No one, then, could long retain Davis's confidence without an abundant supply of tact and sympathy. Probably the two men who made most use of these qualities in their dealings with the President were Lee and Benjamin. But a most instructive difference strikes us here. Lee's tact sprang spontaneously from natural human kindness. He treated his inferiors exactly as he treated his sole superior and was as courteous and sympathetic to the humblest soldier as to the president of the Confederacy. With Benjamin it is wholly otherwise. He was at the War Office for just six months. In that time I will not say he quarreled with everybody under him, but he alienated everybody, and quarreled with so many that his stay there is but a record of harsh words and recrimination. One brief telegram to McCulloch will abundantly illustrate the cause of this state of things: "I cannot understand why you withdrew your troops instead of pursuing the enemy when his leaders were quarreling and his army separated into parts under different commanders. Send an explanation." 31
This sort of dispatch, from a lawyer who had never seen a skirmish to generals of old experience and solid training, was not likely to breed good feeling, much less to restore it. It did not. Benjamin had trouble with Wise, trouble with Beauregard, trouble repeatedly with J. E. Johnston, and drove Jackson to a resignation which, if it had been accepted, might have changed the course of the war. This is surely a pretty record for six months.
