Four Years in Rebel Capitals / An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death

by T. C. De Leon

At the time the first Army Bill was passed by Congress, a law was also made securing to resigned naval officers the same rank they held in the United States service. But there was scarcely a keel in Confederate waters, and small indeed was the prospect for the future; so these impatient spirits, panting for active work, were put into unsuitable positions at the very outset. Later, a bill was passed for a provisional navy, but there was no fleet for their occupation. The department, therefore, used the discretion given it to confer a few honorary titles, and to appoint a vast number of subordinate officers, for shore duty in its work-shops and navy-yards.

The acceptability of Mr. Mallory to the people, at the outset of his career, has been noted. They believed that his long experience in the committee of naval affairs was guarantee for the important trust confided to him. Moreover, he was known to be relied upon by Mr. Davis as a man of solid intellect, of industry and perseverance. If his knowledge of naval affairs was entirely theoretical, it mattered little so long as he could turn that knowledge to practical account, by the counsel and aid of some of the most efficient of the scientific sailors of the Union.

Mr. Mallory took charge of the Navy Department in March, '61. At this time the question of iron-clads had attention of naval builders on both sides of the Atlantic; and deeming them indispensable to naval warfare, the Secretary's first movement was a strong memoir to Congress, urging immediate and heavy appropriations for their construction at New Orleans and Mobile. With a treasury empty and immovably averse to anything like decisive action, the astute lawgivers of Montgomery hesitated and doubted. The most that could be forced from them were small appropriations for the fitting out of privateers.

The first venture, the "Sumter," was bought, equipped and put into commission at the end of April; and in the course of a few weeks she ran out of New Orleans, in command of Raphael Semmes, and the stars and bars were floating solitary, but defiant, over the seas. The history of her cruise, the terror she spread among the enemy's shipping, and the paralysis she sent to the very heart of his commerce, are too well known to need repetition here. Badly-built craft as she was for such a service, she was still more badly equipped; but so eminently successful was she that both Government and Congress must have been incurably blind, not to put a hundred like her upon every sea where the Union flag could float.

Had one-twentieth the sum frittered away in useless iron-clads, and worse than useless "gunboats," been put into saucy and swift wasps like the "Sumter," their stings must have driven northern commerce from the sea; and the United States ports would have been more effectually blockaded, from a thousand miles at sea, than were those of the southern fleet-bound coast.

It may not be irrelevant here to allude to the finale of the Confederate cruisers; and to recall the most inane farce of all those enacted by the madmen who held power in '66.

In the January of that year, Raphael Semmes was seized and thrown into prison. He was now charged—not with having violated his parole given to General Grant, who was personally and morally responsible for his persecution—not with doing aught but "obeying the laws themselves;" but he was charged with having escaped, the year before, from the custody of a man whose prisoner he was not and had never been—with having broken from a durance that ought to have existed! From incontrovertible testimony, we know that Captain Semmes only raised the white flag, after his vessel began to sink; that he stayed on her deck until she went down beneath him; that no boat came to him from the "Kearsage," and that he was in the water full an hour, before the boat of the "Deerhound" picked him up and carried him aboard that yacht.

But radical hatred, and thirst for vengeance on a disarmed enemy, raised the absurd plea that Semmes became a prisoner of war by raising the white flag; that by so doing he gave a moral parole! and violated it by saving himself from a watery grave and afterward taking up arms again. It is only a proof that the country was a little less mad than the radical leaders, that the unheard-of absurdity of its Navy Department was not sustained by popular opinion. It would have no doubt been chivalric and beautiful in Raphael Semmes to have drowned in the ocean, because the boat of the "Kearsage" would not pick him up after accepting his "moral parole;" but, as he did not see it in that light, and as he was never called upon to surrender by any officer of that ship, he was perfectly free the moment his own deck left him in the waves. The white flag was but a token that he desired to save the lives of his men; and would surrender them and himself, if opportunity were given. But even granting the nonsensical claim that it made him a prisoner—the laws of war demand absolute safety for prisoners; and the fact of the "Kearsage" leaving him to drown was, in itself, a release.

There is no necessity for defense of Captain Semmes' position; but it may be well to record how blind is the hate which still attempts to brand as "Pirate" a regularly-commissioned officer in service, whose long career gained him nothing but respect under the northern—nothing but glory under the southern flag. If Raphael Semmes be a "pirate," then was the northern recognition of belligerents but an active lie! Then was Robert E. Lee a marauder—Wade Hampton but a bushwhacker, and Joseph E. Johnston but a guerrilla!

When the "Sumter" began her work, she was soon followed by the "Florida"—a vessel somewhat better, but still of the same class. Under the dashing and efficient Maffitt, the "Florida," too, wrought daring destruction. Her record, like that of her rival, is too familiar for repetition; as is the later substitution of the "Alabama" for the worn-out "Sumter."