Albert Sydney Johnston

At the start of the Civil War Albert Sidney Johnston was almost universally considered to be the finest soldier, North or South, in the country. Jefferson Davis said of him, "I hoped and expected that I had others who would prove generals, but I knew I had one, and that was Sidney Johnson."

Appointed to West Point from Louisiana, he graduated eighth in his class in 1826. After eight years of army service he resigned his commission to take care of his terminally ill wife.

He joined the revolutionary army in Texas as private, but rose within a year to be its commander as senior brigadier. He served as secretary of war for the Republic of Texas, and commanded the 1st Texas Rifles during the Mexican War.

Johnston rejoined the U.S. Army in 1849 as a major, and was made colonel of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in 1855. He was brevetted brigadier general for his 1857 services against the Mormons in Utah.

Posted to California, he resigned again from the army in 1861, but waited for successor to arrived before making his way to Richmond overland.

He entered Confederate service in August of 1861. As the second ranking general in the Confederate army he took command of the western theater of operations. He established a thin defensive line in Kentucky which stretched from the Mississippi River to the Appalachian Mountains. He succeeded in holding this line until it was broken by the Federals by George Thomas at Mill Springs and U.S. Grant at Forts Henry and Donelson.

Forced to abandon Kentucky and most of Tennessee, Johnston withdrew into northern Mississippi. Joined there by P.G.T. Beauregard, he concentrated his scattered forces for a counterattack.

In early April of 1862 he struck at Grant's army in its camp at Shiloh. Attacking out of the woods early in the morning his force caught the Federals completely by surprise. Some momentum was lost when his raw recruits paused to loot the overrun Union encampments, but by late morning Johnston believed victory was his. "We are sweeping the field," he told Beauregard, "and I think we shall press them to the river." The Federals held them for a time at what became known as the "Hornet's Nest."

There was also hard fighting in a peach orchard and Johnston himself led the final charge that drove the Union defenders out of it. Shortly afterward he was hit in the leg by a Yankee bullet which