Prussia’s campaigns of ’66 and ’70.  It was not through vanity alone that he retained in his own hands the supreme control of military affairs.  The Confederate system of government was but an imitation of that which existed in the United States; and in Washington, as in Richmond, the President was not only Commander-in-Chief in name, but the arbiter on all questions of strategy and organisation; while, to go still further back, the English Cabinet had exercised the same power since Parliament became supreme.  The American people may be forgiven for their failure to recognise the deplorable results of the system they had inherited from the mother-country.  The English people had been equally blind, and in their case there was no excuse.  The mismanagement of the national resources in the war with France was condoned by the victories of Wellington.  The vicious conceptions of the Government, responsible for so many useless enterprises, for waste of life, of treasure, of opportunity, were lost in the blaze of triumph in which the struggle ended.  Forty years later it had been forgotten that the Cabinet of 1815 had done its best to lose the battle of Waterloo; the lessons of the great war were disregarded, and the Cabinet of 1853 to 1854 was allowed to work its will on the army of the Crimea.

It is a significant fact that, during the War of Secession, for the three years the control of the armies of the North remained in the hands of the Cabinet the balance of success lay with the Confederates.  But in March 1864 Grant was appointed Commander-in-Chief; Lincoln abdicated his military functions in his favour, and the Secretary of War had nothing more to do than to comply with his requisitions.  Then, for the first time, the enormous armies of the Union were manoeuvred in harmonious combination, and the superior force was exerted to its full effect.  Nor is it less significant that during the most critical period of the 1862 campaign, the most glorious to the Confederacy, Lee was Commander-in-Chief of the Southern armies.  But when Lee left Richmond for the Northern border, Davis once more assumed supreme control, retaining it until it was too late to stave off ruin.

Yet the Southern soldiers had never to complain of such constant interference on the part of the Cabinet as had the Northern; and to Jackson it was due that each Confederate general, with few exceptions, was henceforward left unhampered in his own theatre of operations.  His threat of resignation at least effected this, and, although the President still managed or mismanaged the grand operations, the Secretary of War was muzzled.