Officers at center, Genl Joe Johnston to right and respective troops to side of each officer. Encampment center background
All hope of saving the Confederacy evaporated when General Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, in Appomattox. General Joe Johnston was forced to follow suit and surrendered his command to General William Tecumseh Sherman near Greensboro, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865. Throughout the war Johnston had been one of the most effective Confederate commanders. He was one of five men advanced to the rank of full general in the Confederate Army. Ironically, he was almost always held in higher regard by his opponents in arms and by the troops under his command, than by his own superiors, particularly Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Johnston died in 1891 of pneumonia that he contracted while standing in the rain at, none other than his old adversary, William Tecumseh Sherman’s funeral.
