Free Dixie Betrayed by David J. Eicher Page A

Davis would be a fine battlefield commander but would make a lousy
     executive officer. And there was another problem, bubbling already in the infant Congress, that the president could not have
     expected: an unpredictable fight between the generals and the politicians.
    Every armed conflict carries internal struggles for influence between the military and its civilian commanders, and the Civil
     War was no different. The first flash point in the Confederacy was Joseph Eggleston Johnston, a veteran of the U.S. Army and
     an old associate of Jefferson Davis’s—yet another of those experienced officers who had come to Montgomery to offer his services
     to the New South.
    Joe Johnston was fifty-four at the time of Sumter, an artillerist and engineer who had graduated high in his West Point class
     and served ably in the Florida Wars (the 1830s clashes against mostly Seminole Indians) and the Mexican War before rising
     to staff assignment as quartermaster general of the U.S. Army, in 1860. As such he knew a great deal about the workings of
     the army and had wide knowledge of many of the officers and politicians involved with it, including Davis.
    In April 1861 Johnston and his wife, Lydia, were staying in Richmond, attempting to help Governor John Letcher organize Virginia’s
     state forces for the coming action. Letcher had appointed Robert E. Lee commander of the Virginia forces as a major general;
     a few days later he commissioned Johnston in the same grade and assigned him to command the forces in and around Richmond
     itself. Johnston frenetically started drilling, organizing, and supplying the several thousand troops, who had volunteered
     and marched in from various counties. He also began issuing orders to procure blankets, muskets, uniforms, and tents.
    But after just two weeks, the Virginia legislature, not yet part of the Confederacy, determined only one state major general
     should exist and that it should be Lee. Gravely disappointed, Johnston accepted a brigadier general’s commission instead—in
     the Confederate army, however, not the Virginia militia.
    Already disappointed, Johnston and his wife boarded a train for Montgomery, arriving there to meet with Davis, Walker, and
     Cooper. After much deliberation in the Government Building, the war office sent Johnston to take command of the forces in
     and around Harpers Ferry, which he did near the end of May. He said good-bye to his wife and boarded a train headed to the
     front line. 7
    Yet more disappointment was in store for Johnston. During the first term of Congress, in May, Davis determined the Army of
     the Confederate States of America (the so-called regular army of the Confederacy) should have five full general officers.
     Davis handled the nomination and made sure they would outrank the many general officers of the state militias, who had been
     appointed by the governors. He decided the generals should be ranked by seniority, as follows: Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney
     Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and G. T. Beauregard. Davis evidently based his ranking on year of graduation
     and class standing at the U.S. Military Academy, which was Cooper (1815), A. S. Johnston (1826), Lee (1829, number 2), J.
     E. Johnston (1829, number 13), and Beauregard (1838).
    But because of his high-ranking assignment as quartermaster general, not to mention his considerable ego, Joe Johnston thought
     he should be the ranking general of the South. Others argued that the selections should have been made based on their relative
     rankings at the time of the men’s resignations from the U.S. Army. Still others argued that Cooper’s and Joe Johnston’s staff
     grades as adjutant general and quartermaster general should have been totally ignored and only their lineal ranks considered.
     Others argued that special brevet commissions (commissions issued by the president for special reasons) should have been included.
     Each of these arrangements would have