Joseph Johnston was the eighth son of Judge Peter Johnston and Mary Woods, of Virginia, whose Scotch ancestors had lived and prospered and passed away on the old plantation at Osborne’s Landing. The boy was a born soldier and foreshadowed his brilliant career, even when a child at his mother’s knee. The story is told that his father took him coon-hunting one night, and he became so interested in describing and illustrating military tactics to the negro boy who attended him that they became separated from the hunters, and fell so far behind that they could not reach them with their voices. Jo made the boy dismount and kneel on the ground with his gun presented, in imitation of a hollow square of infantry. Then he withdrew and re-appeared as a regiment of cavalry, charging down upon the hollow square; but his horse was not a war-steed and was totally untrained in battle, and suddenly shying from the squatted infantry, threw the cavalry regiment to the ground. His biographer, Robert M. Hughes, says, “of course he was wounded—he always was on every available occasion.”[1] The growth and development of the lad increased his determination to be a soldier. So marked was his predilection that his father, who had served under “Light Horse Harry Lee” in the Revolution, gave him his sword, although he was next to the youngest son. Young Johnston treasured it, and kept it bright till 1861, when the tocsin of Civil War was sounded, and, like Lee, he drew it in defense of his native State, although, like Lee, he was opposed to secession. [Illustration: GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON] The comparison of the characters of Johnston and Lee is most interesting. Born in the same year, entering West Point at the same time and graduating in the same class (that of 1829), they both saw their first active military service under General Scott. Johnston accompanied Scott on his arduous campaign in the Florida Indian war, and later to Mexico. While Lee was engaged in boundary work in Texas, Johnston was performing a similar work for his government on the Canadian line. From early manhood they were fast friends and were bound together by the same associations, the same surroundings and the same interests throughout all their lives. Both came from the Mexican War with the title of colonel. Both were opposed to secession, but both resigned their commissions in the United States army and entered the service of the Stars and Bars with the rank of colonel. Both supported, with consummate ability and unfaltering courage, the cause they held dear, and when this cause went down in defeat both met the verdict with quiet dignity. Both refused safety and honors abroad, preferring to give their abilities to rebuilding a united nation, and both lived to have abundant proof of the respect and esteem in which all people held them.