Review - "Reckless in Their Statements: Challenging History's Harshest Criticisms of Albert Sidney Johnston in the Civil War" by Leigh Goggin

[Reckless in their Statements: Challenging History's Harshest Criticisms of Albert Sidney Johnston in the Civil War by Leigh S. Goggin (Fontaine Press, 2025). Softcover, 12 maps, bibliography, endnotes, index. Pages main/total:vi,367/447. ISBN:978-0-9924658-7-2 $27.99]

Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston was tasked with handling arguably the most difficult situation faced by any major Civil War department commander. Appointed to head the Confederate Army's Department No. 2 on September 10, 1861, just after the Kentucky buffer zone was erased (instantly altering the strategic situation in the West), Johnston had to protect a vast front stretching from the Arkansas border with Indian Territory all the way to the wilderness invasion routes through eastern Kentucky. Worse, he had to do it without the benefit of having anything like the resources in munitions, manpower, and quality subordinate leaders needed in order to reasonably secure such a vast forward line of defense. Over the second half of Johnston's nearly seven-month tenure in that posting, which ended with the general's demise at Shiloh on April 6, 1862, the Confederate position in the West spiraled into unmitigated disaster. From then to today, many have principally blamed Johnston's own shortcomings for the catastrophic defeats of early 1862 and the permanent loss of key parts of Tennessee, including the state's two largest and most important cities, Memphis and Nashville. Others have suggested that Johnston, while he certainly made his share of mistakes just like every other early-war commander rushed into unprecedented realms of responsibility, did his best in the face of an already enormous task subsequently rendered impossible by grossly insufficient government support. Contributing to the former opinion group are the authors of many classic works underpinning the western theater historiography. Assessing the merits of their most damning assessments of Johnston's leadership is the primary focus of Leigh Goggin's Reckless in their Statements: Challenging History's Harshest Criticisms of Albert Sidney Johnston in the Civil War.

A helpful refresher, Goggin's introductory review of the divided historiography related to Johnston's generalship reveals a great many critics whose views are subsequently contested in the book. Negative portrayals of Johnston's leadership and decision-making emerged during the early-modern period of Civil War scholarship through major works from influential writers such as Stanley Horn [The Army of Tennessee (1941)], Beauregard biographer T. Harry Williams, and Thomas Connelly (Army of the Heartland: The Army of Tennessee, 1861-1862 (1967)]. Though somewhat counterbalanced by a sympathetic biography from Johnston's own son as well as Charles Roland's classic Soldier of Three Republics, the latter originally published in 1964, works strongly critical of Johnston continued to emerge throughout the twentieth century and through to the present. While Connelly's collection of "reckless statements" is by far the most frequent target of Goggin's determined challenge, the views of many others, among them B.F. Cooling, Larry Daniel, Kendall Gott, Larry Daniel, and Timothy Smith, are also scrutinized in the text.

The volume's structure discards a more traditional narrative format in favor of presenting the material as a series of chapters addressing questions (23 in total) directly associated with common criticisms of Johnston's generalship found in the literature. Going into them all is beyond the scope of a review, but a selection from the list will be discussed below. Generally speaking, each chapter begins with an introductory section that provides relevant historical background and shares critical statements and arguments from the published historiography that have shaped both popular and scholarly views of how well, or how badly, Johnston performed. That is followed by the author's hard-charging, often multi-layered, defense of Johnston's judgment and actions. The research behind them primarily based on the O.R., newspapers, and key works from the secondary literature, Goggin's arguments acknowledge some of Johnston's missteps, but their primary aim is, as the book's subtitle suggests, to convince readers that most traditional criticisms of Johnston's generalship are either greatly exaggerated or outright false (with Connelly's views and opinions forming the great preponderance of the latter).

