Albert Sidney Johnston

Albert Sidney Johnston was an American soldier who served in the armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas and the Confederacy. Before the Civil War he had fought in the Black Hawk War and Mexican–American War and commanded the U.S. Army’s Department of Utah.

At the outbreak of the Civil War Johnston became one of the Confederacy’s highest-ranking generals and was given responsibility for a vast western command. He led Confederate forces at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 and was mortally wounded on the first day of the fighting.

Hourly History’s Battle of Shiloh describes the confused fighting around Shiloh Church and the Hornet’s Nest, the death of Albert Sidney Johnston and the arrival of Union reinforcements during the night. Grant’s counterattack on the second day forced the Confederates to retreat, but the scale of the casualties shocked both sides. In Jeff Shaara’s A Blaze of Glory, in spring 1862, Confederate forces in the western theatre have been driven from Kentucky and much of Tennessee. Albert Sidney Johnston gathers an army at Corinth and plans to strike Ulysses S. Grant near Pittsburg Landing before Don Carlos Buell can reinforce him. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman and their inexperienced soldiers do not expect the scale of the attack that reaches their camps on 6 April.