Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 20.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[97] plans and suggestions in the conferences of the Confederate civil and military leaders on the eve of the final surrender in North Carolina.

In 1874 General Johnston published his ‘Narrative of Military Operations.’ In 1880 appeared General Hood's ‘Advance and Retreat.’ And in 1881 the ex-President entered the arena with his ‘Rise and Fall’ of the Confederacy, followed in 1884 by ‘General Beauregard's Military Operations.’ Mrs. Davis' singular book, ‘Jefferson Davis, ex-President of the Confederate States,’ was issued in 1890, after her husband's death.

Johnston's book was almost wholly devoted to an explanation of his relations with the Confederate executive; a large proportion of Mr. Davis' to a statement of his side of the controversy, and Mrs. Davis gives many pages to a re-statement of the ex-President's case and to a bitter attack on Johnston. Her book is of little historical value, both in respect of matter and method. Beauregard had a quarrel of his own with the President, though not so deep and irreconcilable as the other, and consequently the ‘Military Operations’ are mostly in vindication of himself, but with a good deal of incidental matter relating to the other two, generally favorable to Johnston. Hood naturally took sides with President Davis, and attempts to justify his own magnificent failure by violently attacking Johnston's previous operations in the Atlanta campaign.

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The question of rank.

Let us consider the question of rank, which was the primary cause of this quarrel. Joseph E. Johnston was brigadier-general and quarter-master general of the United States army, which position he resigned April 22, 1861, to ‘go with his State,’ which had seceded on the 17th. He says he considered the separation permanent. Robert E. Lee resigned the colonelcy of the First Cavalry, United States army, April 25, 1861. These two men—both Virginians—had been class-mates at West Point, Lee graduating No. 2, and Johnston No. 13, in the class of '29. Samuel Cooper was colonel and adjutant-general of the United States army, and he resigned March 7, 1861, to join the Confederacy. He was born in New York, from which State he was appointed to West Point, where he graduated in 1815. Albert Sidney Johnston (killed at Shiloh), a Kentuckian by birth, but for many years a prominent citizen of Texas, graduated from West Point No. 8 of the class of '26. He resigned