Southwest, threatened with suppression any newspaper that
published anything which might impair confidence in a commanding
officer. How could he have dared to do this, was the cry, unless
the President was behind him? And when General Bragg assumed a
similar attitude toward the press, the same cry was raised.
Throughout the summer of victories, even while the thrilling
stories of Seven Pines, the Peninsula, Second Manassas, were
sounding like trumpets, these mutterings of discontent formed an
ominous accompaniment.

Yancey, speaking of the disturbed temper of the time, attributed
it to the general lack of information on the part of Southern
people as to what the Confederate Government was doing. His
proposed remedy was an end of the censorship which that
Government was attempting to maintain, the abandonment of the
secret sessions of its Congress, and the taking of the people
into its full confidence. Now a Senator from Alabama, he
attempted, at the opening of the congressional session in the
autumn of 1862, to abolish secret sessions, but in his efforts he
was not successful.

There seems little doubt that the Confederate Government had
blundered in being too secretive. Even from Congress, much
information was withheld. A curious incident has preserved what
appeared to the military mind the justification of this
reticence. The Secretary of War refused to comply with a request
for information, holding that be could not do so "without
disclosing the strength of our armies to many persons of
subordinate position whose secrecy cannot be relied upon." "I beg
leave to remind you," said he, "of a report made in response to a