The use of extensive field entrenchments and trenches was advancing war to the World War I era in the two major 1864 campaigns. Amazing that generals trained in Napoleonic methods, and even that was slighted at West Point which was an engineering school with a shallow military patina, could adapt to a completely new style of warfare. A great monograph waits to be written closely comparing and contrasting the two great campaigns of 1864. A shame that Davis replaced Johnston with Hood, so we are unable to see how the Atlanta campaign, and afterwords would have played out if Johnston had stayed at the helm of the Army of Tennessee. Johnson and Sherman and Grant became close friends after the War. Grant noted in his memoir:
For my own part, I think that Johnston’s tactics were right. Anything that could have prolonged the war a year beyond the time that it finally did close, would probably have exhausted the North to such an extent that they might then have abandoned the contest and agreed to a settlement.
Johnston died from pneumonia contracted at Sherman’s funeral by standing bareheaded in the rain. When it was suggested that he need not do this, Johnston responded that Sherman would have been doing it for him if their roles that day had been reversed.
