Joseph E. Johnston: A Civil War Biography

General Johnston was in command of the Confederate forces from the South's first victory in July 1861 to its last in April 1865. Many of his contemporaries considered him the greatest Southern field commander of the war, and yet he remained an enigma. His battlefield victories were never decisive. He failed to save Confederate forces under siege by Grant at Vicksburg, and he retreated deep into Georgia in the face of Sherman's march. His intense feud with Jefferson ensured the collapse of the Confederacy's campaign in 1864, and made Johnson the focus of a political schism that would further undermine the Southern cause. This study provides a narrative of Johnston's Civil War, as well as a portrait of the general as a public and a private man.