Co. Aytch, or a Side Show of the Big Show by Sam Watkins

Author:Sam Watkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594165597
Publisher: Westholme Publishing

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1. Joe Johnston was one of the most senior of Confederate generals. He shared command with Beauregard at the First Battle of Bull Run, which was the first major battle of the war and a Confederate victory. Thereafter he was given command of the South's most important army in Virginia and charged with the responsibility of defending the capital at Richmond against the largest army ever assembled in North America, under Union General George McClellan. Johnston was wounded in the first major battle against McClellan and replaced by Robert E. Lee. Lee retained command until the end of the war. On recovering from his wounds, Johnston was a general in search of a command. In November 1862, he was placed in overall command of the western theater. His chief responsibility was to insure that the armies in Tennessee and Mississippi cooperated to maximum effect

2. Bragg's reassignment to Richmond as a strategic adviser was a good one. He was often brilliant in strategy but a failure in execution, largely owing to an inability to win cooperation from his own subordinate officers.

3. This is a reference to Shakespeare's play Richard III, although the line itself is not original to the play but was anonymously added later.

4. Charles Quintard was originally from Connecticut but moved to Atlanta in 1848 to practice medicine. Within a few years he was teaching physiology and pathological anatomy at a medical college in Memphis. While in Memphis he became acquainted with James Otey, who was the first Episcopal bishop in Tennessee. Otey convinced Quintard to give up medicine for the priesthood. Quintard was a Confederate chaplain during the war, and afterward became the first vice chancellor of the University of the South as well as the second Episcopal bishop for Tennessee.

5. Sam's perspective on Johnston is important because it is different than is commonly held by modern historians and President Davis as well. While today's historians and Davis recognized the value of the respect and loyalty Johnston had from his troops, they regard(ed) him as too reluctant to bring the army to battle. When Atlanta was on the verge of capture, Davis replaced Johnston with a more aggressive commander, John Bell Hood. Unfortunately, although his plans were theoretically sound, Hood demanded too much of the Army of Tennessee, too quickly.

6. This is another Shakespeare reference. Othello lost his status by a change in circumstance in relation to his wife. Sam implies the corrupt “commissaries” lost their status by a change in commanders.

7. Evidently this was part of the “Great Revival” that swept through Union and Confederate armies during the autumn and winter of 1863–64.

8. The “Dead March” used in the military at the time was not the better-know composition by Chopin, but instead one by Handel from his opera Saul.

9. Quintard wrote a memoir that was published posthumously in 1905. He also agreed to subscribe to a revision of the Watkins memoir, but there were never enough subscribers to finance the project while Watkins lived. Quintard led efforts to insure the financial survival of the University of the South after the war.

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