se of
the government, and who had taken a solemn oath to support that
government, were so badly tinctured with disloyalty that the authorities
did not know whom to trust, some of the best men in the service, the
gallant Porter among the rest, being suspected of disunion sentiments.
During the time that elapsed between March 4 and July 5, two hundred and
fifty-nine officers resigned their commissions and went over to the
Confederacy. Some of them, who had been entrusted with commands, had the
grace to give their vessels up to the government instead of surrendering
them into the hands of the secessionists, and one Southern writer
declared, with some disgust, that they carried their notions of honor
altogether too far when they did it. His exact language was:

"If a sense of justice had prevailed at the separation of the States, a
large portion of the ships of the navy would have been turned over to
the South; and this failing to be done, it may be questionable whether
the Southern naval officers in command would not have been justified in
bringing their ships with them, which it would have been easy for them
to do."

But the trouble was, the government never acknowledged that there had
been any "separation of the States." The war-ships belonged to the
nation, and not to a discontented portion of it, and were needed to aid
in enforcing the laws that had been trampled under-foot.

In spite of all these disadvantages the loyal people of the North went
resolutely to work, and before the fourth day of July the blockade was
rendered so effectual that "foreign nations could not evade it and were
obliged to acknowledge its legality." And this was done, too, after
Norfolk navy yard, with its immense stores of munitions of war,
twenty-five hundred pieces of heavy ordnance, and all its ships, save
one, had been doomed to destruction by the perfidious officers who
surrounded and advised its loyal but too credulous commander. It was
something to be proud of.

But we have anticipated events a little. On the day Marcy Gray went to
Nashville after the mail the blockade was not established, except on
paper; there was not a ship of war on the coast so far as he knew;
Hatteras Inlet was still open to the world, and privateers and coasting
vessels were free to go and come as often as they pleased. Up to this
time such a thing as a privateer had scarcely been heard of, but they
appeared as if by magic when it became known that President D