ONFEDERATE BIOGRAPHY: WHEN SIDNEY JOHNSTON FELL. -  Smith County, TX 

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Submitted by Doris Peirce - ginlu@home.com 
15 October 2001 
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TEXANS WHO WORE THE GRAY by Sid S. Johnson 

WHEN SIDNEY JOHNSTON FELL

A correspondent of the Movile Advertiser and Register in a letter from 
the Western army in January, 1863, wrote the following account of the 
death of Sidney Johnston at the battle of Shiloh:  "At Shiloh the 
brave and heroic Albert Sidney Johnston directed the First Missouri 
to advance, then riding to where an Arkansas brigade was wavering, 
siezed the barrel of a musket in his hand, and cried out,  'You 
Arkansas men, who boast of using the bowie knife, let me see you use 
the bayonet'  and led a charge before which the Yankees fell back in 
dismay, but not until one of their accursed bullets had struck the 
noblest man upon the field, and he who sacrificed his own life for 
the welfare of the Yankee wounded.  But a few minutes before receiving 
his wound., the magnanimous leader of the Southern army passed over a 
gully filled with Yankee wounded, groaning pittifully.  Turning to his 
own surgeon, thn the only member of his staff with him, he said: 'go 
back there and mitigate the sufferings of some of those poor miserable 
devils.'  The surgeon declined to go upon the ground that his proper 
position was inseperably attached to Johnston; but the general 
repeated hs request and the surgeon left him to attend to the 
sufferings of the enemy's wounded.  In a few moments Gen. Johnston 
received a severe wound in the thigh, from the hemorrhage of which 
he died.  Had his surgeon been present the wound might have been 
dressed, the hemorrhage stopped and his life saved.  As it was, he 
concealed the fact of his wound, continued to lead forward his 
successful columns, and finally perished, the victim of his own 
heroic magnanimous nature.  His deeds will grace the brightest page of 
his country's glorious history."