C.S. Gen. Bushrod Johnson - 3b18942
“A rather strange career for a Quaker” – Bushrod Johnson’s descendant
C.S. Gen. Bushrod Johnson came from an abolitionist Ohio family and had graduated from West Point. Johnson had spent a decade in the South as a mathematics and engineering professor at the University of Nashville and was a Colonel in the Tennessee militia.
At the Battle of Chickamauga, Tenn., Johnson and his division were at the right place at the right time. A gap was created in the Union lines as U.S. Gen. Wood was moving his troops to “close up on Reynolds.”
According to Johnson:
“The scene now presented I was unspeakably grand. The resolute and impetuous charge sweeping out of the shadow and gloom of the forest into the open fields flooded with sunlight, the glitter of arms, the onward dash of artillery and mounted men, the retreat of the foe, the shouts of the hosts of our army, the dust, the smoke, the noise of fire-arms, of whistling balls and grape-shot and of bursting shell made up a battle scene of unsurpassed grandeur.”