Birth and family of Albert Sidney Johnston.— his father. — his Maternal grandfather. — boyhood and early friends. — character as a boy. — anecdote. — his schools. — Transylvania. — desire to enter the Navy. — visit to Louisiana. — his brothers. — vigor of early settlers of Kentucky. — sketch of Josiah Stoddard Johnston. — his distinguished career. — his generosity to his brothers. — return of A. — S. — Johnston to Transylvania. — appointment to United States military Academy. — kindness to animals. — formation of character. — illustrative anecdotes. — Captain Eaton’s account of entrance at West point. — his conduct there. — testimony of his fellow-cadets. — singular occurrence at his graduation. — assignment to Second infantry. Intimacy with Leonidas Polk. His friends at West point.

Albert Sidney Johnston was born on the 2d of February, 1803, in the village of Washington, Mason County, Kentucky. He was the youngest son of Dr. John Johnston, a physician, and one of the early settlers of that town. Dr. Johnston’s father, Archibald Johnston, was a native of Salisbury, Connecticut, and descended from a Scotch family of some property and local influence, settled in Salisbury. John Johnston, having received a liberal education at New Haven, and at the medical school at Litchfield, began the practice of his profession in his native town. In 1783, at the age of twenty-one, he married Mary Stoddard, by whom he had three sons, Josiah Stoddard, Darius, and Orramel. In 1788 he removed to Kentucky, and settled at Washington, where he remained until his death in 1831.

Mason County, which then included all the northern and eastern portion of Kentucky, in 1790 contained only 2,729 inhabitants, while the whole population of the Territory of Kentucky was less than 74,000. The country still suffered from Indian incursions across the Ohio, and was indeed the very frontier of civilization. But, although an outpost, this beautiful and fertile neighborhood already enjoyed the benefits of social order, and was fast filling up with substantial and educated families, principally from Virginia and Maryland. Dr. Johnston’s skill and worth soon secured him not only a large practice, but the warm friendship of the best people with whom he continued in the kindest relations during his whole life.

Having lost his first wife in 1793, in the following year he married Abigail Harris, the daughter of Edward Harris, an old settler, who, with  his wife, had emigrated from Newburyport, Massachusetts, and whom a venerable citizen describes as “the old John Knox Presbyterian of the place ;” adding, “anecdotes are still told of the spirit and courage with which he defended his Church.” One of General Johnston’s earliest recollections was of his grandfather giving him money to buy a catechism. Edward Harris had been a Revolutionary soldier, and was appointed military storekeeper and postmaster at Washington, Kentucky, by President Washington. A letter to the Postmaster-General is still extant in which he resigns the latter office, because some new postal arrangement required him to open the mail on Sunday, which he could not conscientiously do. The letter is a candid expression of very decided religious convictions, and is evidently the production of an educated and thoughtful man. Edward Harris died in 1825, aged eighty-four years. He, at one time, owned a large body of land in Ohio, but lost it by the intrusion of squatters. Dr. Johnston’s second wife lived about twelve years after her marriage, and died, leaving him six children-John Harris, Lucius, Anna Maria, Clarissa, Albert Sidney, and Eliza. Anna Maria married Mr. James Byers, Clarissa remained unmarried, and Eliza married John A. McClung, distinguished first as a lawyer and afterward as a Presbyterian minister. Dr. Johnston subsequently married Mrs. Byers, a widow with a large family of children, but there was no issue from this marriage. He died in 1831. Wonder was often expressed that he did not remove to a city, where his acknowledged skill would have secured adequate reward; but it may be presumed that he fairly estimated his advantages, and was satisfied to be able to maintain and properly educate so large a family. This he did, giving all his children the best education that the times afforded. Though diligent and conscientious in his profession, he was not anxious to accumulate money, and late in life became poor from the payment of security debts. To discharge these he voluntarily gave up all his property; his home was sold at public sale, but it was bought and restored to him by his eldest son, who had then become eminent and prosperous. Mr. J. S. Chambers, from whom these facts were obtained, adds:

I always thought General Johnston inherited his frank, manly nature from his father. His mother was a gentle, quiet woman; while the old doctor was bold and blunt to a remarkable degree. He had no concealments, and was physically energetic, and mentally bold and independent. He had a large practice, and was often called into consultation in difficult, or rather in desperate, cases.

