Memoirs of Service Afloat, During the War Between the States Part 4

_Commander_ RAPHAEL SEMMES, _Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C._

Here was the sound for which I had been so anxiously listening. Secession was now indeed a reality, and the time had come for me to arouse myself to action. The telegram threw my small family-circle into great commotion. My wife, with the instincts of a woman, a wife, and a mother, seemed to realize, as by intuition, all the dangers and difficulties that lay before me. She had been hoping without hope, that I would not be subjected to the bitter ordeal, but the die was now cast, and with a few tears, and many prayers she nerved herself for the sacrifices, and trials that she knew were before her. Her children were to be withdrawn from school, her comfortable home broken up, and she was to return, penniless, to her people, to abide with them the fortunes of a b.l.o.o.d.y, and a doubtful war.

The heroism of woman! how infinitely it surpa.s.ses that of man. With all her gentleness, and tenderness, and natural timidity, in nine cases in ten, she has more nerve than the other s.e.x, in times of great emergency.

With a bleeding and bursting heart, she is capable of putting on the composure, and lovely serenity of an angel, binding up the wounds of a husband or son, and when he is restored to health and vigor, buckling on his sword anew, and returning him to the battle-field. Glorious women of the South! what an ordeal you have pa.s.sed through, and how heroically you have stood the trying test. You lost the liberty which your husbands, sires, and sons struggled for, but only for a period. The blood which you will have infused into the veins of future generations will yet rise up to vindicate you, and "call you blessed."

The telegram reached me about four o'clock, P. M., and I responded to it, on the same evening as follows:

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, Feb. 14, 1861.

Hon. C. M. CONRAD, Chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs, Congress of the Confederate States:--Despatch received; I will be with you immediately.

Respectfully, &c., R. SEMMES.

The next morning, I repaired, as usual, to the office of the Light House Board, in the Treasury building, General John A. Dix being then the Secretary of the Treasury, and _ex officio_ President of the Board, and wrote the following resignation of my commission, as a Commander in the United States Navy:

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C., Feb. 15, 1861.

SIR:--I respectfully tender through you, to the President of the United States, this, the resignation of the commission which I have the honor to hold as a Commander in the Navy of the United States. In severing my connection with the Government of the United States, and with the Department over which you preside, I pray you to accept my thanks for the kindness which has characterized your official deportment towards me.

I have the honor to be very respectfully your obedient servant,

RAPHAEL SEMMES, _Commander U. S. Navy_.

_Hon._ ISAAC TOUCEY, _Secretary of the Navy_, _Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C._

On the same day, I received the following acceptance of my resignation:--

Navy Department, Feb. 15, 1861.

SIR:--Your resignation as a Commander in the Navy of the United States, tendered in your letter of this date, is hereby accepted.

I am respectfully your obedient servant, I. TOUCEY.

RAPHAEL SEMMES, Esq., _late Commander_ _U. S. Navy, Was.h.i.+ngton_.

A few days previously to my resignation, by the death of a lamented member of the Light-House Board, I had been promoted from the Secretarys.h.i.+p, to a Members.h.i.+p of that Board, and it now became necessary for me to inform the Board officially, of my being no longer a member of it, which I did in the following communication:--

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C., Feb. 16, 1861.

SIR:--I have the honor to inform you, that I have resigned my commission, as a Commander in the Navy of the United States, and that, as a consequence, I am no longer a member of the Light-House Board. In severing thus my connection with the Board, at which I have had the honor to hold a seat, since the 17th of November, 1858, I desire to say to the members, individually, and collectively, that I shall carry with me to my home in the South, a grateful recollection of the amenities, and courtesies which have characterized, on their part, our official intercourse.

I am very respectfully your obedient servant, RAPHAEL SEMMES.

_Commander_ T. A. JENKINS, _U. S. N._, _Secretary Light-House Board, Was.h.i.+ngton_.

I left in the Light-House Board, a South Carolinian, and a Virginian, both of whom were too loyal to their places, to follow the lead of their States. The South Carolinian has been rewarded with the commission of a Rear-Admiral, and the Virginian with that of a Commodore. The presence of these gentlemen in the Board may account for the fact, that my letter was not even honored with an acknowledgment of its receipt.

