Chapter 22: efforts to get arms and troops.
- Small resources and powers. -- Begging for arms. -- scant results and deficient armament. -- recruiting the army. -- concentration. -- requisitions for troops. -- obstacles. -- the Tennessee troops. -- condition of the men. -- embarrassments. -- twelve-months' volunteers. -- distant control. -- difficulties of the Government. -- call for militia. -- General Johnston's urgency. -- letters to the Southern Executives. -- appeals to the Secretary of War. -- Mr. Benjamin's letters.
It has already been shown that, when the Confederate troops advanced into Kentucky and established their line of operations, it was with the confident hope that the people of that Commonwealth would promptly join them in large numbers, and also that a strong army, rallied in the South, would speedily follow to support them. The first illusion was soon dispelled. The causes of inaction in Kentucky, already made sufficiently plain in Chapter XIX., continued, and destroyed the hope of any considerable accession of volunteers from that quarter. But the disappointment was even more grievous at the want of appreciation of the danger, and of the means necessary for defense, exhibited by the Gulf States. General Johnston fully foresaw the difficulties and dangers of his position, and his first steps on arriving at Nashville were to procure men and arms. It will be made manifest in this chapter that he neglected no lawful means to that end. In his address to the Memphis Historical Society, Colonel Munford, General Johnston's aide-de-camp, states the essential question, and answers it:
To those who ask why so able a man lost Kentucky and Tennessee, and seemed to fail, four words will answer, namely-he had no army.Colonel Munford then, in a powerful and convincing statement of facts, which the writer has largely followed, shows that this failure to assemble an army equal to the emergency was not due to General Johnston. While the writer will have occasion frequently to employ this interesting historical monograph, it is thought best to produce the original correspondence, which conclusively demonstrates that in no point of vigilance, decision, or energy, was General Johnston at fault. The narrative of military operations is therefore postponed, and the facts in regard to General Johnston's efforts to obtain men and arms are here grouped together, that the reader may arrive at his own conclusion as to where the responsibility rests. The only legal mode by which a Confederate general could raise troops or secure munitions of war was through the instrumentality of the State, or the General Government. Of his own motion he could do nothing. He had not the power to commission a lieutenant, to raise a company of soldiers, or to buy a gun, except through the intermediary channels of the civil service. Experience had taught General Johnston,
