Booknotes: The Civil Wars of General Joseph E. Johnston, Volume 1

New Arrival:
• The Civil Wars of General Joseph E. Johnston: Confederate States Army - Volume I: Virginia and Mississippi, 1861–1863 by Richard M. McMurry (Savas Beatie, 2023).

I don't follow the NBA and MLB much anymore, but way back when I did I was repeatedly baffled by the frequency with which teams recycled the same head coaches and managers, as if giving a known quantity a fresh start immediately after a disastrous recent performance was always less risky than giving someone else their first opportunity. It's not difficult to get the same vibe from the Davis administration's record of handling appointments to Confederate army/theater command. Each being one of Davis's five 1861 appointees to full general, Joe Johnston and PGT Beauregard were constantly shifted around to top jobs throughout the war even though neither proved capable of putting aside ego and personal differences with the CSA president in order to get together on the same page for the good of the cause. In contrast, the US won the Civil War with commanding generals who weren't even on Lincoln's radar when the fighting broke out.

Johnston's place in the war has always sparked discussion, with some approving of his Fabian-style conduct of war (exemplified by his 1864 North Georgia campaign) as a possible war-winning antidote to Robert E. Lee's more aggressive, risky, and casualty-intensive style of generalship while others have more persuasively argued that Johnston's way of war was incompatible with achieving both independence and preservation of southern society (slavery in particular being unsustainable if vast swaths of the Confederacy were yielded through trading space for time). The first of two volumes, Richard McMurry's The Civil Wars of General Joseph E. Johnston: Confederate States Army - Volume I: Virginia and Mississippi, 1861–1863 keenly focuses on the consequences of a warring nation's lack of high command unity and purpose.

From the description: McMurry's book strongly contends "that the Confederacy’s most lethal enemy was the toxic dissension within the top echelons of its high command. The discord between General Johnston and President Jefferson Davis (and others), which began early in the conflict and only worsened as the months passed, routinely prevented the cooperation and coordination the South needed on the battlefield if it was going to achieve its independence. The result was one failed campaign after another, all of which cumulatively doomed the Southern Confederacy."

Obviously, interpersonal relationships within institutions have had a major impact on winning and losing wars throughout history, but the unabated, war-spanning feud between Johnston and Davis was, in the context of the ACW, exceptional in its detrimental consequences. Though focused on that noxious pairing, this book also looks at Johnston's interactions with peer generals. Examining more than just the fratricidal war fought between Davis and Johnston, "McMurry’s study is not a traditional military biography but a lively and opinionated conversation about major campaigns and battles, strategic goals and accomplishments, and how these men and their decision-making and leadership abilities directly impacted the war effort. Personalities, argues McMurry, win and lose wars, and the military and political leaders who form the focal point of this study could not have been more different (and in the case of Davis and Johnston, more at odds) when it came to making the important and timely decisions necessary to wage the war effectively."

Capturing Johnston "in a way that has never been accomplished," McMurry "sheds fresh light on old controversies and compels readers to think about major wartime events in unique and compelling ways." The Civil Wars of General Joseph E. Johnston profoundly demonstrates "how qualities of character played an oversized role in determining the outcome of the Civil War." I am very much looking forward to reading both of these volumes.