Joseph E. Johnston - Postbellum Life

Postbellum Life

After the war Johnston struggled to make a living for himself and his wife, who was ailing. He became president of a small railroad, the Alabama & Tennessee River Rail Road Company, which during his tenure of May 1866 to November 1867, was renamed the Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad. Johnston was bored with the position and the company failed for lack of capital. He established in 1868 an insurance company in Savannah, Georgia, acting as an agent for the Liverpool and London and Globe Insurance Company, and within four years had a network of more than 120 agents across the deep South. The income from this venture allowed him to devote time to his great postwar activity, writing his memoirs. His Narrative of Military Operations, published in 1874, was highly critical of Davis and many of his fellow generals, continuing his grievance about the unfairness of his ranking as a general and attempting to justify his career as a cautious campaigner. The book sold poorly and its publisher failed to make a profit.

Although many Confederate generals were critical of Johnston, the memoirs of both Sherman and Grant put him in a favorable light. Sherman described him as a "dangerous and wily opponent" and criticized Johnston's nemeses, Hood and Davis. Grant supported his decisions in the Vicksburg Campaign: "Johnston evidently took in the situation, and wisely, I think, abstained from making an assault on us because it would simply have inflicted losses on both sides without accomplishing any result." Commenting on the Atlanta Campaign, Grant wrote, "For my own part, I think that Johnston's tactics were right. Anything that could have prolonged the war a year beyond the time that it finally did close, would probably have exhausted the North to such an extent that they might then have abandoned the contest and agreed to a settlement."

Johnston moved from Savannah to Richmond in the winter of 1876–77. He served in the 46th Congress from 1879 to 1881 as a Democratic congressman; he was not a candidate for renomination in 1880. He was a commissioner of railroads in the administration of President Grover Cleveland. After his wife died in 1887, Johnston spent his remaining years traveling to veterans' gatherings, where he was universally cheered.

Johnston, like Lee, never forgot the magnanimity of the man to whom he surrendered, and would not allow an unkind word to be said about Sherman in his presence. Sherman and Johnston corresponded frequently and they met for friendly dinners in Washington whenever Johnston traveled there. When Sherman died, Johnston served as an honorary pallbearer at his funeral; during the procession in New York City on February 19, 1891, he kept his hat off as a sign of respect in the cold, rainy weather. Someone with concern for the old general's health asked him to put on his hat, to which Johnston replied "If I were in his place and he were standing here in mine, he would not put on his hat." He caught a cold that day, which developed into pneumonia, and he died several weeks later in Washington, D.C. He was buried next to his wife in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland. His personal papers are held by the Special Collections Research Center at the College of William & Mary.