Joseph E

Joseph E. Johnston and the Defense of Richmond. By Steven H. Newton. University Press of Kansas, Lawrence Kansas, 1998.

Joseph E. Johnston has received tremendous criticism since the Civil War for his alleged failures. He has been accused of never wanting to risk a battle, but always willing to retreat, as well as failing to inform his superiors and subordinates regarding his plans. Stephen N. Newton’s Joseph E. Johnston and the Defense of Richmond examines Johnston’s generalship in 1862 and finds that historians failed to give Johnston adequate due for his successful efforts against the Army of the Potomac. Moreover, Newton shows how contemporary myths and ideas regarding Johnston have prevented historians from carefully analyzing the situation.

Newton labors throughout the work to show the involvement of President Davis and General Robert E. Lee in the crafting of the defensive strategy with regards to Northern Virginia in 1862. Moreover, he demonstrates that Lee took direct control over the detached eliminates of Johnston’s Department of North Virginia during the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, even to the extent where Lee intercepted Johnston’s mail and gave direct orders to his division commanders. While Johnston has been condemned for his failure to communicate with superiors, Newton shows Johnston’s repeated communications and conferences with those very superiors.

The trouble for Johnston began when President Davis summoned him to Richmond in response to the military defeats of early 1862. Following their meeting, Johnston and Davis had different perceptions into forward strategy for the theater. Johnston believed that Davis required Johnston to retreat in complete secrecy from Manassas Junction and bring the majority of his forces south to the east of Richmond to defend Yorktown. Davis claimed that he merely directed Johnston to investigate the possibilities for repositioning his army in the case of an advance by the Army of the Potomac. Newton makes the case that the misunderstanding resulted from General Lee’s return to Richmond and assuming the position as de facto Chief of Staff. Lee disliked Davis’s plan. Davis and Johnston’s failure to adequately communicate created the subsequent misunderstanding. Davis thereafter mistrusted Johnston, even when Johnston attempted to keep Davis in close communication.

Newton makes a significant effort to correct the misperceptions regarding Johnston’s movement. He argues the amount of supplies destroyed by the retreating army in no reflected the myths contained in the historiography. Moreover, Newton argues that Johnston successfully relocated the army in an efficient manner.

The strategy for the defense of the peninsula largely resulted from discussions between Lee and Johnston. Lee wanted aggressive defense over the entire peninsula, while Johnston desired measured withdrawal from the peninsula followed by a concentration of Confederate troops outside Richmond with which to defeat the Army of the Potomac. Lee strategy won out, but conditions forced Johnston to gradually retreat from Yorktown. The conditions largely resulted from General John Magruder’s failure to adequate prepare defenses at Yorktown and Williamsburg, as well as the success of Union ironclads. The Yorktown defenses largely adopted those from the British in the Revolutionary War and most of the artillery faced the sea rather than the land. Defenses were largely incomplete and Magruder had no cleared out forests in the area. Magruder had bluffed McClellan into believing that the Confederacy had significantly stronger defenses at Yorktown than he had. As such, McClellan significantly delayed his advance in order to set up a siege at Yorktown. Likewise, Williamsburg had only incomplete fortifications and defenses along the James River near Richmond had not been completed.

Newton credits Johnston with the successful slow retreat over the peninsula, though argues that this could have been conducted with far fewer men had his defensive strategy been adopted. Moreover, Newton argues that Johnston was forced to retreat by the successful Union landings up the peninsula after the fall of Norfolk and Yorktown, not from McClellan’s army.

Ultimately, Johnston set up a large battle outside of Richmond with his concentrated forces. His own wounding prevents an understanding of whether he would have been as successful as Lee during the rest of 1862. Newton argues that Johnston created a strong infrastructure of the Army of Northern Virginia that Lee built on for his success. Moreover, Lee had considerably more success in dealing with Richmond than Johnston. “In one aspect and one aspect only did the status of the army immediately improve under Lee: relations with his civil superiors.”

Newton takes to task numerous contemporary historians for the failures to properly analyze Johnston’s efforts in 1862. Newton argues that Johnston’s 1862 Peninsula Campaign should be rated as successful and that many of the shortcomings heaped upon Johnston do not accurately reflect the reality of the man.

Peter Pratt

Joseph E. Johnston and the Defense of Richmond. By Steven H. Newton. (University Press of Kansas, Lawrence Kansas, 1998)

After the Battle of First Bull Run the Confederate and Federal armies retreated to their respective corners to recover and plan for spring campaigning. In the interim, United States President Abraham Lincoln placed General George McClellan in command of the Union forces in Virginia. For the Confederates, President Jefferson Davis maintained General Joseph E. Johnston as commander of the Confederate forces in the region, with headquarters at Centerville Virginia.

