Officially, the CiviL War began on April 12, 1861, with the firing on Fort Sumter, South Carolina. However, armed combat had been underway for years before that along the Kansas-Missouri border. In 1854 the Kan-sas-Nebraska Act had opened up the Kansas Territory to popular sovereignty, which was supposed to allow the people of Kansas to decide for themselves if they wanted slavery. Whenever a vote on the issue came up, however, proslavery Missourians would cross the border to Kansas and vote illegally in hopes of getting Kansas admitted to the Union as a slave state. Armed violence between proslavery and antislavery guerrillas regularly occurred on these occasions, and eventually a state of near-constant warfare developed. The proslavery guerillas were known as “bushwhackers,” and the antislavery forces were called “jayhawkers.”
The jayhawkers, like the bushwhackers, had few scruples when it came to enforcing their will. They supplied themselves almost entirely by stealing. They usually killed any enemies they encountered, women and children included. Their leader was “Doc” Charles Jennison, who had given up medicine for a career as a horse thief. The ranks of the Jayhawkers also included Senator James Henry Lane, Susan B. Anthony’s brother Dan Anthony, and John Brown’s son John Brown Jr. Between 1855 and 1860, more than 200 people were killed by the jayhawkers, and countless thousands of dollars worth of goods were stolen.
When Civil War finally came to the rest of the nation, the jayhawkers were accepted into the Union ranks as the Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, with Jenni-son as colonel and Anthony as lieutenant colonel. Mustered into service on October 28, 1861, the jayhawkers had only loose ties to the Union army. They continued to supply themselves by stealing, and they generally operated independently of any Union command. They also continued to operate mostly in Missouri. This was a problem for Union leadership, because Missouri had remained with the Union, and many of the people killed by the Jayhawkers in 1861 were loyal Unionists. Concerned that the unit was creating more rebels than it was conquering, the jayhawkers were transferred to Kentucky and then to Tennessee. They performed well in these new assignments, particularly after Jennison and Anthony resigned and were replaced by more able officers. The jayhawkers did not return to Kansas until they were mustered out in 1865.
See also Bleeding Kansas.
Further reading: Stephen Z. Starr, Jennison’s Jayhawkers: A Civil War Cavalry Regiment and Its Commander (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1974).
—Christopher Bates
Johnson, Andrew (1 808-1 875) U. S. vice president, 17th president of the United States
Tailor, merchant, governor, U. S. senator, vice president, and 17th president, Andrew Johnson took office upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865. An “accidental president,” Johnson’s tenure as chief executive was marked by turmoil and controversy, some of it due to his political blunders and incompetence. He enjoys the dubious distinction of being the first president to be impeached while in office.
Born on December 29, 1808, in North Carolina to parents of humble means, Johnson had virtually no schooling.
Andrew Johnson (Library of Congress)
As a young boy, Johnson was apprenticed to a tailor but fled at the first opportunity, landing in Greenville, Tennessee. There, he opened a thriving tailor business and established himself as a wealthy merchant. Married and successful, Johnson turned to politics, where he followed in the footsteps of his hero, Democrat Andrew Jackson. Although a slaveholder himself, Johnson detested the wealthy planters who dominated Southern politics and economic power. As he moved up the political ladder from local to state to national office, Johnson became known as a champion for the ordinary white Southern yeoman farmer.
When the CiviL War broke out, Johnson had for three years been the U. S. senator from Tennessee. A decided Unionist, he followed the U. S. flag, the only member of Congress’s upper house from a seceded state to remain loyal. Labeled a traitor throughout the South, he was a hailed as a hero in the North. The Union army captured Nashville and occupied SECESSlONist western Tennessee in March 1862. Shortly afterward, Abraham Lincoln appointed Johnson to serve as the state’s wartime governor.
Johnson worked hard to restore his state to the Union, something that was made more difficult because the Confederates controlled eastern Tennessee. By summer of 1863 Johnson endorsed EMANCIPATION and supported strongly Lincoln’s efforts to end SLAVERY in the border states. Due to Johnson’s persistence, in January 1865 a Tennessee state convention approved the ABOLITION of slavery, and the voters quickly ratified the measure.
