Tuesday, February 24, 2015

February 25, 1865---The Army of Tennessee restored



FEBRUARY 25, 1865:   


Despite writing, "My opinion of General Johnston's unfitness for command has ripened slowly and against my inclinations into a conviction so settled that it would be impossible for me again to feel confidence in him as the commander of an army in the field," Jefferson Davis, under immense pressure from his Congress, his Cabinet, and his General-in-Chief, appoints Joseph E. Johnston as General of all Confederate forces in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida.

Robert E. Lee immediately dispatches Johnston to central North Carolina to take control of the largest single (but unnamed and long inactive) body of troops in the South (outside of the Richmond-Petersburg pocket).  

Johnston immediately issues orders for all his subordinate commanders --- among them Hardee and Beauregard and Hampton --- to bring their scattered forces to him.

As the tatters of the various Southern commands move north to gather in North Carolina, Johnston begins to put some starch into the spines of his men. Scraping the very bottoms of his Commissary and Quartermaster barrels white, he distributes fresh food and new clothes and munitions to his ragamuffin men wherever he can. He reorganizes his fighting units which have become little more than a leaderless mob. He places Braxton Bragg in charge of a brigade-sized Corps and lets him rot there to the joy of everyone but President Davis and Bragg himself. He issues a mass amnesty to all deserters.

Within days, the ranks begin to swell. By early March Johnston has 25,000 men in reasonably fit fighting trim, and declares his forces to be the Army of Tennessee restored.

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