<P> In the wake of secession, many regular officers felt they could not betray loyalty to their home state, as a result some 313 of those officers resigned their commission and in many cases took up arms for the Confederate Army . Himself a graduate of West Point and a former regular officer, Confederate President Jefferson Davis highly prized these valuable recruits to the cause and saw that former regular officers were given positions of authority and responsibility . </P> <Ul> <Li> Richard H. Anderson </Li> <Li> P.G.T. Beauregard </Li> <Li> Milledge Luke Bonham </Li> <Li> Braxton Bragg </Li> <Li> Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr . </Li> <Li> George B. Crittenden </Li> <Li> Samuel Cooper </Li> <Li> Jubal Anderson Early </Li> <Li> Richard S. Ewell </Li> <Li> Franklin Gardner </Li> <Li> Robert S. Garnett </Li> <Li> Josiah Gorgas </Li> <Li> William Joseph Hardee </Li> <Li> Ambrose Powell Hill </Li> <Li> Daniel Harvey Hill </Li> <Li> John Bell Hood </Li> <Li> Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson </Li> <Li> Albert Sidney Johnston </Li> <Li> Joseph E. Johnston </Li> <Li> Robert E. Lee </Li> <Li> Stephen D. Lee </Li> <Li> Mansfield Lovell </Li> <Li> James Longstreet </Li> <Li> John B. Magruder </Li> <Li> Humphrey Marshall </Li> <Li> Dabney Herndon Maury </Li> <Li> John Hunt Morgan </Li> <Li> John C. Pemberton </Li> <Li> George Pickett </Li> <Li> Edmund Kirby Smith </Li> <Li> Gustavus Woodson Smith </Li> <Li> J.E.B. Stuart </Li> <Li> William B. Taliaferro </Li> <Li> Earl Van Dorn </Li> <Li> Joseph Wheeler </Li> <Li> Henry A. Wise </Li> </Ul> <Li> Richard H. Anderson </Li> <Li> Milledge Luke Bonham </Li>

At the outset of the civil war which political leader was the most experienced military leader