Lest one think Goggin's approach is largely an attempt at making hay against heavily dated interpretation that has already been significantly revised, it also takes on more recent analysis, including that of one of the most respected scholars of Johnston's campaigns, Timothy Smith. Goggin's alternative to Smith's depiction of Johnston's military management style as being too meek and passive has merit, but his criticism of Smith's theory describing how Johnston's behavioral traits informed his Civil War military judgment produces some awkward moments. It is reasonable to be skeptical of historians, no matter how well informed, formulating psychological profiles of long-dead figures, but Goggin introduces some unnecessary confusion into his analysis of the shortcomings of Smith's approach. Early on, Goggin acknowledges the full extent of Smith's theory as developed in that author's 2023 study The Iron Dice of Battle: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Civil War in the West. Smith's thesis posits that Johnston processed his most significant life choices through in-depth reflection that frequently failed to pay off due to misfortune or misjudgment. In response to personal or financial disaster, Johnston then attempted to remedy the impact of those losses through acts of desperate risk-taking. Throughout the body of the book, and strikingly in the epilogue chapter (see pages 364-65), the important second part of Smith's theoretical construct of Johnston's personality and behavior patterns is seemingly passed over in favor of focusing only on the first part (how Johnston's overly contemplative "chess player" approach caused him to lose control of fluid military situations during critical times when the "poker-style game of war" needed to be played). While Goggin thoughtfully counters Smith's characterization by outlining some of the arguably bold moves that Johnston made earlier on in his tenure, the author inexplicably fails to credit Smith's behavioral theory for encompassing the boldest card-playing move of them all, the winner-take-all counterstrike at Pittsburg Landing. This inconsistent characterization of Smith's psychological profile of Johnston muddies the stronger elements of the author's case against what he terms Smith's "unusual metaphor" for explaining Johnston's mindset and actions.

In Chapter 6 ["Why did Johnston assume command of the Central Kentucky Army?"], a major defense of Johnston is Goggin's insistence that the Bowling Green high command (generals Simon Bolivar Buckner and William J. Hardee) did not possess the willingness and self-confidence necessary for independent command, which required Johnston's personal presence there whether he preferred it or not. The author's case has its strong points, but one might counterargue that part of the job of a good theater or army commander is to use his leadership and motivational skills to instill belief and confidence into wavering subordinates. In that scenario, allowing supposed weakness from Hardee and Buckner, rather than strategic/operational considerations, to determine where the theater commander placed his headquarters does not reflect well on Johnston. Goggin's overall case, reinforced at a number of places in the book, for Johnston assuming personal command at Bowling Green and remaining there throughout the twin rivers crisis is probably the best supported one in print. Some, even perhaps most, will still find it ultimately unconvincing, but the author does make it very difficult for critics of Johnston to maintain their blanket condemnation.

Aside from assailing Johnston's alleged obsession with Bowling Green and the hovering Union threat there leading him to improperly neglect the Tennessee and Cumberland river defenses, critics have also alleged that Johnston, once Union army and naval forces descended in force upon Fort Henry, erred badly in not rushing to the twin rivers front to lead his forces in person against Grant. In Chapter 12 ["Why did Johnston delegate the defense of the Cumberland River to Floyd?"], Goggin strongly argues that Johnston had valid, if not entirely compelling, reasons to remain at Bowling Green, trusting Donelson affairs to generals John Floyd (whose incompetence was not fully apparent at the time), Gideon Pillow, and newly arrived Buckner. The author offers a vigorous defense of what led Johnston to believe that Union general Don Carlos Buell's army in Kentucky was the theater's principal threat, but the fact remains that it was the twin rivers front where Union forces were actively advancing and engaging with his defensive line. What Johnston might have been able to achieve beyond saving the forces there from disgraceful surrender is open to debate, but it still seems reasonable to suggest that Johnston's proper place was to go where the actual, as opposed to threatened, fighting was located.

