Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/690

 648 and artillery of Johnston's army, including two brigades of the Mississippi department, was 36,826. The effective total of cavalry, including Roddy's command at Tuscumbia, was 5,613. The winter was mainly employed by General Johnston in improving the discipline and equipment of his army, through which course he soon gained the confidence of the command. The enemy made several decided demonstrations during these months of the winter, which were so gallantly repulsed that on February 27, 1864, Johnston suggested through General Bragg that preparations for a forward movement be made without delay. In the meantime the Federal army was being increased to a larger force of all arms, and evidently contemplating the advance which Sherman made on the 5th of May, thus opening the famous Atlanta campaign. By cautiously entrenching a portion of his immensely superior force and using the remainder for flanking he gradually forced back Johnston towards Atlanta. The campaign was a continuous daily combat, in which the Southern army, handled with masterly skill by General Johnston, acting on the defensive and never once broken, inflicted losses largely disproportionate to its own, and only withdrew from any line of battle to avoid being flanked. Not until the middle of July did Sherman reach the vicinity of Atlanta, having been forced by Johnston to take seventy days to traverse one hundred miles. Here he found himself with a long and difficult line of communication, while Johnston, having reached his base, could no longer be flanked and only had to await the result of breaking his antagonist's communications, which movement he now proposed to complete. At this crisis of the campaign the President removed him and replaced him by Hood, whose army was not long afterwards wrecked.

After this removal Johnston was without a command until late in February, 1865, when General Lee, who had just been made commander-in-chief, assigned to him the