Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/207

 General Joseph Eygleston Johnston. 207

precision of a well adjusted machine. He possessed a genius for military organization ; was a born quartermaster and commissary ; and when he could not obtain clothing and food for his men you may be sure they were not to be had you may be sure they were not there. His anxious efforts to keep his army supplied with all the necessary material, his care for the lives and safety of his men, super- added to his great generalship, elicited the loyalty and devotion of his army to a degree that was only equaled by that of the army of Northern Virginia to the invincible and immortal Lee.

As an instance of the confidence and devotion of his army, after he had left it and after it had been beaten, battered and broken by the battles around Atlanta, Jonesboro', Franklin and Nashville, and he had been recalled by the voice of the country to its command in North Carolina, and the men heard that he was coming and was then in the vicinity of the army, many of them left their camps, guns, equipage, everything, and set out to find him, and when they did so they embraced him with shouts of joy and tears of affection ; and the old hero was so deeply affected by their demonstrations of devotion that his strong frame trembled with emotion, as it had never done in the fiery face of booming battle.

Soon after this the battle of Bentonville occurred, in which his old soldiers, though tattered and torn, barefooted and ragged, fought with the same courage and alacrity that had characterized them in the better days of their hope and power. But do not understand me to say or imply that that army (the army of Tennessee) ever refused to fight under any commander who ordered it to battle. It never did. And at the storming of Franklin, Tenn., under command of General Hood, men never fought more bravely or died more freely. That was a battle which, for desperate, reckless courage, will rank with Gettysburg or Balaklava.

As another evidence of General Johnston's military sagacity and of his ability to divine the plans and movements of his adversaries, I have heard it stated that General Sherman said he never made a movement, while confronting him, in which Johnston had not antici- pated him. I have also seen it stated that General Sherman esteemed him the greatest soldier of the Confederacy ; and very naturally might General Sherman, himself a great soldier, think so, for he had known and felt the masterly stroke of his majestic arm.

When the war was ended, the partisanship of the soldier was at at once submerged in the nationality of the citizen ; and General Johnston exerted his influence in the establishment of peace, in behalf