Destroyer of the Iron Horse: General Joseph E. Johnston and Confederate Rail Transport, 1861–1865 by Jeffrey N. Lash

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 149 of our military skill, in managing our arms, after the European mode. Now we are glad to learn the skulking way of war.” Wilcomb E. Washburn Dr. Washburn is director of the Smithsonian Institution’s American Studies Program and author of several books on Indian-white relations. Destroyer ofthe Iron Horse: GeneralJoseph E. Johnston and Confederate Rail Transport, 1861—1865. By Jeffrey N. Lash. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991. Pp. viii + 228; illustrations, notes, bibliogra­ phy, index. $28.00. Reacting against the carnage that Robert E. Lee’s boldness inflicted on the Confederate soldier, some historians have cast wistful eyes on Joseph E. Johnston. If only so cautious a master of the strategic retreat had remained in command, the Lost Cause might have been won! Jeffrey Lash’s Destroyer ofthe Iron Horse comes as a welcome antidote, for where the use of railroads was concerned, Johnston showed himself a man of limited vision, a slow learner and a quick forgetter. Just as the rifle and minié ball were transforming the face of battle, the railroad should have altered the nature of war itself. Some commanders applied the technology to the logistics of moving men and supplies, but not Johnston or his subordinates in the west. As Lash makes painfully clear, the general understood very little, cared even less, and cooperated in efforts to coordinate movements hardly at all. Instead of choosing experts to handle transportation, he threw the task on staff quartermasters; rather than innovate in railroad policy, even so far as to tender aid to private companies repairing track essential to the war effort, he stuck to the traditional protocol of laissez-faire. The War Department was more flexible than he, more tender toward company property, but Johnston misinterpreted some directives, ignored and flouted others. Unimaginative, insubordinate, arrogant, and uncommunicative, he always knew what to do. Some­ times it paid off. Nearly as often, it proved a hindrance in saving supplies when the army pulled back or carrying men when it moved forward. Well aware of how valuable railroad communications were to the advancing Union army, he somehow overlooked the possibility that they might be just as valuable to the Confederacy. Increasingly perceptive about the strategic use of Virginia’s railroads, increasingly capable in handling troop movements after taking command in the west, he never learned enough or for long. Retreating from Missis­ sippi in 1863, he abandoned or destroyed over six hundred engines and cars, a loss that would have been unnecessary with a little imagination or even obedience to orders from Richmond. Until late in the war when necessity forced him to change his practices, Johnston remained the worst nemesis that southern engines, rolling stock, 150 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE trestles, and iron rails faced. Inconsistency, occasionally incompe­ tence, were the watchwords of the general’s railroad policy. Lash is clear about the ways in which railroads could have been used, and the complexities of finance and transport, and misses nothing. That is why this book will please the researcher into the Civil War more than it will the general reader. Often the story is told in such minute detail that the larger picture vanishes from view; many a Civil War buff’s head will droop as he presses through the off-again, on-again competence of Johnston during the 1861—62 campaign. There is no liveliness of style to beguile, and the distaste for Johnston is unconcealed. Yet, in the end, the weaknesses only underline the strengths. It will be hard for anyone, coming to the end of Lash’s book, to disagree with his conclusion that Johnston’s modest reputa­ tion was one well earned, or not to wish that Lash would take the other generals and apply the same scrutiny to them. Mark Wahlgren Summers Dr. Summers is professor at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He is the author of Railroads, Reconstruction, and the Gospel ofProsperity: Aid under the Radical Republicans, 1865—1877 (Princeton, N.J., 1984). Fortress America: The Corps ofEngineers, Hampton Roads, and United States Coastal Defense. By David A. Clary. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990. Pp. xiii + 222; illustrations, notes...