In 1864 the Republicans (temporarily renamed the American Union Party) wished to attract War Democrats by placing Andrew Johnson, the popular Unionist, on the ticket with Lincoln. The party won handily, and Johnson was inaugurated as vice president on March 4, 1865. Feeling ill on inauguration day, Johnson fortified himself with several glasses of whiskey before his speech. The result was a rambling, incoherent tirade that embarrassed all who witnessed it. Johnson created a more favorable impression when, after Lincoln’s death early in the morning of April 15, he took the oath of office at the Kirkwood House in a dignified and calm manner. The shocking aftermath of the assassination gave Johnson a period of overwhelming support among Northern politicians and voters. He presided competently over the pursuit, capture, and trial of Lincoln’s assassins and created an atmosphere of friendly relations between the executive and congressional branches as the problems of RECONSTRUCTION loomed.
“Treason must be made infamous and traitors must be impoverished,” declared Johnson. RADICAL REPUBLICANS could be forgiven if they thought the new president would stand with them in implementing a harsh Reconstruction policy. They were wrong. Johnson, like Lincoln, believed that secession was illegal, and thus the rebel states were never actually out of the Union. Johnson’s vision was a harmonious “restoration,” directed by the executive branch. His plan was simple. The seceded states had to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, nullify the secession laws, and repudiate the Confederate debt. Once those requirements were met, ELECTIONS could be held, civil governments restored, and elected officials could take their places at all levels, including the national legislature.
Johnson ignored requests from Radicals that he include suffrage for African Americans as part of the restoration plan. A typical STATES’ RIGHTS Democrat, he feared the intrusion of the federal government into areas that trespassed on state sovereignty. In addition, he was a fierce opponent of black voting and civil rights measures. The fact that the dominant Republican Congress would not come into session until December 1865 meant that Johnson could push through his measures with executive decrees.
Johnson busied himself in obstructing all congressional policies designed to assist ex-slaves. In September 1865, Johnson virtually ended land redistribution to freed-men and poor white people. He ordered the Freedmen’s Bureau commissioner, Gen. O. O. Howard, to return all confiscated lands to white Southerners who had been pardoned. Under Johnson’s May 1865 plan, only rebellious Southerners who owned more than $20,000 in taxable property had to receive a presidential pardon personally; the rest were pardoned automatically. Nearly all, more than 6,000, in need of a presidential pardon received one after a short visit with Johnson. By the end of 1865, all of the Southern states except Texas had followed Johnson’s plan and applied for reentry into the Union. Johnson considered “restoration” complete.
The consequences of Johnson’s acting unilaterally were deeply unsettling. Northerners reacted with horror as ex-Confederates blatantly assumed power as if there had never been a war at all. In state after state, Black CODES were passed, which made emancipation a dead letter. Republicans of all backgrounds in Congress supported a more stringent Reconstruction and pushed for protection of African Americans’ economic and basic civil rights.
In December, the hostility between the executive and the legislative branches deepened when the “restored” Southern congressmen arrived in the Capitol to take their places in the Senate and House chambers. The newly elected officials included four ex-Confederate generals, eight colonels, six ex-cabinet members, and the Confederacy’s vice president, Alexander H. Stephens. Congress refused to seat the Southerners, in effect rejecting presidential Reconstruction. The best both sides could hope for now was a serious session of compromise. Johnson, however, refused to negotiate with the Republicans on Reconstruction.
In early 1866, Congress passed two bills, one extending the Freedmen’s Bureau and the other the CiviL Rights Act of 1866. Johnson vetoed both bills. Congress would later override his vetoes, and the bills became law. Even the most moderate Republicans moved into alignment with the Radical Republicans (so-named for their support of the freedmen) after Johnson’s policies had rendered emancipation and civil rights essentially meaningless.
Republicans implemented a plan that set strict requirements for states reentering the Union. These requirements mandated military occupation for all Confederate states (with the exception of Tennessee) until a state convention recognized freedmen’s rights to citizenship and all the other provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment and ended the racially discriminatory Black Codes. Eventually, Congress even called for African-American male suffrage. Johnson vetoed nearly every bill but was again overridden nearly every time.
Johnson, who thought he enjoyed the support of most Northerners, fought hard for his restoration plan. He still controlled the military, which was responsible for carrying out congressional Reconstruction. As commander in chief, he appointed politically conservative, pro-Southern officers to military posts in the South. This further alienated his few supporters left in Congress. Increasingly, his pronouncements were controversial. Terrible race riots in Memphis and New Orleans in the spring and summer of 1866 belied Johnson’s assurances that conditions in the South were returning to normal. Congress further turned against the president.
