The next day, the chief clerk of the Navy Department handed me the following order:
CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, NAVY DEPARTMENT, MONTGOMERY, April 18, 1861.
SIR:--You are hereby detached from duty as Chief of the Light-House Bureau, and will proceed to New Orleans, and take command of the steamer _Sumter_ (named in honor of our recent victory over Fort Sumter). The following officers have been ordered to report to you, for duty: Lieutenants John M. Kell, R. T. Chapman, John M. Stribling, and Wm. E. Evans; Paymaster Henry Myers; Surgeon Francis L. Galt; Midshipmen, Wm. A. Hicks, Richard F. Armstrong, Albert G. Hudgins, John F. Holden, and Jos. D. Wilson. I am respectfully your obedient servant,
The reader will observe that I am addressed as a "commander," the rank which I held in the old service. The Navy Department, in consultation with the President, had adopted the rule of accepting all the officers who chose to come to us from the old Navy--as the Federal Navy began now to be called--without increase of rank; and in arranging them on the Navy-list, their old _relative_ rank was also preserved. This rule had two good effects; it did not tempt any officer to come to us, moved by the hope of immediate promotion, and it put us all on an equal footing, in the future race for honors.
I had been living in Montgomery as a bachelor, at the house of Mr. Wm. Knox, an old friend--my family having gone to spend some time with a beloved brother, in Maryland, until I could see, by the light of events, what final disposition to make of it. It did not occupy me long, therefore, to make my preparations for departure, in obedience to my orders. I took a respectful, and affectionate leave of the officers of the government, with whom I had been associated, and embarked on the afternoon of the same day on which I had received my orders, on board the steamer _Southern Republic_ for Mobile. At Mobile I fell in with Lieutenant Chapman, one of the officers who had been detailed to report to me, and he, being a minute-man like myself, took a hasty leave of a young wife, and we continued our journey together.
I found Mobile, like the rest of the Confederacy, in a great state of excitement. Always one of the truest of Southern cities, it was boiling over with enthusiasm; the young merchants had dropped their daybooks and ledgers, and were forming, and drilling companies, by night and by day, whilst the older ones were discussing questions of finance, and anxiously casting about them, to see how the Confederate Treasury could be supported. The Battle House, at which I stopped for a few hours, previous to taking the steamer for New Orleans, was thronged with young men in military costume, and all seemed going "as merrily as a marriage-bell." Alas! my poor young countrymen, how many of you had disappeared from the scene, when I next returned among you, near the close of the war, and how many poor mothers there were, weeping for the sons that were not. But your gallant and glorious record!--that, at least, remains, and must remain forever; for you have inscribed your names so high on the scroll of fame, that the slanderous breath of an ungenerous foe can never reach them.