Singularly enough, considering the exodus of States'-Rights officers from the navy at the outbreak of the War of Secession, my first service during it brought me into close relations with two captains, both Southerners, whose differing points of view shed interesting light upon the varying motives which in times of stress determined men into a common path. The first, Percival Drayton, a South-Carolinian, had a strength of conviction on the question of slavery, in itself, and the wrong-headed course of the slave power, as well as a strong devotion to the Union, all which were needed to keep a son of that extreme state firm in his allegiance. I question, however, whether any other one of the seceding communities furnished as large a proportion of officers who stuck to the national flag, chiefly among the older men; a result scarcely surprising, for the intensity of affection for the Union necessary to withstand nearest relatives and the headlong sweep of separatist impulse, where fiercest, naturally throve upon the opposition which it met, eliciting a corresponding tenacity of adherence to the cause it had embraced. No more than that other Southerner, Farragut, did Drayton feel doubt as to where he belonged in the coming struggle. "I cannot exactly see the difference between my relations fighting against me and I against them, except that their cause is as unholy a one as the world has ever seen, and mine just the reverse." "Were the sword in the one hand powerful enough, the secessionists would carry slavery with the other to the uttermost parts of the Union, and I do not think the North has been at all too quick in stopping the movement." "I do not think there will ever be peace between the two sections until slavery is so completely scotched as to make extension a hopeless matter."[6]