I have said that there was no talk at this time, about traitors, and treason. The reader will observe how openly, and as a matter of course, all these transactions were conducted. The seceded States had been several months in getting their Conventions together, and repealing, with all due form, and ceremony, the ordinances by which the Federal Const.i.tution had been accepted. Senators, and members of the House of Representatives of the Federal Congress had withdrawn from their seats, under circ.u.mstances unusually solemn, and impressive, which had attracted the attention of the whole country. Mr. Jefferson Davis, in particular, had taken leave of a full Senate, with crowded galleries, in a speech of great dignity and power, in the course of which he said: "We will invoke the G.o.d of our Fathers, who delivered them from the power of the Lion, to protect us from the ravages of the Bear; and thus putting our trust in G.o.d, and in our own firm hearts, and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may."

As the resignation of each officer of the Army, and Navy went in, it was well understood what his object was, and yet we have seen, that up to this period, the Government accepted them all, and permitted the officers to depart to their respective States. It was not known, as yet, to what extent the disintegration might go, and it was not safe therefore to talk of treason. "The wayward sisters" might decide to go in a body, in which event it would not have been _policy_ to attempt to prevent them, or to discuss questions of treason with them. The Secretary of the Navy did not think of arresting me, for telegraphing to the Congress of the Confederate States, that I would be with it, immediately; nor did he, though he knew my purpose of drawing my sword against the Federal Government, if necessary, refuse to accept my resignation. Nay, President Buchanan had decided that he had no power under the Federal Const.i.tution, to coerce a State; though, like a weak old man as he had now become, he involved himself afterward in the inconsistency of attempting to hold possession of the ceded places within the limits of the States which had withdrawn from the Union. It could not but follow, logically, from the premise, that there was no power in the Federal Const.i.tution to coerce a State, that the State had the right to secede; for clearly any one may do that which no one has the right to prevent him from doing.

It was under such circ.u.mstances as these, that I dissolved my connection with the Federal Government, and returned to the condition of a private citizen, with no more obligation resting upon me, than upon any other citizen. The Federal Government, itself, had formally released me from the contract of service I had entered into with it, and, as a matter of course, from the binding obligation of any oath I had taken in connection with that contract. All this was done, as the reader has seen, before I moved a step from the city of Was.h.i.+ngton; and yet a subsequent Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Gideon Welles, has had the hardihood and indecency of accusing me of having been a "deserter from the service." He has deliberately put this false accusation on record, in a public doc.u.ment, in face of the facts I have stated--all of which were recorded upon the rolls of his office. I do not speak here of the clap-trap he has used about "treason to the flag," and the other stale nonsense which he has uttered in connection with my name, for this was common enough among his countrymen, and was perhaps to have been expected from men smarting under the castigation I had given them, but of the more definite and explicit charge, of "_deserting from the service_," when the service, itself, as he well knew, had released me from all my obligations to it.

Another charge, with as little foundation, has been made against myself, and other officers of the Army and Navy, who resigned their commissions, and came South. It has been said that we were in the condition of _eleves_ of the Federal Government, inasmuch as we had received our education at the military schools, and that we were guilty of ingrat.i.tude to that Government, when we withdrew from its service. This slander has no doubt had its effect, with the ignorant ma.s.ses, but it can scarcely have been entertained by any one who has a just conception of the nature of our federal system of government. It loses sight of the fact, that the States are the creators, and the Federal Government the creature; that not only the military schools, but the Federal Government itself belongs to the States. Whence came the fund for the establishment of these schools? From the States. In what proportion did the States contribute it? Mr. Benton has answered this question, as the reader has seen, when he was discussing the effect of the tariffs under which the South had so long been depleted.

He has told us, that four States alone, Virginia, the two Carolinas and Georgia, defrayed three fourths of the expenses of the General Government; and taking the whole South into view, this proportion had even increased since his day, up to the breaking out of the war.

