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Charles P. Roland is Associate Professor of History at Tulane University and the author of Louisiana Sugar Plantations During the American Civil War, which won the Louisiana Literary Award for 1957. He is now working on a biography of Albert Sidney Johnston and a history of the Confederacy. Albert Sidney Johnston And the Shiloh Campaign CHARLES P. ROLAND CONFEDERATE GENERAL ALBERT STDNEY JOHNSTON went to bed at midnight of February 15, 1862, heartened by the message that the Union army investing Fort Donelson was defeated, that the Southern troops had won victory "complete and glorious." Before daybreak he was awakened to the somber intelligence that the fort and its defenders were to be surrendered at dawn. The significance of the defeat was immediately obvious. Eight days earlier Johnston had decided that the advanced Confederate line in Kentucky and Tennessee could not be held and had laid plans for a general withdrawal south of the Tennessee River. In retreating from Kentucky he had ordered 15,000 additional troops to the support of Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River. Now they were lost and Johnston faced disaster. The two wings of his army were 150 miles apart: one (accompanied by Johnston) on the Cumberland River opposite Nashville, Tennessee, and the other at Columbus, Kentucky, on the Mississippi River. Nashville lay indefensible before the converging armies of Ulysses S. Grant and Don Carlos Buell and the Northern gunboats on the Cumberland. Even more serious, the Tennessee River was open as far as the head of navigation at Florence, Alabama, thus providing an indestructible route for the movement of a hostile force between the two widely separated Confederate bodies. Johnston resolved to abandon Nashville in order to save the desperately crippled eastern segment of his army. On February 17 and 18 he led the main body of this force to Miufreesboro, Tennessee, thirty-five 355 356CHARLES P. ROLAND miles southeast of Nashville, and the rear guard followed five days later. The loss of Nashville brought down upon Johnston perhaps the most violent public condemnation experienced by any Southern officer during the entire Civil War. The citizens of that city were seized with rage and panic when they became aware of their fate. They fell to rioting and pressed into the Commander's headquarters to demand his intentions. The whole South was stunned by the loss, for the Confederate strength had been vastly exaggerated in the popular mind. The newspapers clamored for Johnston's dismissal. One citizen telegraphed Jefferson Davis that the Confederate Army was completely demoralized and that nothing but Davis's personal presence could save the state of Tennessee. Another implored Davis to take command of the western army, or if that were impossible, to turn it over to Beauregard, Bragg, or Breckinridge. A group of Tennesseans went to Richmond to beg Davis to discharge Johnston. But the faith of the Chief Executive was unshaken, and he replied , "If . . . [Albert Sidney Johnston] is not a general, we had better give up the war, for we have no general."1 Those citizens were right who said that the Confederate Army was demoralized . Johnston a few days later acknowledged in a letter to Davis that "some of the troops were disheartened" and that the pessimism was spreading. This was an understatement. Even General William J. Hardee, ranking subordinate to Johnston, and Colonel W. W. Mackall, Johnston's adjutant general, seem to have lost confidence in their commander.2 The restoration of morale and esprit de corps in this body of troops appeared to Johnston to be the first order of business. In the meantime, what of the western segment of Johnston's army? These troops, concentrated primarily in the fortified city of Columbus, Kentucky, on the Mississippi River, were placed under the command of General P. G. T. Beauregard, who had arrived in the West only a few days before the fall of Fort Donelson. Beauregard endorsed Johnston's plan to withdraw from the Kentucky line, and on February 12 wrote the Commander a letter strongly restating the factors that made this move necessary. In this letter he recommended that Columbus be abandoned immediately, instead of being heavily defended as initially planned, and that the...

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