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

[305] Navy since the breaking out of the war. Old gentleman Welles was eloquent, and denunciatory when he came to speak of the Sumter. The vessel was a ‘pirate,’ and her commander everything that was odious. The latter ‘was courageously capturing unarmed merchant-ships, and cowardly fleeing from the Federal steamers sent in pursuit of him.’ There were six of these ships in full hue and cry after the little Sumter, any one of which could have hoisted her in upon deck. At the same time that these denunciations were hurled against the Captain of the Sumter, gallant naval officers, wearing Mr. Welles' shoulder-straps, and commanding Mr. Welles' ships, were capturing little coasting-schooners laden with firewood, plundering the houses and hen-roosts of non-combatant citizens along the Southern coast, destroying salt-works, and intercepting medicines going in to our hospitals. But I must be charitable. Mr. Welles was but rehearsing the lesson which he had learned from Mr. Seward. What could he know about ‘pirates’ and the laws of nations, who had been one half of his life editing a small newspaper, in a small town in Connecticut, and the other half ‘serving out’ to Jack his frocks and trousers, and weighing out to him his sugar and tea, as Chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing? It was late in life before the old gentleman, on the rising tide of the Demos, had been promoted, and allowance must be made for the defects of his early training.