April 30, 1862 (Tuesday): Johnston, Ever the Pessimist

Lee Hall Manson, Newport News (http://www.leehall.org/about-us.php)

HEADQUARTERS, Lee's House, April 30, 1862.

General R. E. LEE:
    GENERAL: We are engaged in a species of warfare at which we can never win.
    It is plain that General McClellan will adhere to the system adopted by him last summer, and depend for success upon artillery and engineering. We can compete with him in neither.
We must therefore change our course, take the offensive, collect all the troops we have in the East and cross the Potomac with them, while Beauregard, with all we have in the West, invades Ohio.
    Our troops have always wished for the offensive, and so does the country. Please submit this suggestion to the President. We can have no success while McClellan is allowed, as he is by our defensive, to choose his mode of warfare.
    Most respectfully, your obedient servant,







    J. E. JOHNSTON,
    General.

Official Records, Series I, Vol. 11, Part 3, Page 477.  

Having advocated for a retreat to Richmond from Manassas, Johnston now advocates for an advance across the Potomac.  It would not have been possible for him to undertake such a movement without leaving some delaying force on the Peninsula, which would then have materially weakened any offensive force he commanded.  Beauregard, far from ready to advance in the West, was in charge of a weakened and disorganized force which could not have moved into Ohio without being destroyed on the way.  Johnston was not so much a fantacist as a fatalist.  It is a challenge to memory to find a single point in the war where Johnston was not able to summon to his mind insurmountable challenges.