Albert Sidney Johnston

Happy birthday to General Albert Sidney Johnston, the almost-hero of Vicksburg. The Confederates would have had a clear-cut victory and a strategic trump card had General Johnston (not to be confused with Joe Johnston, who campaigned near the border of North Carolina and Virginia towards the end of the war, and who was considered by Northern General Sherman to be the best of the Confederate crop) not been tragically shot in the leg. Heedless of the injury, he pressed on in the attack alongside his men and bled to death on the field. The resulting paralysis of the Confederate forces allowed a Northern retreat across the Mississippi and the Confederacy could not mount an attack on the retreating invaders. Vicksburg was to fall later in the war.