General Joe Johnston

[bankerpapaw]

I don't know if betrayed is too harsh a word, but did Joe Johnston betray Gen. Pemberton by not coming to the aid of Vicksburg?

 

[BillWright]

I think johnston was wrong, he didn't want to be there. He had gotten crossways with stonewall Jackson and really had been kicked out of the army of northern Virginia. He got to Jackson and ordered a retreat within 2 days leaving Pemberton to fend for himself. I had numerous conversations with pembertons grandson who wrote the book , pemberton defender of Vicksburg , and it offers insights on pembertons feeling. Btw my helper is typing this so apologies for not capitalizing and proper punctuation… mri think he was a good man in the wrong place Wright talks faster than I can type. Old John c the third and I flew and walked all over Vicksburg and environs discussing what had gone wrong. I 've always blamed pemberton for not trusting what some of his field officers
like John Bowen, we're telling him about grants movements.

 

[bdtex]

I don't know if betrayed is too harsh a word, but did Joe Johnston betray Gen. Pemberton by not coming to the aid of Vicksburg?

What do you think about it?

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

It was not betrayal.

Johnston didn't want to be there and didn't have the temperament for the task at hand. He was the wrong man for the job.

He was also given an almost impossible objective. Had Pemberton retreated into the Vicksburg defenses with half as many men and the other half reached Johnston, or Johnston had somehow been reinforced quicker something might have been done very early in the siege. Maybe. Pemberton and Johnston couldn't coordinate very well either.

As it was, Grant was surprisingly concerned about what his opponent might do (not common for him). He got reinforcements and added entrenchments protecting his rear. The window of relief was slim.

 

[breckod]

The Vicksburg Campaign was not the only time that year Johnston seemed reluctant to take responsibility. His report on the troubles in Bragg's army and efforts to avoid assuming command of it are actually pretty wild.

 

[jepridgen]

I tend to blame Jeff Davis. He failed to provide what the modern army calls unity of command. He appoint Johnston to essentially be a theater commander but without authority to command. He had department commanders and army commanders reporting to him and to Johnston. He basically told Pemberton to hold Vicksburg no matter what. That led to Pemberton getting bottled up because Johnston wanted him to save the army which he considered more important than a position. When given the decision to escape and unite with Johnston, he chose Vicksburg.
Now, would that have changed things? Who knows? IMO, not uniting with Johnston and getting bottled up sealed his fate. Johnston just didn't have the force in place at that point sufficient to do an opposed crossing of the Big Black River. By the time he did, Grant was too well established and supplied.

 

[jackt62]

Attempts to save Pemberton's Army of Mississippi at Vicksburg were nothing less than a sorry effort by the involved Confederate parties but do not constitute a "betrayal" by Joe Johnston. Conflicting signals between Pemberton, Johnston, and Davis put the kibosh on a coordinated and serious strategy to deal with Grant's army after it successfully crossed the Mississippi and inserted itself between Pemberton and Johnston's forces at Jackson. Indecisive leadership by a reluctant Johnston further aggravated the dismal situation in which Pemberton found himself facing. Finally, Grant's brilliant management of his Corps' operations outsmarted Pemberton and Johnston's forces by making any potential cooperation more difficult. So no, there was no betrayal, just a combination of inept and befuddled moves.

 

[Greywolf]

Johnston had no chance with the ammount of men he had to do anything significant. Even after gaining reinforcements little chance as Grant was prepared and waiting for him.

 

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

The Vicksburg Campaign was not the only time that year Johnston seemed reluctant to take responsibility. His report on the troubles in Bragg's army and efforts to avoid assuming command of it are actually pretty wild.

Which is a shame because Johnston was who many in the AOT wanted in command and his style was suited to the situation in TN. Bragg would have been better suited trying to raise the Vicksburg siege.

 

[breckod]

Which is a shame because Johnston was who many in the AOT wanted in command and his style was suited to the situation in TN. Bragg would have been better suited trying to raise the Vicksburg siege.

