Contrast the background and leadership of albert johnston and us grant?

Answer 1

Albert Sidney Johnston and U. S. Grant were both graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point. Johnston had attended Transylvania College in Kentucky, the "Harvard of the west", before going to West Point, where he was idolized by a younger student, Jefferson Davis. Johnston resigned from the army after a few years and served in the Texas War for Independence in 1835-36. During the ten years when Texas was an independent nation Johnston served as the Texas Secretary of War. After Texas joined the US and the US-Mexico War of 1847-48, Johnston rejoined the US Army. Up to this time the US Army had, since its beginning, three mounted regiments: the First and Second Dragoons, and the Regiment of Mounted Rifles. With the vast new territory won in the Mexican War the Army needed new mounted units, and the First and Second Cavalry were created to secure the new territory and battle the Apaches and Comanches. Johnston served as Colonel commanding the legendary Second Cavalry in the 1850s. Of the eight men who would become full (four star) Confederate generals, four served in the Second Cavalry. Robert E. Lee was second in command as Lieutenant Colonel of the Second Cavalry. (After the Civil War the Army renumbered its mounted regiments and the old Second Cavalry became today's Fifth Cavalry, now part of the First Cavalry Division - Airmobile).

Johnston was in Los Angeles when the Civil War began. When he sent word that he was resigning authorities in Washington assumed he was going to fight for the south, and alerted all army posts in the west to arrest Johnston if he was seen. Rather than take the usual mode of travel back to the east, by ship via Panama, Johnston, then over sixty years of age, with a small party set out on horseback for the east. He evaded all patrols searching for him and reached New Orleans, where he took ship for Richmond, arriving in August 1861. Jefferson Davis had been saving a very important command for Johnston, and put him in command of all Confederate forces between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. Unfortunately Davis had such faith in Johnston he provided him with few troops to defend this vast area. Johnston was forced to try to hold a line along the Tennessee-Kentucky border with far too few men, and did everything he could think of to fool the Yankees into believing he was much stronger than he in fact was. This worked for a few months until Grant penetrated up the Tennessee River and captured Fort Donelson in February 1862. This unhinged Johnston's line and cost the Confederacy all of west and central Tennessee. Johnston attempted to reverse this setback by attacking Grant at Shiloh in April. Johnston's strategy was sound - he wanted to beat Grant before the 30,000 men under Don Carlos Buell arrived to reinforce Grant. However, he left the planning to Beauregard, and the plan was faulty on several counts. Moreover it took the Confederates two days longer to travel the relatively short march from Corinth to Shiloh Church than the single day the plan called for. None of the Confederate generals now believed that surprising the Yankees was possible, thinking they must know by now of this large Confederate Army drawing near. Mindful of the need to beat Grant before Buell arrived and made the combined force too large to handle, Johnston said "I would fight them if they were a million" and the Confederates pressed on. Sadly Johnston was shot in the leg early in the battle. He had left his doctor to attend a wounded Yankee and did not seek medical attention, and soon bled to death. Johnston was outranked in the Confederate service only by Samuel Cooper, and was just ahead of Robert E. Lee on the seniority list. The Confederacy lost the war by losing in the west, and had Johnston lived things could have gone very differently.

Grant had an undistinguished career in the Old Army, but served well in the Mexican War. A few years later he resigned from the army, perhaps under pressure due to his drinking. Grant tried farming and a few other enterprises, all of which failed. He was a clerk in his father's leather business when the war started. He was soon made a colonel of a new volunteer regiment, and proved to be an aggressive commander, especially when compared with other Union leaders. Grant at least would go looking for a fight. Despite the crawling Confederate approach to Shiloh, and the dozens of Confederates who felt the need to find out whether the constant rains had dampened their gunpowder, which they did by firing their weapons against all orders, Grant ignored all reports indicating the Confederates were drawing near to fight a battle and was completely surprised at Shiloh. Grant's headquarters was across the Tennessee River and some miles downstream, and he did not arrive by steamboat until the battle had been underway for several hours. Grant was extremely lucky that Johnston died, that Johnston was replaced by the "excitable" Beauregard, that Beauregard's flawed plan caused the Confederate units to become inextricably and very confusingly mixed together, and most of all, Grant was lucky that Buell and his 30,000 troops arrived that night and allowed Grant to retrieve what looked to be a disaster on the second day of the Battle of Shiloh. Had the Confederates attacked two days earlier as intended, Buell would not have arrived in time to save Grant and the whole history of the nation might be different.

Grant's tactics were very unsubtle. He fought a war of attrition in the last year of the war, losing a great many more men than Lee had in his army, but in the end prevailing.