Joe Johnston: Letter to "My Darling" Lydia McLane Johnston, May 20, 1864

On this date 150 years ago, General Joseph E. Johnston wrote a letter to Lydia McLane Johnston, his wife of nineteen years, from "Near Etowah bridge," in which he briefly explained the situation of the ongoing military campaign in Georgia. The original is archived in "Lydia McLane Johnston: Incoming Correspondence, 1845-1869," McLane-Fisher Family Papers, ca. 1800-1905 (MS 2403), Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore. (Thanks again to Addy Von DenToten for her field research on my behalf.) 

I cannot post a verbatim transcript without express permission, nor reproduce scanned copies of the letter here for the same reason. Instead, here's a brief overview.

Joe Johnston had pulled his army back to the Etowah River and prepared to meet again the forces of General William T. Sherman, who was coming at him with everything he had. In the letter, which shows evidence (by way of Johnston's handwriting) of having been written quickly, Johnston takes partial responsibility for the situation, and partly blames it on the tardiness of the release (by the high command) of reinforcements. This timing, he implies, prevented him from ordering an initial spoiling attack against Sherman. Also in the letter, he assures Lydia that he will not go out of his way to expose himself directly to enemy fire; that is, he is not deliberately trying to get himself killed. (He'd already been wounded in 1862 at Seven Pines, as well as during the US-Mexican War and Seminole Wars.)  He notes the peculiar nature of the campaign, involving networks of entrenchments, heavy skirmishing and careful maneuver. (The forces of U.S. Grant and R. E. Lee were fighting it out in Virginia at the same time, with more extended frontal assaults and heavier casualties).

Johnston's letter (May 20, 1864) was written five days after the Battle of Resaca, the one in which Ira B. Slack of the 85th Indiana was mortally wounded (previous post).  One of Sherman's charges from General Grant, his superior officer, and US President Abraham Lincoln was to "break up" (destroy) Johnston's army, and conversely, one of Johnston's main personal objectives was not to let that happen. Many of the veteran soldiers understood this dynamic. As J. E. Brant notes in History of the 85th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, Its Organization, Campaigns and Battles (Bloomington, 1902, page 55), from the Union perspective: 'At that time we were assured that the enemy had only one "hole" to get out, and that we were stopping that "hole." But Joe Johns[t]on always found the "hole" out.'

Sketch from Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C. "View of fortifications near the ruins of the Western and Atlantic Railroad bridge across the Etowah River in Georgia," (1864).