Albert Sidney Johnston: Soldier of Three Republics

Rating:
Summary: Great read...
Review: I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across this book last night in my local bookstore. I was perusing the Civil War section for the comprehensive anthologies looking for anything I could find on Sidney Albert Johnston but found only brief blurbs at best. I had no idea such a focused work existed on an obscure individual that I had always thought of as being historically insignificant and mostly forgotten. I am glad to see that Mr. Roland is attempting to set the record straight.

My interest in Sidney Albert Johnston is that indirectly he is my namesake but till now, I had no idea of who he really was and why my great-grandfather would be so moved to attempt to memorialize him through his progeny.

My grandfather born in 1870 in Southern Mississippi and was given Albert Sidney Johnston as a first name. I don't know why the order was reversed but I can only assume his father (my great-grandfather) served under him in the war. I do know from my father that the original intention though was that my grandfather be named after the Civil War General.

Roland's book helped me with this as I learned that Johnston raised the Armies of Mississippi and Tennesee, the former which would have included my great-grandfather.

My father passed on his father's middle name (Sidney) to me as my middle name but I have never used it as to me it has always been a stigma of ignorant Southern racism rather than anything honorable that I should be proud of. This stigma is lessened somewhat now after Roland has illumined Johnston's life to me and some of his other redeeming qualities besides making the mistake of choosing the side of the political issue of his day that history has proven to be wrong.

Ironically though, I also learned that even though Johnston distanced himself from his family's New England puritanical heritage, he himself was named after an English Whig martyr Sidney Algernon, and his brother was given the biblical name Josiah.

Johnston was the grand-son of a New England industrialist and the son of a Medical Doctor who trained in Connecticut before heading south to Northern Kentucky. Johnston initially pursued his father's medical training before changing his mind and pursuing a military career. Interestingly enough, two of Johnston's brothers, including Josiah Stoddard Johnston re-settled down in Northern Louisiana near Alexandria and although both became lawyer's and achieved prominenence in their community, Stoddard became a U.S. rep and then a U.S. Senator from Louisiana, and sponsored Sidney Albert into West Point.

Although I haven't tracked this down yet, I suspect that Roland has answered even another riddle for me in that I think I now understand the relation of the surname Johnston in the Civil War to the modern day political dynasty of the family of J. Bennett Johnston, former U.S. Senator of Louisiana. I suspect that J. Bennett Johnston is descended from these brothers in Alexandria and would therefore be a great nephew of Sidney Albert.

Johnston was a contemporary of both future Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and P.T. Beauregard at Westpoint and although neither regarded his qualifications as a General, they both spoke highly of his character. Since Johnston died in the first battle of the war at Shiloh, history will never know of his military abilities but perhaps due to his character, providence prevented him from being responsible for more bloodshed fighting for the wrong cause if he had lived.

Through this book, I have to come to recognize now some of the qualities of Johnston's character so I can understand how an uneducated Southern farmer would be so impressed with him, and can somewhat forgive my great-grandfather's perpetuating his unvanquished rebellion through his posterity and finally to me.

In summation, I found Roland's book to be very informative and diligently researched and a an enthralling read and would heartily recommend it to anyone interesting in more illumination of this obscure individual and time in history.

John Sidney Walley
Atlanta, GA

Rating:
Summary: Daft Reviewer
Review: One has to question the opinion of a reviewer who cannot even state the proper name of the focus of the biography and seems more interested in detailing his genealogy instead. The proper name of the General is Albert Sidney Johnston, NOT Sidney Albert Johnston, for those passersby who may be interested in the book. Also, I doubt the reviewer's assumption that possessing the name "Sidney" can be directly correlated to ignorant racist Southerners, or any Southerner, as he seems to assume.

Haven't read this book, but want laypersons to be familiar with the correct name of the General. Don't use "stars" as a way to rate books, either.

Rating:
Summary: Balanced.
Review: This is the story of a very interesting life. A good soldier and a fine man, Albert Sidney Johnston served in the background for so long that history questions his ability to rise to the top.

Adept at politics and administration, his leadership remains questioned despite involvement in the Black Hawk Indian War in Illinois, the protection of the early Texas Republic and frontier, the War with Mexico, the Mormon Campaign, and the stability of pre Civil War California.

Killed at Shiloh, the first top Confederate commander to die during the war, his death leaves the question of an unfulfilled life and thoughts of what might have been. His involvement in so many of the key areas associated with the early stages of this nation's Manifest Destiny, his life is an important one, one that impacts the long procession of events that lead up to the Civil War.

He is a person worth knowing about.