Johnston has also been criticized for not developing an adequate fallback plan for handling departmental defense once the outer cordon was breached. In Chapter 16 ["Was Johnston aware of the lack of fortifications at Nashville?"], Goggin does effectively defend Johnston against claims that he was caught entirely off guard by Nashville's relatively defenseless condition. As Goggin explains, the lack of fortification progress at Nashville, and the slow pace of fort development earlier on the twin rivers, was a product of dangerous regional apathy that led to insufficient resources, labor, and urgency for those projects. While all of that is true, it is also the case that it is not enough for a commander to order that those places be fortified but to ensure that such directives were followed. Sure, there were a great many obstacles in his way, but one doesn't get the impression that Johnston, from his static headquarters at Bowling Green, always did his utmost to use his departmental powers to inject impetus into necessary defense work projects located at other points under his command.

Of course, every reader of this book will eagerly anticipate questions about Shiloh. Three chapters ["Did Johnston approve the Battle Plan?,"Was Johnston or Beauregard in command of the Army of the Mississippi?," and "Did Johnston or Beauregard direct the battle of Shiloh?"] address neverending planning and leadership debates related to that great western battle. Documentation is sparse, but the author builds a strong circumstantial case that Johnston was well aware of, and satisfied with (he did nothing to alter it), P.G.T. Beauregard's battle plan. On the latter two questions, command authority was clear cut (Johnston was in charge, and Beauregard was his second in command), and Goggin cites enough critical mid-battle decisions on Johnston's part to counter assertions that he left general direction of the battle to Beauregard, who, in Goggin's view, while still ill "performed well at the rear of the army, collecting reports from the front lines, reforming stragglers, and dispatching inactive units back to the front" (pg. 350). How well the author defends the wisdom behind the Confederate attack plan, one of the most reviled battle line arrangements of any major Civil War battle, is less convincing, though still interesting. Goggin contends that the Army of the Mississippi's deployment, with each corps stacked one behind the other rather than side by side (left, center, and right) with a reserve, was not only reasonable given terrain considerations (and incorrect assumptions conveyed through poor maps) but was also deemed best for masking the army's strength (making it appear larger than it was to the enemy) and providing the means of rapid movement necessary for maintaining surprise. The contention that any formation would have immediately broken up raw troops deployed in the heavily wooded terrain, making the stacked corps formation materially no worse than any other, is plausible to a degree. Weaker is the idea that the stacked formation was advantageous in that each line would have the benefit of known units on either side of it all along the line. This supposed advantage disappears, though, when the need arises to extend the flanks of the army's front line or bring up support directly from the rear, all of which would involve close cooperation with unfamiliar leaders and units (tactical challenges that the other corps deployment plan would have mitigated). At the very least, Goggin's analysis of the army deployment plan invites readers to meaningfully reconsider what was known and unknown, from the Confederate leadership's perspective, about the battlefield terrain, the location of the enemy's camps, and the facing of the enemy's defensive front.

The level of persuasiveness spread among the great many positions that Leigh Goggin assumes in defense of Albert Sidney Johnston's brief but event-filled Civil War record, sampled in the above paragraphs, runs the gamut. However, the preponderance of answers to the questions raised by each chapter heading exhibit a degree of thoughtfulness and evidential rigor that make them formidable counterpoints to a great many firmly established views and interpretations. Even if you don't agree with the author's ultimate conclusion that Johnston "was a competent, resourceful, and responsive commander, simply thwarted by the intractable complexities of the military environment be found himself in" (pg. 366), his arguments, individually and collectively, are a force to be reckoned with. A key takeaway message might be that even though Johnston may not have made the best decisions, especially in hindsight, most are justifiable enough to at the very least effectively defend Johnston against charges of gross incompetence.

In the end, Reckless in Their Statements adds fuel to the understanding, popular among many, that no one could have succeeded in Johnston's position, and Goggin certainly supports the idea that the "multitude of geographic, meteorologic, military, political, logistic, and personnel factors beyond his control" made Johnston's task impossible (pg. 365). With that many roadblocks to any foreseeable path to success, one might reasonably conclude that only the most profound luck could have avoided the collapse of the Confederacy's western defense cordon. At the same time, though, one also cannot help but ponder how many another generals placed in the very same position might have still failed but failed less spectacularly on the battlefield and less disastrously to Confederate fortunes in the West than Johnston did.