In the summer of 1864 the American Civil War was drawing closer to an end as the Federal Armies closed in around their Confederate adversaries. As Robert E. Lee contended the Virginia theatre with George Meade and Ulysses S. Grant another campaign of equal importance was taking place in Georgia.
Across the border of Georgia and Tennessee there stood two forces preparing or war. In Tennessee stood the formidable Army Group of William Tecumseh Sherman - a force made up of George Henry Thomas' Army of the Cumberland, James B. McPherson's Army of the Tennessee and John M. Schofield's Army of the Ohio - and in Georgia stood the tough little Confederate Army of Tennessee now under the command of Joseph Eggleston Johnston.
General Johnston's appraisal of the situation was different from his President's. He saw himself grossly outnumbered and concluded that the only way he could stand any chance of victory would be to give up territory for time and fight only when he had the advantage of terrain or when he could launch an attack on an isolated part of his enemies Army Group and criple or destroy it.
Presidents Davis' appraisal of the situation however was that Tennessee had to be retaken at any cost. Being driven solely by political needs he knew that to keep the support of the people of Tennessee he had to make a show of fighting for that state. Militarily speaking he might have been wrong but politically he could do little else but eventually he was forced to accept Johnston's stance on it that invasin of Tennessee at that time was not possible.
Sherman's order from Grant would certainly seemed to make Johnston's appraisal of the situation the correct one. Grant's orders to Sherman were that he should seek out and destroy the Army of the Tennessee as soon as possible and after that go as far into Confederate territory as possible and disrupt their capabilities to wage war.
Sherman, contrary to everybodies expectations, took his secondary objective from Grant and made it his primary one and made his primary objective from Grant his secondary one. Meaning that he decided that it more important to get far into southern territory and disrupt the capabilities of the Confederacy to wage war than it was to seek out and destroy the Army of Tennessee.
Nevertheless Sherman did want to destroy the Army of Tennessee but he was not prepared to destroy it in a war of attrition but wanted to manouver it into an corner and smash it to pieces.
In the continuing Atlanta Campaign Johnston and Sherman danced around each other in what was perhaps the greatest campaign of manouver and counter-manouver in the Civil War. Historian Shelby Foote called the Atlanta Campaign "The Red Clay Minuet" for the amount and quality of the manouvering happening in that campaign.
Though there was much fighting in the campaign there was no major battle fought until Kennessaw Mountain and that had frustrated Sherman. Kennessaw Mountain came about out of Sherman's frustration and being unable to pin down the Army of Tennessee. But following that bloody battle Sherman returned to flaking his enemy and making a move on Atlanta only to find, as he had previously, that the Army of Tennessee had move to block his path and he would have to find an alternate route once more.
Eventually however Johnston fell foul of his President. Davis had not wanted a defensive campaign fought in the first place and he had no love for Johnston anyway so he was not prepared to give him too much discretion in the matter.
As Johnton prepared to launch into his next battle at Peechtree Creek he recieved the news that he was being replace by Hood. This replacement, it has been said, occured at the worst time as it not only prevented Johnston from launching a potentially devastating assault on the Army of the Cumberland that could have crushed his adversary but also prevented Hood from doing so in his place.
Upon learning of Johnston's removal and Hood promotion General Sherman was jubilant. Not only would he be rid of Johnston but would now face a reckless and overly offensive adversary that would play right into the Union mans hands.
In the post war years Sherman would look back on the Atlanta Campaign and remember with great respect the work that Johnston did. Sherman had been out to pin down the Army of Tennessee and smash it and he held Johnston in the highest regards for preventing Sherman from doing just that.
In this campaign each side of the Confederate Arguement has its supporters.
General Johnston's supporters claim that he would either have held Atlanta long enough for Lincoln to lose the election or that, at the very least, he would have kept a strong force between Sherman and the deep south if Atlanta had fallen.
General Hood's supporters claim that he tried his best and that his attempts were admirable but that he had inherited an unwinnable situation and that either Davis is at fault for asking Hood to do something he coudn't or that Johnston is at fault for letting Sherman get too close to Atlanta.
President Davis' supporters claim that he did what he had to do, that Johnston did not seem to be putting up any kind of fight, that Davis was forced to replace Johnston for giving up so much gound and that Hood was the best choice available because he was a offensive general who had been telling Davis that he could do so much better than Johnston was doing.
So it is quite possible that the argument over the wisdom of the decison to remove Johnston may never be settled but is the same true over the justification of the removal of Johnston?
Was Davis justified in removing Johnston simply because there had been only one major battle fought in the entirity of that campaign? Was he justified in replacing Johnston with Hood just because Hood was telling him he could do better?