From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (126):
[Jefferson] Davis read [the letter from Joseph E. Johnston] with a wrath that quickly rose to match the sender’s. … In composing his reply, however, Davis employed not a foil but a cutlass. Rejecting the nimble parry and riposte of thetoirc and logic, at both of which he was a master, he delivered instead one quick slash of scorn:
Sir: I have just received and read your letter of the 12th instant. Its language is, as you say, unusual; its arguments and statements utterly one sided, and its insinuations as unfounded as they are unbecoming.
I am, &c.
Jeff’n Davis.“