Of every appropriation, then, that was made by Congress for the support of the military schools, three fourths of the money belonged to the Southern States. Did these States send three fourths of the students to those schools? Of course not--this would have been something like justice to them; but justice to the Southern States was no part of the scheme of the Federal Government. With the exception of a few cadets, and mids.h.i.+pmen "at large," whom the President was authorized to appoint--the intention being that he should appoint the sons of deceased officers of the Army and Navy, but the fact being that he generally gave the appointment to his political friends--the appointments to these schools were made from the several States, in proportion to population, and as a matter of course, the North got the lion's share. But supposing the States to have been equally represented in those schools, what would have been the result? Why, simply that the South not only educated her own boys, but educated three fourths of the Northern boys, to boot. Virginia, for instance, at the same time that she sent young Robert E. Lee to West Point, to be educated, put in the public treasury not only money enough to pay for his education, and maintenance, but for the education and maintenance of three Ma.s.sachusetts boys! How ungrateful of Lee, afterward, being thus a charity scholar of the North, to draw his sword against her.

CHAPTER VIII.

AUTHOR PROCEEDS TO MONTGOMERY, AND REPORTS TO THE NEW GOVERNMENT, AND IS DISPATCHED NORTHWARD, ON A SPECIAL MISSION.

On the evening of the 16th of February, the day after I had resigned my commission, I took a sorrowful leave of my family, and departed for Montgomery, by the way of Fredericksburg and Richmond. Virginia and North Carolina had not yet seceded, and anxious debates were going on, on the all-absorbing question, in each town and village in these two States, through which I pa.s.sed. It was easy to see, that the great majority of the people were with the extreme South, in this her hour of need, but there were some time-servers and trimmers, who still talked of conciliation, and of guarantees. They inquired eagerly after news from Was.h.i.+ngton, at all the stations at which the train stopped, and seemed disappointed when they found we had nothing more to tell them, than they had already learned through the telegraph.

On the evening of the 18th, I entered the level tract of pine lands between West Point, and Montgomery. The air had become soft, and balmy, though I had left a region of frosts, and snow, only two days before. The pine woods were on fire as we pa.s.sed through them, the flames now and then running up a lightwood tree, and throwing a weird and fitful glare upon the pa.s.sing train. The scene was peculiarly Southern, and reminded me that I was drawing near my home, and my people, and I mechanically repeated to myself the words of the poet:

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!"

And my heart, which up to that moment, had felt as though a heavy weight were pressing upon it, began to give more vigorous beats, and send a more inspiring current through my veins. Under this happy influence I sank, as the night advanced, and the train thundered on, into the first sound sleep which had visited my weary eyelids, since I had resigned my commission, and read at the foot of the letter accepting my resignation, my name inscribed as plain "Esq." This night-ride, through the burning pine woods of Alabama, afterward stood as a great gulf in my memory, forming an impa.s.sable barrier, as it were, between my past, and my future life. It had cost me pain to cross the gulf, but once crossed, I never turned to look back. When I washed and dressed for breakfast, in Montgomery, the next morning, I had put off the old man, and put on the new. The labors, and a.s.sociations of a lifetime had been inscribed in a volume, which had been closed, and a new book, whose pages were as yet all blank, had been opened.

My first duty was to put myself in communication with Mr. Conrad, the chairman of the Committee of Naval Affairs. Several naval officers had preceded me to the seat of the new government, and others were arriving.

It was agreed that there should be a special meeting on the next day, in joint session, of the two committees--on military and naval affairs.

The Confederate Congress was in session in the State Capitol, and about noon, I repaired thither to witness the spectacle. They did me the honor to admit me to the floor, and upon casting my eyes over the august a.s.sembly, I recognized a number of familiar faces. General Howell Cobb of Georgia was the President; Toombs, Crawford, and other distinguished men were there from the same State. Curry, McRae, Robert H. Smith and other able men were there from Alabama. In short the Congress was full of the best talent of the South. It was by far the best Congress that ever a.s.sembled under the new government. It was a convention as well as a Congress, since it was charged with the establishment of a Provisional Government. Every one realized the greatness of the crisis that was upon us, and hence the very best men in the community had been selected to meet the emergency. The harmony of the body was equal to its ability, for, in the course of a few weeks, it had put the complicated machinery of a government in motion, and was already taking active measures for defence, in case the Federal power should decide upon making war upon us.

