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Show but Pattar$s teist n a . tir : ' ' J 1 Y 1 .'-f ' By ELMO SCOTT WATSON JSKf I ,,,,.,.,,, , . "tferrf-f'' brevetted lieutenant colonel and colo- Tr U1KCARY ,3 ' l,f "m- nel and during the next fifteen versar, of he birthday 2t5. years performed various duties in 1 of two Amencan soldiers UWy the West (lnclnding that of acting whose careers afford j ? Inspector-general for the Utah expedite expedi-te sinking similar - 70 tIon commanded by the other Johns-I Johns-I : tu'3 ' Sl,)e equally tAihw e,-,,,, mi, i. By ELMO SCOTT WATSON UllllCARY 3 Is the anni-versnry anni-versnry of the birthday 1' of two American soldiers whose careers afford some striking similarl-,n similarl-,n ties and some equally r ilT striking differences. They VjKyO bore the same family pS&Sjlsj name, yet were not re- .vVj"!! lafed- T1,ey were erad" tt t it uate(1 from ,1e game military school, both achieved distinction distinc-tion as Indian fighters, both attained high ranks In both the United States army and the Confederate army, yet one rose to the heights as a military leader only to be cheated of his reward re-ward by death, while the other lived to see his fame as a soldier end In something of an anti-climax. The two were Albert Sidney Johnston and Joseph Eggleston Johnston. Albert Sidney Johnston was born on February 3, 1803, In Washington, Ky., the son of a Connecticut country physician and was graduated from the United States Military academy, eighth In his class, In 1S20. He,vas assigned to the Second Infantry and served as chief of stnff to Gen. Henry Atkinson In the Black Hawk war In 1S32. Resigning Re-signing from the army in 1834, . he was n farmer for a short time near St. Louis, then In 1838 joined the Texas patriots In their struggle for freedom. Although entering the Texan army as a private he rapidly rose through nil the grades to the command of the army and in 1S38 President Mirabeau Lamar of the Lone Star republic made him secretary of war. The next year lie led a campaign against hostile Indians In-dians and in two brilliant battles defeated de-feated them and drove them out of Texas. Next we find him a planter in Texas but at the outbreak of the Mexican Mex-ican war he was in the field again as colonel of the First Texas rifies. This regiment soon disbanded but Johnston Johns-ton continued in the service and was Inspector general of Butler's division at the battle of Monterey. Although Con. Zachary Taylor called him "the best soldier he ever commanded," and his superiors recommended him for an appointment as brigadier-general, he was passed over (for political reasons) and again retired to his farm. There he lived in poverty and neglect neg-lect until President Taylor In 1S40 suddenly appointed him a paymaster in the United States army and six years later President Pierce appointed him colonel of a new regiment, the Second cavalry. In 1807 he was placed In command com-mand of the expedition to restore order or-der among the Mormons in Utah, who were in open revolt against tlte government. gov-ernment. By a forced march of S)20 miles in 27 days, he reached his little army of 1,100 men, to find them lost amid the snow-filled defiles of the Rockies, with the temperature at 16 below zero, their supplies cut off by the hostile Mormons and their starving starv-ing teams their only food. By an extraordinary ex-traordinary display of energy and wisdom wis-dom Johnston led the army safely into in-to winter quarters and by using equally equal-ly commendable diplomacy he put an end to the rebellion without a drop of Mood being sited. For this exploit he was brevetted brigadier-general and a short time later placed in command com-mand of the department of the Pa-litlr. Pa-litlr. l.nval to the army and the nation, the coming of the Civil war brought the deepest distros to Johnston. But when Texas seceded he resigned his commission but he regarded his command com-mand as such a sacred trust that he concealed his resignation until lie could be relieved and went at ouce to Richmond where In September, IStil, he was p'urod in command of all the Confederate forces In the West. The fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson to the Union forces under Foote and Grant followed and the new leader fell back to Murfrees-boro Murfrees-boro where he began reorganizing his troops. Then he moved to Corinth, Miss., the key of the defense of the railroad system In the lower Mississippi Missis-sippi valley, where by April 1, 1802, he had about 40,000 men, poorly armed and badly supplied. Grant, commanding command-ing the right wing of the Union army, was concentrating at Pittsburg Landing Land-ing on the Tennessee river with some 40,000 men and Buell was rapidly approaching ap-proaching with 40,000 more. With a Napoleonic flash of genius Johnston decided to beat the enemy In detail and to attack Grant before Buell could arrive. On April 3 he started on his 25 mile march to Pittsburgh Landing but he was delayed by bad roads and did not arrive until the 5th. At a council of war General Beauregard, his second sec-ond In command, protested against an attack and advised a return to Corinth, Johnston overruled him and on Sunday morning, April G, he led his army to the attack. It was a complete com-plete surprise, for Grant was not even on the field. The struggle lasted all day and was proceeding successfully just as Johnston Johns-ton had planned. The Union army was being crowded into an angle between Snake creek and the Tenessee river and was facing annihilation. About 2:30 o'clock In the afternoon Johnston, Johns-ton, while