Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[123] to make the presentations. I am seated at one end of the long mess-table, and my first lieutenant at the other. The first lieutenant, as the reader has already been informed, by an inspection of the Sumter's muster-roll, is from Georgia. John McIntosh Kell is a descendant from one of the oldest families in that State, having the blood of the McIntoshes in his veins, through one branch of his ancestors. He was bred in the old Navy, and my acquaintance with him commenced when he was in trouble. He was serving as a passed midshipman, on board the old sailing sloop Albany, and being ordered, on one occasion, to perform what he considered a menial duty, he resisted the order. Some of his brother passed midshipmen were in the same category. A court-martial resulted, and, at the request of the young gentlemen, I defended them. The relation of counsel, and client, as a matter of course, brought us close together, and I discovered that young Kell had in him, the making of a man. So far from being a mutineer, he had a high respect for discipline, and had only resisted obedience to the order in question, from a refined sense of gentlemanly propriety. The reader will see these qualities in him, now, as he sits opposite me. He has developed since the time I speak of, into the tall, well-proportioned gentleman, of middle age, with brown, wavy hair, and a magnificent beard, inclining to red. See how scrupulously neat he is dressed, and how suave, and affable he is, with his associates. His eye is now beaming gentleness, and kindness. You will scarcely recognize him, as the same man, when you see him again on deck, arraigning some culprit, ‘at the mast,’ for a breach of discipline. When Georgia seceded, Lieutenant Kell was well on his way to the commander's list, in the old Navy, but he would have scorned the commission of an admiral, if it had been tendered him as the price of treason to his State. To have brought a Federal ship into the waters of Georgia, and ravaged her coasts, and fired upon her people, would have been, in his eyes, little less than matricide. He forthwith resigned his commission, and joined his fortunes with those of his people. When it was decided, at Montgomery, that I was to have the Sumter, I at once thought of Kell, and, at my request, he was ordered to the ship—Commodore Tattnall, with