IN THE NAVAL SERVICE
CHAPTER I
THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR
In 1859, after seventeen years of almost continuous sea service, for during all that time I had never been on shore more than two months at any one time, I determined to abandon the sea and pass the remainder of my life on shore.
The fact that I had just taken to myself a wife was, no doubt, a very potent factor in bringing me to this decision, which was strengthened by a favorable opportunity being presented just then for investing my savings in a safe commercial enterprise in Boston.
So I fell in with it, rented a nice little house in a pleasant suburb within sight of the gilded dome of the State House, and there set up my lares and penates.
At first this radical change from the free and easy habits of a sea life to the more rigid conventional routine of a mercantile career rather irked me, but by the end of a year I had shaken down into my new rôle, and should probably have become reasonably well contented to pass the remainder of my days in a ’longshore life, had it not been for the march of events, which, in bringing about the upheaval of a nation, sent me off on salt water again.
Early in April, 1861, the North was startled by the news of the attack upon Fort Sumter by the Southern forces, which followed so quickly after the secession of South Carolina, and on the 19th of the month the excitement in Boston was sent up to fever heat by the telegrams announcing the cowardly attack upon the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment by the Baltimore roughs, on its passage through that city.