Why Didn't Johnston Attempt to Lift the Seige of Vicksburg???

Joined
Jan 23, 2012
Simply saying that Johnston and Pemberton "Didn't like each other very much" seems to fall short of explaining why no attempt was made to move on Grant's rear and support Pemberton's defense of Vicksburg. I'm troubled by why no valid attempt was made. What is the truth?

Mike
 
Well we know Grant brought in a lot of troops to prevent that from happening. One of the regiments was the one my ancestor served in.

I've read Johnston did not want to be blamed and let the 'yankee' holding Vicksburg take the blame!

Also read he, like a lot of others, wanted more men and supplies and.....
 
Simply saying that Johnston and Pemberton "Didn't like each other very much" seems to fall short of explaining why no attempt was made to move on Grant's rear and support Pemberton's defense of Vicksburg. I'm troubled by why no valid attempt was made. What is the truth?

Mike

An attempt was made but by the time it was attempted it was too late.
 
When Johnston arrived in Jackson, MS with some of the expected troops, he sent a message to Richmond that said "I am too late". My great-grandfather was part of the force that arrived with him. Johnston wanted to wait till all expected reenforcements arrived to make a move, but by then, Grant had sent a large force in his direction. Johnston deployed to hold Jackson, but as soon as the yankees showed up, he decided he couldn't hold and pulled back. The letters my great-grandfather wrote home at this time are from each town along what is now I-20 going toward Jackson and then from the same towns going back to Meridian.
 
This board has discussed Johnston on other threads and IMO, Johnston did not seem to believe in defending fixed points on maps as a goal in themselves. As it was most likely that southern armies would be fewer and smaller, in relation to numbers to be available at any point in time, to hold points that could probably never be reinforced was to risk losing both to position and its defenders. If the points to be defended were essentially undefensible, it was the height of silliness to defend them to the last against sure defeat anyway by a larger army.
Although I do not think Johnston thought of it in the terms of using fixed points as bases from which to manuever aggressively, he seems to have had an idea of it.
Still in the end, Johnston was very like McClellan in one pertinent point, he seldom encountered a situation from which he did not see himself as too threatened to do anything too active.
 
The simple truth is Johnston was up against U.S. Grant, who had a superior number of troops and supplies. Pemberton and Johnston ran out of options. As Lee would find in 1865.
 
Both Pemberton and Johnston were outnumbered by Grant's forces (sorry, I don't have the numbers at hand right now). Their only hope of succeeding in an attack was a coordinated effort. This applies to any break-out attempt by Pemberton, as well.

But communications between Johnston and Pemberton were problematic, as the Grant's army was between them. Union pickets and cavalry were on the lookout for any attempt at communication between the forces, and a good number of messages were intercepted. Remember that a messenger from Johnston had to not only sneak through the Union lines, but also into the Confederate lines at Vicksburg - a very dangerous proposition as any movement in the "no man's zone" was likely to be a magnet for fire from the sentries of both sides.

Add to that the problem that one of the regular Confederate couriers was a turncoat who immediately turned over messages to Grant's headquarters. Grant knew the content of the messages considerably sooner than either Johnston or Pemberton.

In his autobiography, Grant dismisses any thought of danger posed by Johnston. He simply said he had adequate resources to deal with Johnston if necessary, and didn't discuss it further.
 
I've always thought that was very basically why Johnston didn't move toward Vicksburg - didn't want to add to the pile! No sense in putting his 17-20,000 into Pemberton's tally. But, perhaps if communication was better, Johnston had moved a little faster, and some other mishaps hadn't happened - maybe Johnston could have helped prolong the siege. Johnston, though, had a handle on overall strategy - keep a fighting army in the field. Grant was not concerned about him at any time as Rhp6033 notes.
 
Gen. Grant...
"I do not know that there was any better than Joe Johnston. I have had nearly all of the Southern generals in high command in front of me, and Joe Johnston gave me more anxiety than any of the others. I was never half so anxious about Lee. By the way I saw in Joe Johnston’s book that when I was asking Pemberton to surrender Vicksburg, he was on his way to raise the siege. I was very sorry. If I had known Johnston was coming, I would have told Pemberton to wait in Vicksburg until I wanted him, awaited Johnston’s advance, and given him battle. He could never have beaten that Vicksburg army, and thus I would have destroyed two armies perhaps. Pemberton’s was already gone, and I was quite sure of Johnston’s. I was sorry I did not know Johnston was coming until too late. Take it all in all, the South, in my opinion, had no better soldier than Joe Johnston – none at least that gave me more trouble. "
Around the World by J. Russell Young

"Sometimes I would walk along the parapet of our works, looking off to the northeast where the Confederates were supposed to be, and I ardently wished they would attack us. Our defenses were so strong that in my opinion it would have been a physical impossibility for flesh and blood to have carried them. Had Johnston tried, he simply would have sacrificed thousands of his men without accomplishing anything to his own advantage."
Leander Stillwell, 61st Illinois at Vicksburg

Kevin Dally
 
Gen. Grant...
"I do not know that there was any better than Joe Johnston. I have had nearly all of the Southern generals in high command in front of me, and Joe Johnston gave me more anxiety than any of the others. I was never half so anxious about Lee.

Grant was obviously in his cups when he said this.