leading a charge which crushed the left wing of Grant's forces, fell with a mortal wound. Beauregard, Beau-regard, with enough daylight left to complete the victory, vacillated and ordered the attack to cease. That night Buell's army came up and the next day the Confederates were driven from the field. Had the bullet which struck down Albert Sidney Johnston reached another target, the history of the Civil war might have been vastly vast-ly different. Unlike Albert Sidney Johnston, who was a Southerner of Northern ancestry, an-cestry, Joseph Eggleston Johnston was a Southerner of the Southerners. He was born In Cherry Grove, Va., on February 3, 1807, the scion of a Virginia Vir-ginia family which had been in this country for nearly 200 years. He was graduated from West Point in 1S29 in the same class that gave Robert E. Lee to the army and commissioned a second lieutenant in the Fourth artillery. ar-tillery. With the exception of service In the Black Hawk war in 1S32, most of his first six years in the army was spent In garrison duty at various posts along the Atlantic seaboard. But In 1S30 he became aide-de-camp to Gen. Winlield Scott in the war with the Seminole Indians in Florida and won a brevet as captain for gallantry in action when troops under his command com-mand fell into an ambuscade, from which Johnston extricated them skillfully. skill-fully. On this occasion his uniform was perforated with no less than :i0 bullets! bul-lets! In lvl2-l't he was again in Florida serving against the Seminoles. In the war with -Mexico bo was at the siege of Vera Cruz and in the battles of Corro Gordo, Contreras, Molino del Key. Chapultepec and t lie attack on the City of Mexico. He was severely wounded at Cerro Gordo ami again at Chapultepec, where he was the first to plant regimental colors on' the ramparts of the fortress. For his gallantry at Cerro Gordo, he was brevetted lieutenant colonel and colonel colo-nel and during the next fifteen years performed various duties in the West (including that of acting inspector-general for the Utah expedition expedi-tion commanded by the other Johnston Johns-ton Albert Sidney) which led finally to his commission of quartermaster-general quartermaster-general of the United States army. Johnston resigned from the army when Virginia seceded, was commissioned commis-sioned a major-general of volunteers by Virginia and with Robert E. Lee organized the soldiers who poured Into In-to Richmond to defend the capital of the state. Next he was appointed commander of the army of the Shenandoah Shen-andoah and led it to the aid of General Gen-eral Beauregard when McDowell attacked at-tacked on July 21, 1861, at Manassas. Manas-sas. Johnston outranked Beauregard and took command so that he Is credited cred-ited with the victory at Bull Run. The next month he was appointed one of the five full generals authorized by the Confederate congress (among them Albert Sidney Johnston) but was placed fourth on the list. Johnston Johns-ton protested against this, since he felt that his high rank In the United States army when he resigned should have placed him first on the list, and In this he was justified by a previous congressional act. This protest is said to have been the beginning and cause of the hostility towards him shown by President Jefferson Davis throughout the war. The quarrel between the two men, according to Alien Tate in his recent biography of Davis, "was to outlast the Confederacy and have a paralyzing influence upon its career." After the Battle of Seven Pines In 1862, at which Johnston was seriously wounded, Davis replaced him in command com-mand of the Confederate forces In the East with Gen. Robert E. Lee and the eclipse of Joseph E. Johnston as an outstanding military leader began. The next year he was sent to take command of the Department of thtt West. "Johnston was one of the thret, or four best soldiers in the South," writes .Tate. "But he tended to avoid assuming responsibility; he was touchy and quarrelsome; and his Instinctive In-stinctive dislike of offensive warfare had, inconsistently enough, undermined under-mined the President's confidence in him since his retreat up the peninsula before McClellan in the spring. In the end, Davis' lack of confidence may have been sheer dislike; Johnston had not handled him, in bis rancorous letters, let-ters, with kid f loves. So, when Johnston Johns-ton went west his instructions were a little vague " Both Davis and Johnston have their ardent partisans In the historic dispute dis-pute between the two and it seems impossible to arrive at any conclusion as to who was most to blame. But the not result was disaster in the West which further weakened the "Lost Cause" and contributed its share to the downfall of the Confederacy. Con-federacy. It fell to his lot to play a leading role In the last military scene of the great tragedy which befell the American people between 1801 and 1865. Just as he had been in command at the first major engagement of the war, so was be in command when the last important armed forces of the Confederacy laid down their arms. On April 26, 1S05, Johnston surrendered his army to General Sherman on the same terms under which Lee had surrendered sur-rendered to Grant. After the war Johnston was president presi-dent of a railroad in Arkansas, president presi-dent of an express company of Virginia Vir-ginia and agent for various insurance companies. In 1877 be was elected te. congress from Virginia and ten years later he was appointed United States commissioner of railroads by President Presi-dent Cleveland, lie died in 1801. by Western Xtwitpaper L'aioa.J |