uld have been in no way different had
he lived, but his death was an incalculable loss to the Confederacy. It
was Lee's opinion that he would have won the battle of Gettysburg had he
had Jackson with him, and this is more than probable, so evenly did
victory and defeat hang in the balance there. But, even then, the North
would have been far from conquered, and its superior resources and
larger armies must have won in the end. Perhaps, after all, Jackson's
death was, in a way, a blessing, since it shortened a struggle which, in
any event, could have had but one result.

Another heavy loss which the Confederacy suffered even earlier in the
war was that of Albert Sidney Johnston, killed at the battle of Shiloh.
Jefferson Davis said the cause of the South was lost when Johnston fell,
but this was, of course, only a manner of speaking, for Johnston could
not have saved it. Johnston had an adventurous career and saw a great
deal of fighting before the Civil War began. Graduating at West Point in
1826, he served as chief of staff to General Atkinson during the Black
Hawk war, and then, joining the Texan revolutionists, served first as a
private and then as commander of the Texan army. He commanded a regiment
in the war with Mexico, and in 1857, led a successful expedition against
the rebellious Mormons in Utah.

His training, then, and an experience greater than any other commander
in the Civil War started out with, fitted him for brilliant work from
the very first. At the outbreak of the war, he was put by the
Confederate government in command of the departments of Kentucky and
Tennessee, and on April 6, 1862, swept down upon Grant's unprotected
army at Shiloh. That battle might have ended in a disastrous defeat for
the North but for the accident which deprived the Confederates of their
commander. About the middle of the afternoon, while leading his men
forward to the attack which was pressing the Federals back upon the
river, he was struck by a bullet which severed an artery in the thigh.
The wound was not a fatal, nor even a very serious one, and his life
could have been saved had it been given immediate attention. But
Johnston, carried away by the prospect of impending victory and the
excitement of the fight, continued in the saddle cheering on his men,
his life-blood pulsing away unheeded, until he sank unconscious into the
arms of one of his officers. He was lifted to the ground and a surgeon
hastily summoned. But it wa