of their quota. These men were not politicians, but when the war clouds gathered felt bound by every sense of duty, love and devotion, many of them against their judgment as to the judiciousness of disruption, and all of them against the professional hopes, aspirations and pecuniary interests, when their mother States withdrew, to rally to their standard, resigned and tendered their services. They were accepted and given commissions properly signed by the executive and confirmed by the Congress of the Confederate States. No more loyal men lived on earth. Let no slanderous tongues or libelous pens impugn their motives. Let not their reputation for purity of purpose, as to their duty, be handed down to posterity with any stain, but let their children have perpetuated in their minds and hearts the fact that their fathers were neither knaves, fools, cowards nor traitors. These men were ready and anxious to serve their country in her hour of peril, in any honorable field that they might be called to by her. These men officered the cruisers of the Confederate States.
The Confederate States Steamers Sumter, Alabama, Florida, Tallahassee, Nashville, Georgia, and others, had gone out and done damaging service against the United States merchant marine. There was, however, one branch of that marine, a large and remunerative interest, prolific with gain and profit, against which no special expedition had been sent. That interest was the whaling fleet of the United States.
The conception of the judiciousness of such a special expedition came, I think, primarily from Lieutenants John Mercer Brooke and the late Robert R. Carter, two distinguished officers of the United States Navy, who, upon the secession of their native State, Virginia, had resigned and joined her cause. Captain Brooke is now, and has been for years, a professor at the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington. They had, as members of a scientific expedition fitted out by the United States, become acquainted with the extent and cruising grounds of the whaling fleet. Lieutenant Carter, afterwards associated with Captain Bulloch, talked the matter over with him, and to him it was due, from his knowledge of the field, that a comprehensive letter and general plan was formulated for such a cruise.
Of course it could only be an outline of an expedition which constant and unavoidable emergencies and exigencies must