Joseph Eggleston Johnston is a very controversial figure in Civil War historiography. His failures to relieve the Siege of Vicksburg and keep William T. Sherman away from Atlanta have been pointed to by critics of the general. However, Steven Newton argues that Johnston’s performance during the Peninsula Campaign in the spring of 1862, up until his wounding at the Battle of Seven Pines on May 31, should be reevaluated. Newton states that Johnston was not the same man that he became in 1863 and 1864.

In February 1862 Davis recalled Johnston to Richmond to discuss a withdrawal of his army further south to better protect Richmond. Johnston took it upon himself to organize and execute a strategic retreat even though no positive orders were ever issued. Johnston’s handling of the retreat has often been criticized by historians as wasteful and clumsy in light of the amount of supplies lost to the Federals in the process. However, Newton challenges this assertion, contradicting such eminent historians as Douglas Southall Freeman and Steven Woodworth. Newton maintains that Johnston actually saved a large portion of the supplies. The above is only one example of the glaringly revisionist nature of Newton’s work. At every turn he challenges conventional wisdom, and elevates Joseph Johnston to hero’s status while relegating Robert E. Lee’s to that of a meddling commander in chief and Jefferson Davis’ to Lee’s willing ally.

In April 1862 George McClellan landed his entire Army of the Potomac on Virginia’s Peninsula between the York and James Rivers. McClellan intended to drive up the Peninsula and take Richmond. Johnston responded quickly, however, moving his forces to defend Yorktown across the Peninsula directly in McClellan’s path. Cautious as he was, McClellan settled down for a siege.

On April 30, McClellan’s heavy siege guns opened on the Confederates. Johnston had only smaller guns with which to reply, and the Confederate commander, worried about a possible Union landing behind his position via the York River, decided to retreat. On May 4, James Longstreet’s Division fought an ill-conceived rear-guard action at Williamsburg as Johnston moved his army back up the Peninsula. On May 17 a shift of strategy occurred when Federal ironclads engaged the Confederate batteries at Drewry’s Bluff on the James River very near Richmond. Johnston, Lee and Davis were all convinced that a Federal landing was now possible, and Johnston pulled his army closer into Richmond so that they could oppose any landing and work on improving the defenses at Drewrey’s Bluff.

Meanwhile, George McClellan played right into the hands of the Confederates. Up to that point the Federal supply depot had been at White House Landing on the York River. However, McClellan decided to change his base of supplies to the James River for a more secure location. Simultaneously, McClellan had requested that Lincoln give him Major General Irvin McDowell’s army then at Fredericksburg. But Lincoln wanted McDowell to march south instead of proceeding by boat, so McClellan extended his right flank north of the rain-swollen Chickahominy River while his left flank was stretched south of the river to facilitate his new base of supplies.

Johnston decided to attack McClellan’s two isolated corps south of the Chickahominy. He designated James Longstreet to lead the attack. What followed was a disjointed effort that ended with Confederate repulse around the crossroads of Seven Pines. During the later phases of the battle Johnston rode out with W.H.C. Whiting’s Division to attack, and was struck from his horse by a shell fragment. Johnston was never unconscious, but, being severely wounded, was forced to relinquish command.

By the time Johnston had recovered from his wound, Robert E. Lee was firmly in command of what became the Army of Northern Virginia. He had driven McClellan back from Richmond, defeated John Pope at Second Bull Run, and again fought McClellan to a bloody standstill on the banks of Antietam Creek Maryland. In his analysis of Johnston’s performance, Newton acknowledges that it has gone better with the reputation of certain generals if they were killed in action. Johnston of course was not killed, and his later performances at Vicksburg and Atlanta tarnished his reputation. Newton clearly identifies himself as a Johnston partisan, and asserts that his conduct in the Peninsula Campaign has been unfairly colored by his actions later in his career and the acrimonious finger pointing that accompanied the post-war period. Newton maintains that Johnston’s wounding at Seven Pines psychologically arrested his development as a field commander and directly led to his timid conduct in later campaigns.

Joseph E. Johnston and the Defense of Richmond is certainly a viable contribution to Civil War literature. It is a clearly written and reasoned partisan defense of Joseph Johnston’s conduct on the Peninsula. Newton makes a good case for new interpretations of parts of Johnston’s conduct in the campaign. However, the parts do not add up to a whole. He fails to make a convincing argument that Johnston’s entire career should be reevaluated based on the Peninsula Campaign, and the rest of his career excused or blamed on the effect of an artillery fragment on his psyche. But in general Newton has given the historical community something new to chew on in the realm of the Peninsula Campaign and Joseph Johnston, and that is always refreshing.