Dabney Herndon Maury

“ The Confederate Congress made a law that all officers should hold rank in the Confederate army in accordance with that held in the United States army, and Johnston, as the only brigadier- general who came from the south, felt that he was entitled to be the senior general of the Confederate forces. ”

“ We reached Richmond on July 19th, where all was in active preparation for war. I reported to the governor and to General Lee, commanding the forces in Virginia. I was much impressed by the grave and anxious aspect of General Lee, and remarked to Commodore Maury that it surprised and depressed me. He, too, had observed it. I was appointed Colonel of Cavalry of the Virginia forces, and ordered to report to Adjutant General Cooper. The same day I received my appointment as Captain of the regular Cavalry of the Confederacy, and Lieutenant - Colonel of their provisional army. ”

“ For I possess in no degree the confidence of our government, and now they have in my place one who does possess it, and who can accomplish what I could never have done, -- the concentration of our armies for the defense of the capital of the Confederacy. ”

“ The enemy received the Seventeenth Corps and a number of garrisons and bridge guards from Tennessee and Kentucky that has been relieved by "hundred-day men."
I am blamed for not fighting. Operations commenced about the 6th of May; I was relieved on the 18th of July. In that time we fought daily, always under circumstances so favorable to us as to make it certain that the sum of the enemy's losses was five times ours, which was 10,000 men. Northern papers represented theirs up to about the end of June at 45,000. Sherman's progress was at the rate of a mile and a quarter a day. ”

“ He has thus ruined Hood, and destroyed the last hope of the Southern Confederacy."
Several years after the war, the Legislature of Virginia ordered General Johnston's portrait to be painted by Elder and hung in the capitol of the State. I was asked to be present at the sittings, to keep him in conversation that the artist might have the advantage of the play of his features. The first day he discussed Napoleon, Marlborough, and Wellington. Ranking Napoleon above all great commanders since Caesar, he criticized him with great animation for more than half an hour. ”