Miles Cemetery, Brighton Township - Macoupin County IL

Donated by - Diane & John Loy Completed
A few corrections on Jones by Claude McDonald
Located about 2 ½ miles northeast of Brighton Illinois
WPA transcription

Bushrod Johnson, Major General, CSA, contributed by Diane Loy

Italics in listing from Macoupin County Genealogical Society Cemetery Book

Words in brackets [ ] or parenthesis ( )are not on stone.

Civil War Confederate Major General Johnson was born in Belmont County, Ohio on 17 Oct 1817 to a Quaker family. Despite his upbringing, he became a West Point cadet and in 1840 graduated from the United States Military Academy. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Infantry and fought in the Seminole War in Florida. During the Mexican War he was relegated to a post of commissary officer, but in 1847 after being accused of selling contraband goods, he was forced to resign and thereafter became a teacher at the Western Military Institute and the University of Nashville.

During that period, Johnson was also active in the state militias of Kentucky and Tennessee and when the Civil War broke out, he entered the service as a colonel of engineers in the Tennessee Militia. This militia shortly after became a part of the Confederate States Army.

Instrumental in the construction of Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, Johnson there commanded a wing of the army but was effectively overshadowed by the more politically astute Brig. General Gideon J. Pillow, who led the wing in a fierce assault in an attempt to break out and escape from the encircled fort. The fort and its army surrendered to Major General Ulysses S. Grant on February 16, 1862, but Johnson was able to walk unimpeded through Union lines and escaped capture.

Johnson then commanded a brigade of the Army of Mississippi at the Battle of Shiloh, and was severely wounded by the concussion of an artillery shell. After his recovery, he led his brigade in Bragg's invasion of Kentucky and the Battle of Perryville, followed by Stones River, Chickamauga, and, under James Longstreet, the Siege of Knoxville.

Promoted to major general in May of 1864, Johnson served with the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee. He commanded a division in the section of trenches manned by the South Carolinian troops in the Battle of the Crater. They captured three stands of colors and 130 prisoners that day. His men spent the remainder of the Siege of Petersburg in the trenches, ending up at the Battle of White Oak Road and Battle of Five Forks. The division was shattered at the Battle of Sayler's Creek, yet he was once again able to escape and was later paroled at Appomattox Court House without a command.

Following the War, he moved to Illinois and became a farmer. He died in Brighton, at the age of sixty-three on 12 Sept 1880 and was buried in Miles Station Cemetery in Macoupin county. In 1975 his remains were removed and he was ultimately laid to rest beside his wife Mary at the Old Nashville City Cemetery.

A ceremony honoring him and placing an historical marker on his grave by the Major General Bushrod Johnson Camp #1718 of Granite City, Illinois took place at the Nashville City Cemetery on 16 Aug 1996.


BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES: Confederate Military History, vol. X, p. 318 - Ancestry.com; General Officers of the Confederate States of America - Wikipedia; Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders by Ezra J. Warner, Louisiana State University Press, 1959; Civil War High Commands by John H., and David J. Eicher, Stanford University Press, 2001; Yankee Quaker Confederate General: The Curious Career of Bushrod Rust Johnson by Charles M. Cummings, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1971; Where the South Lost the War: An Analysis of the Fort Henry - Fort Donelson Campaign, February 1862 by Gott, Kendall D. Gott, Stackpole books, 2003.

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