Background
JOHNSON, Bushrod Rust was born on October 7, 1817 in Norwich, Musingum County, Ohio, United States, United States. Son of Noah and Rachel (Spencer) Johnson.
JOHNSON, Bushrod Rust was born on October 7, 1817 in Norwich, Musingum County, Ohio, United States, United States. Son of Noah and Rachel (Spencer) Johnson.
Graduated from the United States Military Academy, 1840.
He attended St. Clairsville Academy, Ohio, and graduated twenty-third in a class of forty-two from the U.S. Military Academy in 1840. He entered the army as a second lieutenant and held various frontier duties. Johnson, nominally a Quaker, was not particularly religious.
He married Mary Hatch on April 12,1852. They had one son. After fighting in the Florida War in 1853-1854 and serving on the Kansas frontier as a first lieutenant in 1844, Johnson fought at Palo Alto, Resaca, and Monterrey during the Mexican War. In 1847, he was forced to resign his commission because he had been discovered smuggling.
From 1848 to 1851, he was a professor of philosophy and chemistry at Western Military Institute in Georgetown, Kentucky, where he was superintendent from 1851 to 1855. In 1855, he became superintendent of the Military College of the University of Nashville. A secessionist, he also served as a colonel in the Tennessee Militia during the 1850s.
When the war began, he volunteered as a colonel of engineers under Albert Sidney Johnston in the provisional Army of Tennessee. Appointed brigadier general in the Confederate Army on January 24, 1862, he was captured at Fort Donelson, escaped, and was later conspicuous at the battle of Shiloh, where he was wounded in the spring of 1862. He fought at the battle of Perry ville during the Kentucky campaign of 1862 and at Murfreesboro.
As a division commander at the battle of Chickamauga in 1863, he entered the gap in the federal lines and defeated the federal right wing. Johnson also commanded a division under General James Longstreet in east Tennessee and participated in the battle of Bean’s Station and in the defense of Knoxville in late 1863. On May 21,1864, he was promoted to major general.
He fought at Petersburg and at Drewry’s Bluff in 1864 and at Sayler’s Creek in 1865. He surrendered with Lee at Appomattox and was paroled. In 1866, he was a professor of engineering, mechanics, and natural philosophy at the University of Nashville, where he was also chancellor from 1870 to 1874.
He then retired to a farm near Brighton, Illinois.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.
Spouse Mary Hatch.