After he resigned, General Johnston earnestly advised many Southerners, some of them still alive, to do nothing that would bring war to California. “If you want to fight, go South,” was his constant counsel to all. Many followed his advice. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them were cut off by Indians in Arizona, where the savages had full swing, all the frontier army posts having been abandoned. General Johnston stayed in California till his State--Texas--seceded. Then with a few followers he traversed the savage wilderness and after many adventures reached the South.
There is a rather pathetic sidelight to the story that illustrates the simple devotion of the old-time slaves to their white masters. General Johnston had freed all his slaves before he came to California. One of them, called “Rand,” brief for “Randolph”--he had no other name--followed him as a body-servant to the Pacific. When Johnston left for the South he ordered “Rand” to stay behind. He was a famous cook and could have commanded big wages in a high-class restaurant. But the faithful body-servant would not be denied. He fought his way with his former master through the Apaches of Arizona and was with him at Shiloh when he died. He hung over the dead body of the fallen leader in a wild passion of primitive grief.
Later some hundred colored body-servants of General Johnston’s appeared at various parts of the South. The real “Rand” settled in Louisville, where he was an object of solicitous regard on the part of the Johnston family and others of the old regime.
“Rand” proved himself no less great in peace than war, for he married a widow with seven children, an act that needed moral courage of the highest sort. His career was somewhat checkered, but he was always well looked after, and “looking after” “Rand” was often quite a job.
He became something of a character in the border city; resolutely declined to be “reconstructed” and remained an unrepentant rebel to the last. He was very bitter in his talk about the “poor white trash” of the North. When he uncorked the vials of his wrath he called his adversary an “abolitionist” as the last word of scorn.
In his final illness tender Southern hands smoothed his way into the hereafter. Mrs. H. P. Hepburn of Louisville, once of San Francisco, was present when the curtain rang down on “Rand.” He raised his feeble head and said: “I’se ’gwan to meet ole Marse Johnston,” then sunk back on the rough pillow, closed his eyes and died.