General Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations During the Civil War

[225] no reasonable hope of relief. As the Confederate Government had been unable to prevent a siege, it was certain that it could not break one. As the capture of the place could not be prevented, the army should have been saved by leading it away.

If I and the reinforcements sent from Beauregard's department had been ordered to Mississippi in April, in time to join General Pemberton's army, I could have directed the Confederate forces, and would have been responsible for events; but, by hesitating to transfer troops and send a new commander until too late, the Administration made itself and General Pemberton responsible for consequences, and those consequences were the ruin of our affairs in Tennessee as well as in Mississippi. They were ruined in Mississippi by the long delay of the Administration in sending reenforcements to General Pemberton's army; and in Tennessee, by a draft of eight thousand men from General Bragg's army, whose going to Mississippi was useless, because too late, while it so weakened that army as to enable its antagonist to drive it rapidly across the Cumberland Mountain and Tennessee River.

It would have been much less hazardous to send Longstreet's corps to Mississippi than to weaken the Army of Tennessee, then scarcely strong enough to cope with that of General Rosecrans. The military condition in Virginia seems to have been such in all the spring of 1863, that that corps was not required in General Lee's army, for in all that time it was detached generally in the southern and eastern parts of the State, in some service far less important, certainly, than that which might have been given it