Before the 1866 congressional elections, Johnson undertook a controversial speaking tour known as the “Swing around the Circle.” His goal was to rally voter support for his policies. Instead, Johnson’s speeches were divisive, rude, and often confrontational. He received much negative publicity, and many in the crowds booed his appearances. Gossips whispered that the president had been drunk for much of the tour. Drunk or not, the tour was a disaster at the polls, and a large, “veto-proof’ Republican majority was returned to Congress.
In March 1867, the House and Senate passed the Tenure of Office Act over Johnson’s veto. The act required Johnson to obtain the Senate’s approval before dismissing any of his cabinet members. It was designed to protect Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a leftover from Lincoln’s cabinet and a Radical Republican. Citing his executive powers, Johnson suspended Stanton in August 1867 without the Senate’s consent. After much political wrangling, the House impeached Johnson in February 1868 for committing high crimes and misdemeanors in office, the first ever impeachment in U. S. history. However, the Senate failed to convict him by one vote. Vindicated but powerless, Johnson did not accomplish anything of significance for the rest of his term.
In 1868 the Democrats chose Horatio Seymour to run for president against Ulysses S. Grant. Johnson was quite bitter over his treatment in Washington, D. C., and refused to attend Grant’s inauguration. Andrew Johnson retired to Tennessee but reentered politics, returning to the U. S. Senate in 1875. He served for only a few months before his death on August 31, 1875.
See also impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
Further reading: Eric McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Brooks D. Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998); Hans L. Tre-fousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1989).
—Scott L. Stabler
Johnston, Albert Sidney (1803-1862) Confederate general
At the beginning of the CiviL War, Albert Sidney Johnston was perhaps the Confederacy’s most renowned and well-respected soldier. Johnston was born in Washington, Kentucky, on February 2, 1803, to John and Abigail Johnston. He was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point from Louisiana and graduated eighth in the class of 1826. Johnston served at Sackett’s Harbor, New York, in 1826; with the Sixth Infantry at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, in 1827; and as regimental adjutant in the Black Hawk War. He married Henrietta Preston in 1829 and resigned his commission in 1834 due to her grave illness. After Henrietta’s death in 1836, he went to the Southwest and fought for Texas’s independence. This appointment resulted in a duel with Felix Huston, the man he replaced. Due to an injury suffered in the duel, however, Johnston was unable to take his new post. On December 22, 1838, he was appointed secretary of war for the Republic of Texas by President Mirabeau B. Lamar. In 1840 Johnston returned to Kentucky, where, on October 3, 1843, he married Eliza Griffin, a cousin of his first wife. They returned to Texas to settle at China Grove Plantation in Brazoria County.
During the Mexican-American War Johnston served as colonel of the First Texas Rifle Volunteers and then served with W. O. Butler as inspector general at Monterrey, Mexico. Johnston reentered the regular army in 1849 and by 1855 had risen to the rank of colonel. In 1857 he was promoted to brigadier general.
When the Civil War began, Johnston returned to the army as a Union brigadier general in command in California, but when his “home state” of Texas seceded from the Union, he resigned from the U. S. Army and joined the Confederacy. jEFFERSON Davis placed him in command of the western theater as a full general. As commander of this department, his area of responsibility was massive, extending from the Appalachian Mountains in the east to the Indian Territory in the west. When Fort Henry and Fort Donelson were lost in February 1862, Johnston was forced to retreat from Kentucky and most of Tennessee. Johnston joined forces with Gen. PlERRE CuSTAVE Tou-TANT Beauregard and massed in Corinth, Mississippi, where he planned to launch a surprise attack on the UNION ARMY in Tennessee.
Early on the morning of April 6, 1862, Johnston assaulted UiYSSES S. Grant’s army at its camp on Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River. The two-day Battee OF SHILOH, named for a small church near the landing, had begun. As hoped, Johnston’s attack caught the Federals completely by surprise. However, momentum was lost when 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.” But the Federals held the Confederate forces for a time at what became known as the “Hornet’s Nest.” There was also hard fighting in a peach orchard, where Johnston himself led the final charge that drove the Union defenders out of it. While directing operations at Shiloh, Johnston was hit in the leg by a bullet that severed his femoral artery. Johnston had sent his surgeon to tend to a group of wounded Union prisoners, and he bled to death for lack of medical attention. He was temporarily buried in New Orleans, but his remains were later transferred to Texas for burial in the state cemetery in Austin.
Further reading: Charles P. Roland and Gary Gallagher, Albert Sidney John. ston: Soldier of Three Republics (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001).