Mr. Davis, the Provisional President, had preceded me to the capital, only a few days, and my next step was to call upon him. I had known him in the city of Was.h.i.+ngton. He received me kindly, and almost the first question which he asked me, was whether I had disembarra.s.sed myself of my Federal commission. I replied to him that I had done so, as a matter of course, before leaving Was.h.i.+ngton, and that my allegiance henceforth belonged to the new government, and to the Southern people. He seemed gratified at this declaration, and entered into a free, and frank conversation with me, on the subject of the want of preparation for defence, in which he found our States, and the great labor that lay before us, to prepare for emergencies. Congress, he said, has not yet had time to organize a navy, but he designed to make immediate use of me, if I had no objection. I told him that my services were at his command, in any capacity he thought fit to employ them. He then explained to me his plan of sending me back to the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, and thence into the Northern States, to gather together, with as much haste as possible, such persons, and materials of war as might be of most pressing necessity.

The persons alluded to, were to be mechanics skilled in the manufacture, and use of ordnance, and rifle machinery, the preparation of fixed ammunition, percussion caps, &c. So exclusively had the manufacture of all these articles for the use of the United States, been confined to the North, under "the best government the world ever saw," that we had not even percussion caps enough to enable us to fight a battle, or the machines with which to make them, although we had captured all the forts, and a.r.s.enals within our limits, except Fort Sumter and Fort McRae. The President was as calm and unmoved as I had ever seen him, and was living in a very simple, and unpretending style at the Exchange Hotel. He had not yet selected all his Cabinet; nor indeed had he so much as a private secretary at his command, as the letter of instructions which he afterward presented me, for my guidance, was written with his own hand. This letter was very full, and precise, frequently descending into detail, and manifesting an acquaintance with bureau duties, scarcely to have been expected from one who had occupied his exalted positions.

On the next day, I attended the joint-session of the two committees above named. These committees were composed, as was to have been expected, of some of the best men of the Congress. Conrad, Crawford, Curry, and the brilliant young Bartow of Georgia were present, among others whose names I do not now recall. But few naval officers of any rank had as yet withdrawn from the old service; Rousseau, Tattnall, Ingraham, and Randolph were all the captains; and Farrand, Brent, Semmes, and Hartstone were all the commanders. Of these there were present before the committees, besides myself, Rousseau, Ingraham, and Randolph; Major Wm. H. Chase, late of the engineers of the Federal Army, was also present. Randolph commanded the Navy Yard at Pensacola, and Chase the military defences. We discussed the military and naval resources of the country, and devised such means of defence as were within our reach--which were not many--to enable us to meet the most pressing exigences of our situation, and separated after a session of several hours. I can do no more, of course, than briefly glance at these things, as I am not writing, as before remarked, the history of the war.

The next morning I called again on the President, received my instructions, and departed Northward on the mission which had been a.s.signed me. I will be brief in the description of this mission also. I stopped a day at Richmond, and examined the State a.r.s.enal, in charge of Capt. Dimmock, and the Tredegar Iron Works; having been especially enjoined to report upon the present, and future capacity of these works for the casting of cannon, shot, sh.e.l.ls, &c. The establishment had already turned its attention in this direction, and I was gratified to find that it was capable of almost indefinite enlargement, and that it could be made a most valuable auxiliary to us. The reader will see how confidently we already reckoned upon the support of Virginia.

