Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[282] himself on firm grounds. Experience in the old Union had sufficiently taught the Confederates what little safety to public liberty was to be expected from the representatives of the people, when Executive patronage was brought to bear; and indicated the additional lesson that even where the Executive officer had not sufficient ability to be dangerous, he might become the tool of a proscriptive and tyrannical party.

After the first battle of Manassas, a certain adviser of President Davis, who had some experience of the Congress at Montgomery, and knew the numerous efforts to shape the action of the government in favour of local interests, drew his attention to the bipartite nature of his office, and urged him to assume more of the Imperator, as the best and speediest manner of concentrating our forces for decisive action. From a conscientious regard to the advisory power of Congress, President Davis then declined to do this. How could he, as the executive officer of Congress, do it? Were not the two offices in one person clearly antagonistic? The consequence was, that before the end of the first year of the war it was manifest that a clear head and a vigorous will were wanting in the administration of military matters. The conclusion came to be almost unanimous in the public mind that the civil and military affairs of the Confederacy could not be conducted by one head, and should be separated into two distinct offices. It was argued that this plan involved the least danger to public liberty; that the civil and military powers being, each, in the control of one clear head and strong hand, would probably be most effectually exercised in the accomplishment of our independence, and that the two heads would not be as likely to unite for any end injurious to the public liberty as a Cabinet of weak, plastic characters, put in place and held in hand by one man.

In consequence of these views, a plan was matured by several leading Confederate politicians, having for its object the division of the Executive powers between a civil ruler, who should carry out the designs of Congress and watch over the liberties of the people and the safety of the Constitution, and a military leader, Imperator, or commander-in-chief, who should be entrusted with the conduct of the war, and look to Congress and the Executive for the means to carry out his plan.

The scheme was this: Gen. R. E. Lee was to be commander-in-chief and have the army of the Potomac; Johnston to be entrusted with the war in the Valley of the Mississippi East; Price in Missouri; Kirby Smith in Louisiana and Texas; Bragg in the South; Beauregard in the South-east, while Jackson, Longstreet, Hill, Whiting, and the other promising officers were to carry out their views. The commanders of divisions, above named, were to constitute a board of advisers to Congress, and each to be entrusted with discretionary powers in his own district.

President Davis was probably aware of the details of this early plot