—Arthur E. Amos
Johnston, Joseph E. (1807-1891) Confederate general
A career soldier, Gen. Joseph Eggleston Johnston was one of the top military commanders for the Confederacy. For him, the CiViL War was alternately marked by failure and success. His predisposition toward defensive warfare placed him at odds with President JEFFERSON Davis, and his critics attacked him for wasting many opportunities for Confederate victory. Like many of his contemporaries, Johnston’s postwar years were spent in justifying his wartime record and casting doubt on the record of his many detractors.
Johnston was born on February 3, 1807, into a distinguished family in Prince Edward County, Virginia. His
Father, Peter Johnston, served in the American Revolution, and his mother was a niece of Patrick Henry. Educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point, he graduated in good standing with the class of 1829. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, Johnston participated in the Black Hawk War of 1832, the Seminole War of 1836-37, and the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. From the 1830s to the eve of the Civil War, Johnston compiled an excellent record as a topographical engineer in the Southwest, a lieutenant colonel of the U. S. First Cavalry, and quartermaster general of the U. S. Army, a position he resigned from in 1861 to join the Confederate forces.
The highest ranked officer from the “old army,” Johnston was appointed brigadier general by President Jefferson Davis. Along with PiERRE GusTAVE Toutant Beauregard, Johnston directed the Confederate victory at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. The victory was marred shortly thereafter by a bitter argument over Johnston’s ranking in the Confederate military hierarchy. He believed that he should be ranked first, but President Davis disagreed, and Johnston was placed fourth. This was the first of many personal and professional disagreements between the two proud and stubborn men, much to the detriment of the Confederate armies in the western theater.
In the spring of 1862, Johnston was given the task of defending Richmond against the Northern invasion led by his former Mexican-American War comrade, George B. McClellan. In late May, Johnston was severely injured during the Battle of Seven Pines, and the command of the main CONFEDERATE ARMY was given to Gen. Robert E. Lee. Johnston resumed his field career in December, commanding the Confederate forces in Tennessee and Mississippi. Expected to defend a huge amount of land against the Federals, Johnston assumed a defensive stance whenever possible. For his bloodless approach to war and more, Johnston’s men loved him as few other generals. “In appearance,” an observer remarked, “he is small, soldierly and graying.” To his superiors, Johnston appeared arrogant, affecting a superior attitude about all things military. Jefferson Davis also considered himself a military expert and deferred to no one except Robert E. Lee, whose record of victory was second to none. Davis was especially overbearing in his dealings with the western generals, and Johnston in particular.
When the Mississippi citadel of Vicksburg fell in July 1863, Johnston was blamed for his apparent slowness in supporting John Pemberton’s beleaguered forces. Davis and the press criticized Johnston’s cautious nature harshly after the surrender of Vicksburg, and he was temporarily relieved of his command for failing to stem the Union advance.
D avis could not afford to retire a competent and respected general like Johnston for long, however. December of 1863 found him in charge of the Army of Tennessee after Braxton Bragg lost Chattanooga to the Federals. This time, Johnston faced William T. Sherman in the Atlanta campaign of the spring and summer of 1864. Leaving Dalton, Georgia, under heavy pressure from Sherman, Johnston executed a textbook series of backward maneuvers until he entrenched just outside of Atlanta. Once again, Davis, impatient with Johnston’s timid generalship, removed him from command. His replacement was the feisty Texan John Bell Hood, whose willingness to do battle with Sherman’s troops led to defeat and the surrender of Atlanta on September 2, 1864. By now the master of thankless tasks, Johnston squared off against Sherman again in February 1865 in the Carolinas campaign. Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee to Sherman on April 26, 1865.
Johnston’s postwar career was more successful. A prosperous businessman in railroad and insurance, he also dabbled in politics as a congressman from Virginia (1878-80). Johnston, who published his memoirs in 1874, was a popular speaker at veterans reunions throughout the South. He also was invited on a regular basis to speak to Northern veterans organizations, where he spread a message of reconciliation and harmony between the sections. At 84, he became a tragic symbol of reunion when, after serving as a pallbearer at Sherman’s funeral on a cold wintry day, he caught pneumonia. Shortly thereafter, on March 21, 1891, Johnston died at his home in Washington, D. C.
See also Vicksburg campaign.
Further reading: Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations Directed during the Late War between the States (1847; reprint, Milwood, N. Y.: Kraus Reprint, 1969); Craig L. Symonds, Joseph E. Johnston: A Civil War Biography (New York: Norton, 1992).
World History
