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
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