CONFEDERATE BIOGRAPHY: ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON - Smith County, TX ***************************************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm Submitted by Mary Love Berryman - marylove@tyler.net 20 August 2001 ***************************************************************** TEXANS WHO WORE THE GRAY by Sid S. Johnson ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON. Albert Sidney Johnston was born in Mason County, Ken­tucky, Feb. 3, 1803. He obtained his literary education at Transylvania University, and was graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in June 1826, being number eight in a brilliant class of which Jefferson Davis was a member. He was assigned as second lieutenant of the 2nd infantry, transferred to the 6th infantry in 1827, was regimental adjutant from 1828 to 1832, and participated throughout the Black Hawk war as chief of staff to Gen. Atkinson. Owing to the serious illness of his wife who died the following year, he in 1834 resigned from the army and engaged in farming until May 1836 when he came to the Republic of Texas and enlisted as a private soldier in the army. His merit soon brought him promotion, and he was by Gen. Thos. J. Rusk made adjutant-general of the Army of Texas, and not long after chosen senior brigadier-general and chief commander of the army in the place of Gen. Felix Huston then in command of the forces and a disappointed competitor for the place. In the duel which followed John­ston was seriously wounded. In 1838 he was made Secretary of War of the Republic of Texas. In 1839 he led an expedi­tion against the hostile Cherokee Indians, and in a battle on the Neches defeated and routed them with great slaughter. After Texas had been annexed to the union and the war between the United States and Mexico broke out he organ­ized a regiment, the 1st Texas Rifiles, and hastened to the Rio Grande. He was distinguished in various battles, es­pecially at Monterey, where he had three horses shot from under him. He returned now to his Texas plantation and the care of his family, where he remained until 1849 when without his knowledge he was appointed by President Zachary Taylor to be paymaster in the U. S. Army with the rank of major. Six years later President Franklin Pierce appointed him colonel of the 2nd cavalry, a new regiment, and he was assigned to the command of the department of Texas where he remained until 1857 when he was put in comnand of expedition to Utah to force the Mormons to submit to the laws of the United States Government. He overcame great difficulties and showed such ability and tact in the delicate mission that he was made brevet Brigadier-General in the U.S. Army. When the war between the States broke out Gen. Johnston was in command of the department of the Pacific. When he received the news of the secession Texas he resigned his commission, and made his way by land to Richmond, Va., reaching there in September. He had a cordial reception, was made a full general and assign to the command of the department of the West, in which post he rendered heroic service to the Confederacy. He fell "on the field of glory" at Shiloh, April 6, 1862, while leading a desperate charge to victory. There are many milita critics and world famed soldiers who endorse the opinion of President Jefferson Davis that he was the greatest general whom the war produced. Gen. Johnston had many times expressed the wish to be buried in Texas, and so his remains are interred in the State Cemetery in Austin and above his grave Texas has placed the exquisite recumbent statue by the Texan sculpturess Elizabeth Ney. Gen. Johnston was married in 1829 to Miss Henrietta Preston: Their son William Preston Johnston, graduated from Yale in 1852; was aid-de-camp to Jefferson Davis throughout the whole war; professor of history and literature at Washington and Lee University (under presidency Gen. Robt. E. Lee) and from 1880 until his death July 16, 1899 was president of Tulane University in New Orleans.