Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: November 2, 1861

It has culminated. Mr. Benjamin's quarrel with Beauregard is openly avowed. Mr. Benjamin spoke to me about it to-day, and convinced me at the time that Gen. B. was really in the wrong. He said the general had sent in his report of the battle of Manassas, in which he stated that he had submitted a plan to the department for the invasion of Maryland; and no such plan having been received, as Mr. B. says, and the matter being foreign to the business in hand, the department had seen proper to withhold the report from publication. But this did not concern him, Mr. B., because he was not the Secretary of War when the alleged plan had been sent to Richmond. But his difference with the general grew out of an attempt of the latter to organize troops and confer commands without the sanction of the department. He had rebuked the general, he said; and then the general had appealed to the President, who sustained the Secretary. Mr. B. said that Gen. B. had ascertained who was strongest with the President.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 90