You usually have something of more value to say than this one-line sniping. Ole
 
I think Grant also commented to someone that had he known Johnston was coming he would have let Pemberton keep stewing in Vicksburg and turned to meet Johnston's advance. He thought he'd have bagged him two armies then. And, so did Johnston! His mama didn't raise no fool - he knew it would not take too much for Grant to keep Pemberton penned in while he dealt with Johnston, especially as he had nearly triple the numbers. Staying alive was the very effective strategy he used on Sherman and kept his march obstructed. Sherman couldn't kill Johnston's army and, with a viable enemy force able to operate in the field before him, could not begin his march to the sea. Johnston understood the politics involved better than most generals on either side - just treading water was very apt to win the day.

He had a very different situation with Lee. He was herding Lee into a siege and Lee had no options except to let Richmond go. Davis adamantly refused to do this - had he let Lee do it, Grant might have been considerably more afraid than he was. Lee was a good Houdini and could have slipped away from Grant, which he had done a couple times before - which meant he could have either joined with Johnston in North Carolina or lit on Sherman, which was something Sherman was very anxious about. Grant might not have been scared by Lee but Sherman sure was! Preventing the combination of Grant and Sherman would have put a kink in their plans.
 
When Johnston arrived in Jackson he had a grand total of 6,000 men to call upon. Upon taking command of the position he learnt from John Gregg and W.H.T. Walker of the Confederate defeat at Raymond and that Sherman's Corps was between him and Pemberton. "I am too late" he said in a message to Richmond, with the force immediately at his disposal little more than a division and the Federals at Clinton preventing an easy link up with Pemberton he could do little of immediate value. 9,000 reinforcements were on the way but they might not, and indeed did not, arrive in time to prepare properly for a defense of Jackson let alone an attempt to break through to Pemberton.

Walker and Gregg had told him that Sherman was isolated at Clinton. With this in mind Johnston sent orders to Permberton to march on Clinton with as strong a force as he thought practicable, attack Sherman and break through to join up with him at Jackson. Pemberton answered that he would move immediately with 16,000 men but did not. He slept on his orders, decided they were wrong and convince the senior officers of his army in a council of war that they would be better off marching south to strike at Grant's supply lines.

In the mean time Johnston discovered just how wrong Gregg and Walker had been.

Sherman wasn't isolated at Clinton. McPherson's corps was close by in support. Not only was McPherson operating in close support with Sherman but Grant was with them and they were marching on Jackson. Johnston's reinforcement from further east had not yet arrived, he could not guarentee that they would arrive in time nor in what state they would be in when they arrived to be of much use to any attempted defense of the city, and the two corps advancing upon him had a numerical advantage well over two to one. Johnston thus saw a potential defense of Jackson to be detrimental to his army and the campaign and instead decided to gamble on losing the city but linking up with Pemberton for only union with Pemberton would permit the Confederates to face the Federals on an even footing.

Johnston only learnt after he's began to march up the Canton road that Pemberton had not obeyed his orders and was marching south instead of east. He sent further orders to Pemberton, reaffirming his original order and stating that he would move to join him. This time Pemberton obeyed.

Unfortunately one of the men Johnston trusted to get his orders to Pemberton turned traitor and took those orders directly to General McPherson who sent them on to General Grant who acted with his usual decisiveness to move to prevent any attempt to link up. What followed was Champion Hill.

Pemberton, defeated, fell back to Vicksburg. Johnston, learning of Pemberton's defeat, counciled him to march north, leave Vicksburg to the defense of the Militia and join up with him so that they could face the Federals on a more or less even footing and defeat them in oper battle. Pemberton ignored this council, fell back into the cities defenses and sent a message to Johnston saying he awaited further orders.

Johnston was now the only major Confederate force out in the open in Mississippi. His reinforcements had arrived and with Loring's division - the only one to escape being trapped in Vicksburg - he had approximately 20,000 men. Grant, investing Vicksburg, quickly swelled his numbers until they reached approximately 77,000 men. By the time Johnston had built an army the size of the one Pemberton took with him into Vicksburg it was already too late.

Pemberton turned Johnston into an almosy mythical saviour during the siege of Vicksburg, using his name to rally the people in their conviction to withstand the seige. He knew, however, that Johnston had no intention fo lifting the siege but instead was insisting that any attack against the Federal would only be with the eventual goal of breaking the Army of Mississippi out, that Johnston thought Vicksburg was doomed and would not waste his mens lives trying to save it regardless of the political circumstance surrounding its fall. Pemberton, for his part, refused to give up on Vicksburg and kept sending pleas for Johnston to ride to the rescue of the city, refusing to understand the military reality of the situation.
 
I think Johnston's character during the whole conduct of the War pretty much answers this question. Johnston would rather do nothing and shift responsibility, then put himself out there and actually have to face the prospect of being defeated by the enemy.
 
I think Johnston's character during the whole conduct of the War pretty much answers this question. Johnston would rather do nothing and shift responsibility, then put himself out there and actually have to face the prospect of being defeated by the enemy.

I reckon he could have been more like Hood, but that didn't turn out too well. Johnston was really cautious, but it could be argued he was trying to save his army for the best opportunities, not waste it when the outcome of a battle seemed very much in doubt.
 
Not only was Johnston up against Grant but also the great war making potential of the North. He was never able to increase his numbers, supplies or amteriale' as fast or as much as Grant during the entire campaign and did not have the temperamate nor talent for making war on a shoe-string.
 
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