Free Dixie Betrayed by David J. Eicher

as commissary general of subsistence. Northrop did not want
     to accept the post and did so only after Davis’s pleading. A writer visiting Montgomery caught a glimpse of Davis and his
     new commissary general together and published a pen portrait after the war: “With Mr. Davis walks an old gentleman, who bears
     so striking a family resemblance to him that one would be likely to consider him the wealthy ‘Uncle Joe’ to whom the nephew
     owed so much,” penned the writer, referring to Jefferson Davis’s older brother Joseph, not an uncle.
    He seems an erratic old personage, and jogs along with a limping, lazy stride. What marked features he has—as marked as those
     of Jeff. [Jefferson]—only more cadaverous. Nature made the two men like enough to be counted kinsmen; art and taste made them
     prefer similar colors in costume and cut of beard. But there the similarity ends. The old man’s coat hangs as loosely as if
     it were four sizes beyond his measure, and his pants are “shapeless misfits,” while his hat—such a shocking bad one.
    To make matters worse the Subsistence Department was immediately riddled with corruption, hoarding, and schemes that allowed
     only poor distribution, the many bad apples more interested in enhancing their own lives than preserving a way of life. Complaints
     against Northrop’s department were voiced right away, and Northrop soon descended into an aura of gloom and despair. 6
    The Confederate Bureau of Ordnance was ably handled by Josiah Gorgas, a forty-two-year-old Pennsylvanian who had graduated
     West Point and served in the Mexican War as an expert on ammunition. Gorgas was a dark-haired man with a dark beard, prominent
     nose, and by the time of the Civil War, a receding hairline. He was an independent man who was highly competent yet enjoyed
     constantly complaining about others. His marriage to an Alabama girl tied him to the South, despite duty at Northern arsenals
     as the war came. Gorgas began his tenure as a bureau chief with the seizure of about 429 artillery pieces and 154,000 small
     arms from former U.S. arsenals—a nice start for the fledgling department. It was, in fact, the most significant act in building
     the storehouse of Confederate weapons.
    Gorgas also was acting as chief Confederate engineer, a post that would be taken over by Danville Leadbetter, another native
     Yankee. Age forty-nine, a Maine man, Leadbetter had graduated high in his West Point class before becoming a career engineering
     officer. He served on the Pacific frontier and in New York State before transferring to Mobile, Alabama, where he settled
     in the 1850s. Prior to the outbreak of war, Leadbetter became chief engineer for the state of Alabama, and he remained loyal
     to his adoptive state when shots were fired at Sumter. His counterpart in the Engineer Bureau, the so-called corps of engineers,
     was Alfred L. Rives.
    Finally, there was the Confederate Medical Department, charged with overseeing the system of hospitals and surgeons assigned
     to regions and military units. It, too, started on shaky ground, as David C. DeLeon and then Charles H. Smith each acted as
     bureau chief before Samuel Preston Moore, another Charlestonian, took over as surgeon general. Moore, age forty-seven, was
     a graduate of the Medical College of South Carolina and a longtime army doctor who agreed to serve as surgeon general only
     reluctantly.
    As Davis was pulling together his War Department, the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy met in Montgomery for the first
     time. Sessions began on April 29, 1861, just seventeen days after the shelling of Sumter, and lasted for three weeks. Amid
     all the chaos and furor, Jefferson Davis had a great deal to attempt to balance. There were the politicians who thought they
     should have received appointments in the Confederate government but didn’t. There were old friends who wanted favors and old
     enemies with scores to settle. There were many who thought