biography
| name: |
Johnston, Joseph Eggleston
|
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1807–91)
|
| biography:
| US soldier, born in Prince Edward Co, Virginia, USA. He trained at West Point (1829), fought in the Mexican War, and was the army's quartermaster-general when the Civil War broke out. He resigned when Virginia seceded, and commanded a wing of the Confederate army at First Bull Run, but he had feuded with Jefferson Davis and did not obtain the position he felt he deserved. Wounded on the Virginia Peninsula (Jun 1862), he had the distinction of being succeeded by Robert E Lee. During the long months that followed, he held a series of senior commands but failed to win a major battle, and during Sherman's Atlanta Campaign, he was effectively in retreat and surrendered to Sherman in North Carolina (26 Apr 1865). After the war, he went into the insurance business and then served in the US House of Representatives (Democrat, Virginia, 1879–81) and as commissioner of US railroads (1885–91). He died of pneumonia brought on by standing hatless in the rain at the funeral of General Sherman. |
|
|
