No man influential in the making of history ever knew less of the art of divining character than Jefferson Davis. Entirely ingenous himself, he persisted in attributing that virtue to every one else, utterly failing to understand the mixed motives that influence all men in most of the affairs of life. If he perceived one trait of character, real or imaginary, which appealed to his admiration, it was quite sufficient, and forthwith he proceeded to attribute to its possessor all of the other qualities which he wished him to possess. That conclusion once reached, no amount of evidence could overthrow it or even shake his confidence in its correctness.
That peculiarity, in some ways admirable in itself, was responsible for many of his mistakes and misfortunes. The first vital one attributable to that cause was Mr. Davis’ selection of the head of the commissary department of the Confederate army. Early in his military career, while stationed at Fort Crawford, a warm friendship had sprung up between himself and Lieutenant Northrop. About the time he resigned his commission an accident befell Northrop which compelled him to retire from the army also. Thereupon he studied medicine and afterward locating in Charleston became a zealous convert to the Catholic faith and beyond the spheres of church quarrels and religious polemics, remained an unimportant factor in his community. Indeed he seems to have been unable to manage his own small affairs with any degree of success, and many of his neighbors and friends believed him to be of unsound mind. Mr. Davis had not seen him, and probably knew little of his life since he left the army, a quarter of a century before. A superficial inquiry must have demonstrated that Dr. Northrop was wholly unfitted by education, temperament and experience for a position which required business training and executive ability of the first order. However, Mr. Davis, remembering the man as he had supposed him to be years before, proceeded to appoint him to the most important and difficult position under the government.
Robert Toombs
Colonel Northrop, of course, had ideas of his own and he proceeded to execute them without the slightest regard for the wishes or opinions of the able and experienced generals who commanded the Confederate armies in Northern Virginia.
Near Manassas, where Johnston and Beauregard had been ordered to form a junction, a railroad branched off from the main line and traversed the famous Shenandoah Valley, then and afterward known as the granary of the South. To have supplied the armies with provisions by the use of that line whose rolling stock was then comparatively idle would have been one of the easiest of military problems; but instead of following that course, breadstuffs were transported first from the Valley to Richmond and thence over the sadly overtaxed main line to the army at Manassas. But one result was possible which, of course, was the almost complete failure of the commissary department. Most of the Southern troops went hungry into the battle of Bull Run, and not until ten o’clock at night could meager rations be procured for the exhausted army. This fact was the real reason why General Johnston did not pursue the routed army of McDowell. Johnston, Beauregard and President Davis all concurred in the necessity of following up the victory, and the latter actually dictated the order to Colonel Jordan, but as the commissary department had completely gone to pieces, no forward movement was possible then, or, indeed, for months afterward.
