He had already, in a
letter to the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, expressed his willingness to
fight for the South: "his judgment, his inclinations, and his
affections," all hurrying him, as he says, to link his fate with the
first movement of the South. "My fate," he pursues, "is cast with the
South; but I should be unwilling, unless invited, to appear to thrust
myself upon the new Government _until my own State_ has moved." This was
at that time the feeling of many border statesmen. In another letter to
Mr. Curry he had exposed sound practical views of the situation of the
Confederates, as regards their marine, for defence and means of
inflicting damage on their opponents.
Captain Semmes at once replied that he would attend upon the committee
immediately. His next act was respectfully to resign his commission as
Commander in the Navy of the United States; which resignation was
accepted in the same terms. He ceased similarly to be a member of the
Lighthouse Board. These matters concluded, he telegraphed to the Hon.
J.L.M. Curry, in Montgomery, where the Confederate States' Congress was
sitting, that he was now a free man to serve his struggling country.
Forthwith he was deputed by President Davis to return to the Northern
States, and make large purchases and contracts "for machinery and
munitions, or for the manufacture of arms and munitions of war;" as also
to obtain "cannon and musket-powder, the former of the coarsest grain,"
and to engage with a certain proprietor of powder-mills for the
"establishment of a powder-mill at some point in the limits of our
territory.
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