The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South
Alexander Kelly McClure, Ed.

[132] illness which “infected the very life-blood of our enterprise,” like the Earl of Northumberland's. General Johnston covers the whole ground in saying of General Pemberton, “His design and objects and mine are founded on exactly opposite military principles.” General Johnston was not in accord with the Richmond government, and General Pemberton was not in accord with General Johnston. Those whom God had put asunder, man had.joined together. Mistaking and mistrusting each other, neither one did as well as he might have done without the other. General Pemberton thought the objective of the campaign was to save Vicksburg, or make a fight for it, and in this was supported by the administration. General Johnston thought the safety of the army was the first consideration, that the enemy might still be confronted, no matter what position he might gain. Each accuses the other of slowness, and each, probably, is right. General Pemberton, brave man, stout fighter, doubtless, and faithful to the South as any native son-a fidelity never doubted by the intelligent among his men-was deliberate, slow of assuming responsibilities, perhaps not equal to the movement and management of large bodies, and utterly devoid of personal magnetism. What character General Johnston has as a soldier, history has already, in part, decided. In military resources perhaps no captain of the South excelled him; but at Jackson he was flustered by a responsibility suddenly assumed, and for which his mind was not schooled; between which and the discharge of duties well grasped in advance, there is the same difference as between “two o'clock in the morning courage,” and the ordinary daring of the soldier who obeys orders and feels the contact of his comrade's elbow.

General Pemberton is said to have felt keenly the injustice done him with respect to the fall of Vicksburg. At one time during the siege, when some exaggerated victory was reported in Richmond, the press almost smothered him with laurels. The Dispatch said that Beauregard and Lee had both urged his promotion, and that Johnston had fairly begged for him to be his chief-of-staff! But public sentiment told a different tale when failure befel his army. Assigned to command of the artillery around Richmond, he was greeted with jeers by the men as he rode down the lines. Ever since the war General Pemberton is said to have felt most deeply the odium attaching to him as the man who surrendered Vicksburg and sundered the South. It is a curious fact that no portrait of him appears among Confederate collections. I never saw him in person, but I do him the bare justice of recording my own conviction that