It might be objected that in this instance Jackson showed little respect for the discipline he so rigidly enforced, and that in the critical situation of the Confederacy his action was a breach of duty which was almost disloyalty.  Without doubt his resignation would have seriously embarrassed the Government.  To some degree at least the confidence of both the people and the army in the Administration would have become impaired.  But Jackson was fighting for a principle which was of even more importance than subordination.  Foreseeing as he did the certain results of civilian meddling, submission to the Secretary’s orders would have been no virtue.  His presence with the army would hardly have counterbalanced the untrammelled exercise of Mr. Benjamin’s military sagacity, and the inevitable decay of discipline.  It was not the course of a weak man, an apathetic man, or a selfish man.  We may imagine Jackson eating his heart out at Lexington, while the war was raging on the frontier, and the Stonewall Brigade was fighting manfully under another leader against the hosts of the invader.  The independence of his country was the most intense of all his earthly desires; and to leave the forefront of the fight before that desire had been achieved would have been more to him than most.  He would have sacrificed far more in resigning than in remaining; and there was always the possibility that a brilliant success and the rapid termination of the war would place Mr. Benjamin apparently in the right.  How would Jackson look then?  What would be the reputation of the man who had quitted the army, on what would have been considered a mere point of etiquette, in the very heat of the campaign?  No ordinary man would have faced the alternative, and have risked his reputation in order to teach the rulers of his country a lesson which might never reach them.  It must be remembered, too, that Jackson had not yet proved himself indispensable.  He had done good work at Manassas, but so had others.  His name was scarcely known beyond the confines of his own State, and Virginia had several officers of higher reputation.  His immediate superiors knew his value, but the Confederate authorities, as their action proved, placed little dependence on his judgment, and in all probability set no special store upon his services.  There was undoubtedly every chance, had not Governor Letcher intervened, that his resignation would have been accepted.  His letter then to the Secretary of War was no mere threat, the outcome of injured vanity, but the earnest and deliberate protest of a man who was ready to sacrifice even his own good name to benefit his country.