Johnsonville

“Johnsonville” doesn’t mean much to most students of the Civil War. Its contribution to Union victory in the Western Theater, however, is difficult to overstate, and its history is complex, fascinating, and heretofore mostly untold. Johnsonville: Union Supply Operations on the Tennessee River and the Battle of Johnsonville, November 4–5, 1864, by Jerry T. Wooten, Ph.D., now available in paperback, remedies that oversight with the first full-length treatment of this subject.

Wooten, a former Park Manager at Johnsonville State Historic Park, unearthed a wealth of new material that sheds light on the creation and strategic role of the Union supply depot, the use of railroads and logistics, and the depot’s defense. His study covers the emergence of a civilian town around the depot, and the role all of this played in making possible the Union victories with which we are all familiar.

This sterling monograph also includes the best and most detailed account of the Battle of Johnsonville. The fighting took place on the heels of one of the most audacious campaigns of the war, when Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest led his cavalry through western Tennessee and Kentucky on a 25-day campaign. On November 4–5, 1864, Forrest’s troops attacked the depot and shelled the town, destroying tons of valuable supplies. The complex land-water operation nearly wiped out the Johnsonville supply depot, severely disrupted Gen. George Thomas’s army in Nashville, and impeded his operations against John Bell Hood’s Confederate army.

Prior works on Johnsonville focus on Forrest’s operations, but Wooten’s deep original archival research peels back the decades to reveal significantly more on that battle, as well as what life was like in and around the area for both military men and civilians. Civil War students thirst for original deeply researched studies on fresh topics, and that is exactly what Johnsonville: Union Supply Operations on the Tennessee River and the Battle of Johnsonville, November 4–5, 1864 provides them.