LITMIR.BIZ

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letter of this date, is hereby accepted.

       I am respectfully your obedient servant,

       I. Toucey.

       Raphael Semmes, Esq., late Commander U. S. Navy, Washington.

      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 Secretaryship, to a Membership 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:—

      Washington, 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, Washington.

      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 Constitution had been accepted. Senators, and members of the House of Representatives of the Federal Congress had withdrawn from their seats, under circumstances unusually solemn, and impressive, which had attracted the attention of the whole country.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 God 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 God, 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 Constitution, 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 Constitution 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 circumstances 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 Washington; 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 document, 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 élèves of the Federal Government, inasmuch as we had received our education at the military schools, and that we were guilty of ingratitude to that Government, when we withdrew from its service. This slander has no doubt had its effect, with the ignorant masses, 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 midshipmen “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 Massachusetts boys! How ungrateful of Lee, afterward, being thus a charity scholar of the North, to draw his sword against her.

      CHAPTER VIII.

       Table of Contents

      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

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