Johnston also seems to have gotten on reasonably well with Polk, which may have defused the worst dysfunction in the AoT's high command.

 

[UCVRelics]

I don't know if the word betray is correct as Retreat Joe was just being Retreat Joe. According to accounts the first thing he did when he got off the train in Jackson on May 12th was telegraph Jeff Davis "I'm to late" to understand Joe's big I little U syndrome you have to go back to the 1840's and his time in the US Army as he had the same issues with other officers as he did with the CSA.

 

[GwilymT]

How do folks expect someone to take responsibility in the West when it was already apparent that the rebellion was doomed?

 

[John S. Carter]

I don't know if betrayed is too harsh a word, but did Joe Johnston betray Gen. Pemberton by not coming to the aid of Vicksburg?

Pemberton should have not allowed his army to become entrapped. It is like, one morning he woke up and Vicksburg was encircled by the Union army and gunboats were floating in front on the city. Pemberton was under orders from Davis to defend the city. Pemberton should have taken his army out of the city and fought Grant in the open, with Johnston. I think that Johnston ,as bad a general as he was, knew that Vicksburg was indefensible when faced with a massive force. This is a demonstration of lack of intelligence of ones opposition. Grant had proven what a strategist and determined general he was , Davis failed to learn from these engagements. If one was Pemberton and you heard and saw how Grant, with the assistance of Shermans army' would you have disobeyed your commander in chief and saved your army and if one was Johnson would you have placed your army in a indefensible situation. Reminds me of a battle that Ceasar fought against a German king who placed his army in an enclosed fort and when the king's reinforcements arrived Ceasar was able and his army prepared to defeat both sides. [Sorry I can not spell the German's name}.

 

[Irishtom29]

Reminds me of a battle that Ceasar fought against a German king who placed his army in an enclosed fort and when the king's reinforcements arrived Ceasar was able and his army prepared to defeat both sides. [Sorry I can not spell the German's name}.

Not a German but a Gaul (a Celtic people) and his name was Vercingetorix. The place was Alesia, in current France and it was one of history's greatest sieges. The Romans worked like beavers and built two formidable lines of fortifications, one facing inward surrounding Alesia and the other facing outwards to protect the Romans from Gallic relief forces.

 

[tony_gunter]

I only know about Johnston as far as the Vicksburg Campaign is concerned.

On May 13th, he landed and assumed command of the troops in and around Jackson. This included 4,000 combat ready troops, 2,000 men that had been fought to exhaustion at Raymond, and a smattering of state troops and local militia.

Was he too late, as he wired to Richmond? Too late to save Jackson for sure, even if we only count the army corps he knew about on the Clinton road.

He sent 3000 troops out to delay the corps at Clinton, 1000 troops to delay the troops south of the city, and posted the 2000 exhausted troops from Raymond north of the Clinton approach as a distraction. Then he set about extracting all of the supplies from the city and planning to retreat north. After the retreat, he ordered Pemberton to attack "Sherman" (actually McPherson) at Clinton, regrouped south of Canton, and began marching towards Livingston.

To my knowledge, there was no direct road from Livingston to Clinton at the time. For all purposes, I consider the order to attack Clinton a disguised order to abandon Vicksburg.

By the time Johnston reached Livingston, Pemberton was fighting Grant at Champion Hill. When Johnston received word of the defeat at Champion Hill, he turned his army around, marched back to the railroad, and reoccupied Jackson.

I'm on the fence with what Johnston could have done. One one hand, it took several weeks for Grant to complete the encirclement of Vicksburg. On the other, Johnston had no supply line to the city.

I lean towards Johnston placing Gregg in overall command of the troops retreating north of Jackson and riding from Jackson with Wirt Adams' cavalry to Edwards Station via Livingston and Brownsville. If he wanted to abandon Vicksburg, he should have stepped up and done it himself.

 

[bankerpapaw]

What do you think about it?

He could have done a lot more than he did.