Joseph E. Johnston as military adviser to the president. Davis offered the position to William J. Hardee, the senior corps commander, who refused it. He considered P.G.T. Beauregard, another general with whom he had poor personal relations, and also Robert E. Lee. Lee, who was reluctant to leave Virginia, first recommended Beauregard, but sensing Davis's discomfort, changed his recommendation to Johnston. After much agonizing, Davis appointed Johnston to command the Army of Tennessee in Dalton, Georgia, on December 27, 1863. Faced with Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's advance from Chattanooga to Atlanta in the spring of 1864, Johnston conducted a series of withdrawals
Joseph E. Johnston Johnston, emigrated to Virginia from Scotland in 1726. Joseph was the seventh son of Judge Peter Johnston (1763–1831) and Mary Valentine Wood (1769–1825), a niece of Patrick Henry. He was named for Major Joseph Eggleston, under whom his father served in the American Revolutionary War, in the command of Light-Horse Harry Lee. His brother Charles Clement Johnston served as a congressman, and his nephew John Warfield Johnston was a senator; both represented Virginia. In 1811, the Johnston family moved to Abingdon, Virginia, a town near the Tennessee border, where his father Peter built a home he named Panecillo. Johnston attended