Reaching Was.h.i.+ngton again, I visited the a.r.s.enal, and inspected such of its machinery as I thought worth my notice, particularly an improved percussion-cap machine which I found in operation. I also held conferences with some mechanics, whom I desired to induce to go South. Whilst I was in Was.h.i.+ngton Mr. Abraham Lincoln, the newly elected President of the United States, arrived, for the purpose of being inaugurated. Being purely a sectional President, and feeling probably that he had no just right to rule over the South, he had come into the city by night, and in disguise, afraid to trust himself among a people of whom he claimed to be Chief Magistrate. Poor old General Winfield Scott was then verging toward senility, and second childhood, and had contributed no little, perhaps, to Mr. Lincoln's alarm. He had been gathering together troops for some days, in the Federal capital, for the purpose of inaugurating, amid bayonets, a President of the United States. It had been the boast of the American people, heretofore, that their Presidents did not need guards, but trusted wholly for their security, to the love, and confidence of their const.i.tuents, but the reign of peace, and good will was at an end, and the reign of the bayonet was to ensue. The rumbling of artillery through the streets of Was.h.i.+ngton, and the ring of grounded arms on the pavements, had sounded the death-knell of liberty in these States for generations. Swarms of visitors from far and near, in the North and West, had flocked to Was.h.i.+ngton, to see _their_ President inaugurated, and were proud of this spectacle of arms; too stupid to see its fearful significance.

The auspicious day, the 4th of March, at length arrived, and whilst the glorious pageant is being prepared; whilst the windows and the house-tops along Pennsylvania Avenue are being thronged with a motley population of men and women, come to see the show; whilst the President elect, in a hollow square of bayonets, is marching toward the Capitol, the writer of these pages, having again taken leave of his family, was hurrying away from the desecration of a capital, which had been ceded by a too credulous Maryland, and Virginia, and which had been laid out by Was.h.i.+ngton. As I left the Baltimore depot, extra trains were still pouring their thousands into the streets of Was.h.i.+ngton. I arrived in New York, the next day, and during the next three weeks, visited the West Point Academy, whither I went to see a son, who was a cadet at the Inst.i.tution, and who afterward became a major of light artillery, in the Confederate service; and made a tour through the princ.i.p.al work-shops of New York, Connecticut, and Ma.s.sachusetts.

I found the people everywhere, not only willing, but anxious to contract with me. I purchased large quant.i.ties of percussion caps in the city of New York, and sent them by express without any disguise, to Montgomery. I made contracts for batteries of light artillery, powder, and other munitions, and succeeded in getting large quant.i.ties of the powder s.h.i.+pped. It was agreed between the contractors and myself, that when I should have occasion to use the telegraph, certain other words were to be subst.i.tuted, for those of military import, to avoid suspicion.

I made a contract, conditioned upon the approval of my Government, for the removal to the Southern States, of a complete set of machinery for rifling cannon, with the requisite skilled workmen to put it in operation. Some of these men, who would thus have sold body, and soul to me, for a sufficient consideration, occupied high social positions, and were men of wealth. I dined with them, at their comfortable residences near their factories, where the music of boring out cannon, accompanied the clatter of the dishes, and the popping of champagne-corks; and I had more than one business interview with gentlemen, who occupied the most costly suites of apartments at the Astor House in New York City. Many of these gentlemen, being unable to carry out their contracts with the Confederate States because of the prompt breaking out of the war, afterward obtained lucrative contracts from the Federal Government, and became, in consequence, intensely _loyal_. It would be a _quasi_ breach of honor to disclose their names, as they dealt with me, pretty much as conspirators against their government are wont to deal with the enemies of their government, secretly, and with an implied confidence that I would keep their secret. It is accordingly safe.

In the mean time, the great revolution was progressing. Abraham Lincoln had delivered his inaugural address, with triple rows of bayonets between him, and the people to whom he was speaking, in which address he had puzzled his hearers, and was no doubt puzzled himself, as to what he really meant. He was like President Buchanan; now he saw it, and now he didn't. He would not coerce the States, but he would hold on to the ceded places within their limits, and collect the public revenue. Texas, and Arkansas went out whilst I was in New York. The bulletin-boards at the different newspaper offices were daily thronged by an unwashed mult.i.tude, in search of some new excitement. The Northern public was evidently puzzled. It had at first rather treated secession as a joke. They did not think it possible that the Southern people could be in earnest, in dissolving their connection with a people, so eminently proper as themselves; but they now began to waver in this opinion. Still they forbore any decided demonstration. Like sensible men they preferred waiting until they could see how large a bull they were required to take by the horns.

Toward the latter part of my stay in New York I received the following letter from the Hon. Stephen R. Mallory, who had been appointed Secretary of the Navy, which branch of the public service had been organized since I had left Montgomery: