But there was another evil soon to become only too painfully apparent. Brigadier Shelton had been sent for to co-operate with the General; but it was manifest that there was never likely to be any co-operation between them. Each has left upon record his opinion of the conduct of the other. The General says that the Brigadier was contumacious and insubordinate. The Brigadier says that he was thwarted in all his efforts to do good service—that he could not even place a gun in position without being reminded by the General that he had no independent command. Upon whomsoever the greater amount of blame may rest, the result was sufficiently deplorable. The military chiefs never acted in concert.[136] Shelton was a man of a hard uncompromising nature, and it is probable that he had little toleration for the indecision of the general, and was little inclined to regard with tenderness and compassion the infirmities of the poor old chief. He did what he was commanded to do, if not with much military skill, at all events with an unflinching gallantry, to which the general himself bore willing testimony.[137] But from the absence of a right understanding between them a fatality attended almost every enterprise. Hesitation and delay at the outset—then vacillation and contradiction—resolutions taken and then abandoned—orders issued and then countermanded—so irritated the Brigadier, that his temper, never of a very genial cast, was generally in a somewhat tempestuous state before he took the field at the head of his men. How far we may rightly attribute to this the want of success which attended the Brigadier’s operations can only now be conjectured; but it is very certain that in all of them the daring of the soldier was more conspicuous than the judgment of the commander.