Early Years
Johnston was born at Longwood House in "Cherry Grove", near Farmville, Virginia. (Longwood House later burned down. The rebuilt house was the birthplace in 1827 of Charles S. Venable, an officer on the staff of Robert E. Lee, and is now the home of the president of Longwood University.) His grandfather, Peter Johnston, emigrated to Virginia from Scotland in 1726. Joseph was the seventh son of Judge Peter Johnston (1763-1831) and Mary Valentine Wood (1769-1825), a niece of Patrick Henry. He was named for Major Joseph Eggleston, under whom his father served in the American Revolutionary War, in the command of Light-Horse Harry Lee. His brother Charles Clement Johnston served as a congressman, and his nephew John Warfield Johnston was a senator; both represented Virginia. In 1811, the Johnston family moved to Abingdon, Virginia, a town near the Tennessee border, where Peter built a home he named Panecillo.
Johnston attended the United States Military Academy, nominated by John C. Calhoun while he was Secretary of War, days before he was inaugurated as vice president in 1825. He was moderately successful at academics and received only a small number of disciplinary demerits. He graduated in 1829, ranking 13th of 46 cadets, and was appointed a second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Artillery. He would become the first West Point graduate to be promoted to a general officer in the regular army, reaching a higher rank in the U.S. Army than did his 1829 classmate, Robert E. Lee (2nd of 46).
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