Just have the telegraph line break.
I understand why Benjamin was out but why is Reagan? I remembered he was a Texan and ran the Post Office very competently but what keeps him from being elected (I am missing something)
That won't stop the Confederates from firing on Ft Sumter, just delay it.
Reagan is out because he's a Texan, which was a political backwater with hardly any population. Any Provisional Confederate President is coming from the 7 states that had seceded at that point, but Texas and Florida were too unimportant. That leaves men from Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. There's probably less chance of a South Carolinian, they were seen as more extremist and there was no real need to appeal to their people to get them fully committed to the Confederacy. Robert Barnwell might be an exception.
One potential issue with Stephens is that there is a good chance that Davis would wind up co-ordinating military operations anyway.
Stephens, as you note, did not have military experience himself, so presumably would have tried to find a military supremo, either a strong Secretary of War or an army chief of staff or commander in chief.
You could always go for the extremely unlikely and long shot of Sam Houston. But you would have to change a lot to get him to be the President, given that he was an ardent and devoted Unionist.
Another option I'm a fan of is John A. Quitman, who was about the only Fire Eating radical with a brain on his shoulders. Avoid him catching National Hotel Disease in 1856 and his death two years later is easy enough to remove at which point he's a cunning Southern former Governor and legislator with Military and Filibuster experience.
Davis may have been right to put Johnston behind A. S. Johnston and Lee. And Johnston's letter of protest was over the top in its length and rhetoric.
But If Davis had been the leader Lincoln was, he would have recognized that Johnston was just blowing off steam and ignored it. Instead he responded with a brutal dismissal. He had to know this would forever poison his relationship with Johnston, but his pride required it.
Not only did Davis dismiss Johnston's letter and the feeling behind it in a brutal and unfeeling manner but he took Johnston's letter before his cabinet and railed against it's content and it's author and informed the members of his cabinet just what he was going to say in reply, thereby ensuring that he not only did he fail to address any of Johnston's concerns or sooth his wounded pride but he also made this dispute hot topic amungst Richmond society because the wives of his cabinet members gossipped about it.
Anyone who could look up to Braxton Bragg and think him fit to command large bodies of men had no business handing out army assignments.
Point. But I mean, Bragg was such a total moody prick that could not get along with his subordinates and peers that you'd have to be willfully blind to it to go, "yes, I shall make him a full general and give him an army."Bragg wasn't even the worst command choice by Davis. Polk and Northrop each did far more damage to the Confederacy than did Bragg.
Point. But I mean, Bragg was such a total moody prick that could not get along with his subordinates and peers that you'd have to be willfully blind to it to go, "yes, I shall make him a full general and give him an army."
My only quibble with your post--ASJ being unfit. We'll never really know, but he certainly knocked Grant on his ass during the first part of Shiloh. His plan, had it been carried out by Beauregard, was simple and most likely would have been more effective than what actually happened. Seems to me that he showed potential
McClellan was not ordered off until after he had been repulsed by Lee. There are several differences between 1862 and 1864 that you are ignoring. In 1864, Robert E Lee said ""We must destroy this Army of Grant's before he gets to the James River. If he gets there it will become a siege and then it will be a mere question of time."
Robert Toombs was the man most likely to come out of the Montgomery Convention as President. In some ways, he would have been a better President than Davis. His tenure in the Senate revealed him to be an expert on fiscal policy, which would have been of vast benefit to the Confederacy (poor fiscal policy on the part of the Confederate government did more damage to them than any number of battlefield defeats). He also was generally a man of intelligence and would have shared with Davis the great advantage Davis brought to the office: unwavering devotion to the cause.
However, Toombs had three gigantic strikes against him. First, he was cantankerous and argumentative - not bad for a legislator but bad for an executive. Second, he had a passionate hatred of West Pointers, always being suspicious of a standing army and sharing the old Jeffersonian belief in a citizen militia. This would not have helped his relations with generals. Third, he was half drunk most of the time. Indeed, this is why he failed to gain the presidency in 1861; the night before the vote, he got utterly smashed in the bar room of the Exchange Hotel and made an absolute fool of himself in front of several delegates, who quickly spread the word about what had happened.