Whether you feel it is fair for either of them to take the blame for the debacle of the first failed raid, the 51 day siege, and the aftermath of the second attempt, they gave their assent and it was their authority that lay behind the planning and execution. It is all about authority.
Having ones subordinates nay-say or second guess ones decisions in the press soon after a defeat is nothing new to military operations during the civil war. That Beauregard should conduct a campaign where he takes credit for the whole campaign twenty years after Johnston's death is something else. He may very well be correct when he states the following.
In writing about his views on reinforcing Forts Henry and Donelson and his opinion as to the critical nature of those two positions:
The adoption, I said, and above all the vigorous execution of such a plan, would not only restore to us the full control of the Tennessee, but insure likewise the possession of the Cumberland, and eventually secure a much better position to our troops as to the defense of Nashville. My views were not adopted. General Johnston agreed to their correctness, in a strategic point of view, but feared that a failure to defeat General Grant, as proposed, would jeopardize the security of our positions at other points, and might possibly cause our forces to be crushed between Grant and Buell. pg. 6
Serial: The North American Review Volume 0142 Issue 350 (January 1886)
Title: The Shiloh Campaign, Part I [pp. 1-25]
Author: Beauregard, G. P. T.
Collection: Journals: North American Review (1815 - 1900)
Later, when presenting his defense to the reading public after the printing of The Century; a popular quarterly Volume 0029 Issue 4 (Feb 1885) in which Johnston's son, William lays some of the blame for the failure of Shiloh at the feet of Beauregard, he writes:
On the same day, February 16th, in answer to a dispatch of mine, asking if any direct orders had been issued to General Polk with regard to the troops at and around Columbus, Colonel Mackall, A.A. G., sent me this telegram: . You must do as your judgment dictates. No orders for your troops have issued from here. And General Johnston, in another telegram, dated February 18th, said: You must now act as seems best to you. The separation of our armies is now complete. pg. 9
Serial: The North American Review Volume 0142 Issue 350 (January 1886)
Title: The Shiloh Campaign, Part I [pp. 1-25]
Author: Beauregard, G. P. T.
Collection: Journals: North American Review (1815 - 1900)
Beauregard intimates here that Johnston gave him leeway to coordinate the troops as Beauregard saw fit, a major portion of that was the abandonment of Columbus, Tennessee by forces under Leonidas Polk's command, a move that Johnston's son had this to say:
When the capture of Fort Henry separated Tennessee into two distinct theaters of war, General Johnston assigned the district west of the Tennessee River to General Beauregard, who had been sent to him for duty. This officer had suddenly acquired a high reputation by the battle of Bull Run, and General Johnston naturally intrusted him with a large discretion. He sent him with instructions to concentrate all available forces near Corinth, a movement previously begun. His own plan was to defend Columbus to the last extremity with a reduced garrison, and withdraw Polk and his army for active movements. Beauregard made the mistake, how- ever, of evacuating Columbus, and making his defense of the Mississippi River at Island Number Ten, which proved untenable and soon surrendered with a garrison of 6000 or 7000 men. pg. 618
Serial: The Century; a popular quarterly Volume 0029 Issue 4 (Feb 1885)
Title: Battles and Leaders of the Civil War: Albert Sidney Johnston and the Shiloh Campaign. By His Son [pp. 614-629]
Author: Johnston, Wm. Preston
Was this hindsight, or did Albert S. Johnston really believe that the abandonment of Columbus, Tn a mistake, a move that Beauregard states was not only suggested by himself but also backed by the Confederate Department of War?
I was then at Jackson, Tennessee, where Colonel Jordan, my chief of staff, had just arrived, after an inspection tour at Columbus. His report, coupled with that of Captain Harris, my chief engineer, about the exaggerated extension of the lines there, the defective location of the works, and the faulty organization of the troops, strengthened my own opinion as to the inability of Columbus to withstand a serious attack, and rendered more imperative still the necessity of its early evacuation. General Polk, who had considered the situation in a different light, and who believed in the defensive capacity of the place, was at first averse to the movement. He changed his mind, however, upon my showing him the saliency of Fort Columbus and the weak points of its construction, and cheerfully carried out my instructions, when, on the 19th of February, the War Department having given its consent to the evacuation, he was ordered to prepare for it without delay. pg. 9-10
Serial: The North American Review Volume 0142 Issue 350 (January 1886)
Title: The Shiloh Campaign, Part I [pp. 1-25]
Author: Beauregard, G. P. T.
In order to understand Beauregard's account as put forth in The North American Review, one has to read the Johnston account in the Battle's And Leaders of the Civil War as published by The Century. If Beauregard takes liberties with the role he played, playing up his own council to his commander and taking credit where it is perhaps undue, his motivation to respond to his thinly veiled detractor becomes clearer.
In the next installment, we'll look a little at what else Johnston says of his father's plans in the campaign and a what official history has to say.
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