Colonel (afterward Major-General) William Preston, then acting on General Johnston's staff as a volunteer aide, enjoyed as free an intercourse with him as any one could. Not long after General Johnston's death, in a letter (dated April 18, 1862) to the present writer, he gave a succinct but clear account of the campaign. The following is an extract from it:
Nashville was indefensible. General Johnston withdrew to Murfreesboro, determined to effect a junction with Beauregard, near Corinth. His two chief staff-officers, Colonels Mackall and Gilmer, deemed it impossible. Johnston persevered. He collected Crittenden and the relics of his command, with stragglers and fugitives from Donelson, and moved through Shelbyville and Fayetteville on Decatur. Halting at those points, he saved his provisions and stores, removed his depots and machine-shops, obtained new arms, and finally, at the close of March, joined Beauregard at Corinth with 20,000 men, lifting their aggregate force to 50,000. This movement having been completed, though General Johnston fully appreciated its hazard if the enemy had interrupted him with 20,000 or 30,000 men between Decatur and Corinth, General Johnston found himself for the first time at the head of an army capable of giving battle. In the mean time, he had borne with unshaken constancy and serenity the obloquy leveled at him by ignorant assailants, consoled by the unwavering confidence reposed in him by his unalterable friend the President, and upheld by his own manly self-reliance in the midst of adversity.General W. C. Whitthorne, then Adjutant-General of Tennessee, now a member of Congress from that State, has addressed to the writer the following communication:
After the fall of Nashville, and while General Johnston was at Murfreesboro with his troops, and while General Forrest was at Nashville superintending the removal of stores, I was at General Johnston's headquarters in Murfreesboro, having some business with his staff-officers, which being completed, I was in the act of leaving the house, when an aide of General Johnston informed me that he (General Johnston) wished to speak to me. Upon entering his room he asked if I was going to leave without calling upon him. I replied, “Yes,” but excused myself upon the ground that I knew he was overwhelmed with business,
