THE FORMATION OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT, AND THE RESIGNATION OF OFFICERS OF THE FEDERAL ARMY AND NAVY.
As I am not writing a history of the war, but only of a very small portion of the war, it cannot be expected that I will follow events in a connected train. I have detained the reader, so far, as to give him a continuous, though hasty glance, of the causes of the war, but having brought him down to the final rupture of the sections, I must leave him to supply for himself many a link, here and there, in the broken chain, as we proceed. Let him imagine then that the Southern States have seceded--the gallant little State of South Carolina setting her larger, and more powerful sisters, the example, on the 20th December, 1860--and that they have met at Montgomery, in Alabama, by their delegates in Congress, to form a new Confederacy; that a Provisional Government has been formed and that Mr. Jefferson Davis has been elected President, and Mr. Alexander H. Stephens Vice-President.
The time had now come for the officers of the old Army, and Navy to make their election, as to which of the two Governments they would give their adhesion. There were no such questions then, as rebellion, and treason in the public mind. This was a Federal after-thought, when that Government began to get the better of us in the war. The Puritan, if he had been whipped, would have been a capital secessionist, and as meek, and humble as we could have desired. He would have been the first to make a "perpetual" alliance with us, and to offer us inducements to give him the benefits of our trade. After the first drubbing we gave him, at Manassas, he was disposed to be quite reasonable, and the Federal Congress passed the conciliatory resolution I have quoted in a previous chapter, intimating to us, that if we would come back, slavery should be secure in the States, and our "rights and dignity" remain unimpaired. But as he gained strength, he gained courage, and as the war progressed, and it became evident that we should be beaten, he began to talk of traitors, and treason.
As a general rule, the officers both of the Army, and the Navy sided with their respective States; especially those of them who were cultivated, and knew something of the form of government, under which they had been living. But even the profession of arms is not free from sordid natures, and many of these had found their way into both branches of the public service. Men were found capable of drawing their swords against their own firesides, as it were, and surrendering their neighbors, and friends to the vengeance of a government, which paid them for their fealty. Some, with cunning duplicity, even encouraged their former messmates, and companions who occupied places above them, to resign, and afterward held back themselves. Some were mere soldiers, and sailors of fortune, and seemed devoid of all sensibility on the subject, looking only to rank and pay. They were open to the highest bidder, and the Federal Government was in a condition to make the highest bids. Some of the Southern men of this latter class remained with the North, because they could not obtain the positions they desired in the South; and afterward, as is the fashion with renegades, became more bitter against their own people than even the Northern men.