Joseph E. Johnston Joseph E. Johnston Joseph Eggleston Johnston (February 3, 1807 – March 21, 1891) was a career United States Army officer, serving with distinction in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), and Seminole Wars. After Virginia seceded, he entered the Confederate States Army as one of the most senior general officers. (He was unrelated to Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston, who was killed in early 1862.) Johnston was trained as a civil engineer at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, graduating in the same class as Robert E. Lee. He served in Florida, Texas, and Kansas. By 1860 he
USS Azalea (1864) President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet retired into the Deep South in the hope of continuing the struggle. However, Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia on the 9th and General Joseph E. Johnston realized that his army, the only significant body of Confederate troops left in the field, could not prevail. On the 25th, Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman informed Rear Admiral John A. Dahlgren that he expected General Johnston to surrender the next day and asked the commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron to ". . . watch the east coast and send word round to the west