Robert E. Lee - right at the end of the war, too late to make any difference.
Before that, the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, had tried to replicate this role for himself, as a one-time Army officer who imagined he was a great General. Events showed that he was out of his depth in both the military and the political arena.
Robert E. Lee is the most famous one, but there were many others.
The leaders of the Confederacy believed that the Union states were the enemy. This belief was largely influenced by the slave trade.
Lincoln
Overall leaders were Lt. Gen. Irwin McDowell for the Union and Gens. Joseph Johnston and Pierre G.T. Beauregard for the Confederacy.
noisy neighbor
Control of all military bases in its territory
because the were the most respected people in the clans
Control of all military bases in its territory
Because Lincoln had jailed its pro-Confederate leaders.
There was a chance that it would join the Confederacy, because it was a deeply divided state, and its leaders were Southern sympathisers. Lincoln acted promptly (and illegally) to jail those leaders, and the danger of a Confederate state surrounding Washington was averted.
They lacked great leaders, and at the beginning of the war were not fighting with as much devotion to the cause as the Confederacy.
One advantage that the Confederacy had in the war was its talented military leaders.
There is an infinite universe of speculation possible.