All the old citizens of Washington bear witness to his industry, skill, talents, and probity, and to his kind and genial temper. General Johnston’s mother is spoken of by others as a woman of handsome person, fine intellect, and sterling worth; but, whatever traits her children inherited from her, she died too young to have done much toward moulding their character.

The boyhood of Albert Sidney Johnston was a fit prelude to his after-life. Though his father’s means were narrow, yet the education which he had, at whatever personal inconvenience, bestowed upon all his children, could not fail to exercise a liberalizing influence on his household. The habits of all classes at that time were plain and unostentatious; but this family was necessarily trained to a Spartan simplicity that was ever after the rule and habit of life most congenial to the subject of this memoir. Captain Wilson Duke, United States Navy, one of the choice friends of his youth, used laughingly to tell how he tore off his ruffled shirt-collar and hid his shoes on the road to school, from fear of Albert Johnston’s ridicule. His intimate friends in those early days nearly all obtained more than ordinary positions in after-life. Among them were : Captain Wilson Duke, the father of the gallant General Basil W. Duke; Captain William Smith, also of the United States Navy; Captain William Bickley, of the United States Army; Hon. John D. Taylor, well known in the politics and jurisprudence of Kentucky; Mr. Charles Marshall (known as Black Dan), Mr. John Green, and John A. McClung.

Albert Sidney Johnston was endowed by nature with an ardent and enthusiastic temperament; but to this were joined a solidity of judgment and a power of self-control, that early held it in check, and eventually so regulated it that it was only displayed in resolutions and actions requiring uncommon loftiness of soul. The feature of his character most remarked by his contemporaries was, in his early boyhood, an energy that made him an acknowledged leader among his comrades; later, it was a self-contained dignity and reserved power that subjected affections, will, and passions, to the performance of duty.

His eldest sister says of him that, when he was a boy, he was fearless and impetuous; but kind, affectionate, and just; amenable to reason, and deferential to age.

Mr. J. G. Hickman, of Maysville, writing in 1869, “after consulting all the old folk,” says:

My aunt and Mr. Lashbrooke remember General Johnston from his infancy; and they say, as indeed all say, that there was great promise about him from his childhood. He was a handsome, proud, manly, earnest, and self-reliant boy; and his success and distinction in after-life were only what were expected of him by those who knew him in his boyhood. Mr. Lashbrooke says he went to the same school with him, in 1811, to Mann Butler, a teacher of some distinction in his day. He was distinguished, too, for his courage in boyhood and early manhood. While he was a born gentleman, as they all say, and as far from being a bully as any boy in the world, yet he was one whom the bullies left undisturbed. Colonel C. A. Marshall told me of one fellow about Washington who was proud of playing the bully, but who, to the amusement of the town, always skipped Albert Johnston and Black Dan Marshall.

General Johnston sometimes told an anecdote of his early boyhood, from which he was wont to draw many a valuable moral. Playing marbles “for keeps” —a species of boyish gaming — was a favorite sport of his schoolboy days; and he was so skillful and successful a marble-player that at one time he had won a whole jar full of white alleys, taws, potters, etc. It was then that the design entered his breast of winning all the marbles in the town, in the State, and eventually in the world. Filled with enthusiasm at the vastness of his project, he cast about for the means; and finally concluded, as the first step, to secure his acquisitions by burying them. He buried his jar very secretly, reserving only marbles enough “to begin life on.” Purpose lent steadiness to his aim, so that again he beat all his rivals “in the ring,” and added daily to his store. Only one competitor stood against him, whose resources seemed to consist not so much in skill as in an...