Then some one gave the command to "Fire at will; commence firing."
They fired seven shots each; at the seventh shot, poor Johnny Reb fell a
corpse, pierced through the heart.
REMOVAL OF GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON
Such was the fact. General Joseph E. Johnston had been removed and
General J. B. Hood appointed to take command. Generals Hardee and
Kirby Smith, two old veterans, who had been identified with the Army of
Tennessee from the beginning, resigned. We had received the intelligence
from the Yankees.
The relief guard confirmed the report.
All the way from Rocky Face Ridge to Atlanta was a battle of a hundred
days, yet Hood's line was all the time enfiladed and his men decimated,
and he could not hold his position. Old Joe Johnston had taken command
of the Army of Tennessee when it was crushed and broken, at a time when
no other man on earth could have united it. He found it in rags and
tatters, hungry and heart-broken, the morale of the men gone, their
manhood vanished to the winds, their pride a thing of the past. Through
his instrumentality and skillful manipulation, all these had been
restored. We had been under his command nearly twelve months. He was
more popular with his troops day by day.
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