Jefferson Davis ensured the collapse of the Confederacy's western campaign in 1864 and made Johnston the focus of a political schism within the government.
Now in this rousing narrative of Johnston's dramatic career, Craig L. Symonds gives us the furst rounded portrait of the general as a public and private man.
"A vivid, fast-moving narrative of Johnston's dramatic career. Symonds brings careful research and even-handed judiciousness to a fascinating story full of incident and controversy." —Charles Royster, Louisiana State University
"A splendid, even-handed biography." —Byron Farwell, Washington Times
"The most readable and interesting biography yet on Joe Johnston." —Journal of American History
"A significant contribution to Civil War scholarship. . . . An engrossing portrait." —Kirkus Reviews
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