"If you mean it, why don't you say it? Call things by their right names. The people of the South are not all rebels. Why, confound it, Farragut is a Southerner; so is General Anderson; so are a hundred men, who have distinguished themselves in putting down treason. It's an insult to these men to talk about the people of the South as rebels."
"I agree with you, Commodore Portington, and what I said was only a form of expression."
"It's a very bad form of expression. Why, man, you are a Southerner yourself."
"I am; and I suppose that is what makes me so proud of the good fighting the people of the South—I mean the rebels—have done. We can't help respecting men who have behaved with so much gallantry."
"Can't we?" exclaimed the commodore, with a sneer so wholesome and honest, that Lieutenant Pillgrim withered under it. "I can help it. I have no respect for rebels and traitors under any circumstances."
"Nor I, as rebels and traitors," replied Pillgrim, mildly.
"As rebels and traitors! I don't like these fine-spun distinctions. If a man is a traitor, call him so, and swing him up on the fore-yard arm, where he belongs."
"You are willing to acknowledge that the rebels have fought well in this war?" added the lieutenant.
"They have fought well: I don't deny it."
"And you appreciate gallant conduct?"