"THE MAN WHO SAT ON THE POWDER." on shore to the battery, and Mr. Raymond then planted the Stars and Stripes, and returned on board the Delaware, which was moored to the wharf at Elizabeth City, at forty-five minutes past nine o'clock, in the forenoon, thus ending one of the shortest and most brilliant engagements which has occurred during this unfortunate civil war." In this engagement, the enemy were doubtless looking for an encounter at long range, when their guns might have inflicted more serious damage, but Commander Rowan had, as we have just seen, provided another plan of attack. Regardless of the guns of the enemy, he pushed on without returning a shot until within three-quarters of a mile of the fort, when his vessels opened fire and dashed upon the rebel gunboats, driving into them and running them down. One only of the vessels was saved from destruction, the Ellis, whose Commander, Captain Cooke, was wounded and taken prisoner. After the gunboats were abandoned, the rebels commenced setting fire to the principal buildings in Elizabeth City, which had been deserted by most of its inhabitants. The prompt assurances of protection of Commander Rowan, however, checked this insane proceeding. In reference to this matter, in a general order after the action, he expressed his gratification," at the evidence of the high discipline of the crews, in refraining from trespassing, in the slightest degree, upon the private property of defenceless people in a defenceless town. The generous offer to go on shore and extinguish the flames, applied by the torch of a vandal soldiery upon the houses of its own defenceless women and children, is a striking evidence of the justness of our cause, and must have its effect in teaching our deluded countrymen a lesson in humanity and civilization." The Union loss in this encounter, was, two killed, and several wounded. Of the enemy, says a correspondent, in his description of the scene, many were killed by the bayonet and เ 253 revolver in this hand-to-hand fight, and sunk beneath the water. The slaughter was fearful."* An extraordinary act of bravery is recorded of a gunner's mate in this action. As the Valley City, one of the Union fleet, was engaged with the enemy, a shell from their battery entered the vessel and exploded by the magazine, where John Davis was passing out powder for the guns. Seeing the danger, he protected an open barrel of powder with his body, actually seating himself upon it, and remained in that position till the flames were extinguished. The heroic act was reported by Lieutenant Chaplin, the commander of the Valley City, to Flag-Officer Goldsborough, who brought it to the notice of the Navy Department, recommending "the gallant and noble sailor" to special consideration. Secretary Welles promptly replied to this communication by conferring the appointment on Davis of acting gunnera substantial promotion, which raised his salary from twenty-five dollars a month to a thousand dollars a year. A popular subscription was also started in New York by W. C. Bryant, Elias Wade, Jr., and others, for "the man who sat on the powder," which resulted in the payment to him of eleven hundred dollars. In the correspondence connected with this matter, Lieutenant Chaplin gave the following account of the brave recipient : "John Davis is a native of Finland, Russia proper; and has been a citizen of the United States for twenty-five years-fifteen of which he has spent in the merchant marine, and ten years in various vessels of the naval service in this country. His age is forty-two years. He has no family. Such is his history. As to his character: he was received on board my vessel while in the Potomac river as coxswain, along with the crew of a launch, to shelter in the exigencies of the service, and I very soon marked * Correspondence of the New York Tribune, February 15th, 1862. him as a thorough seaman, and a man who, under all circumstances, was prudentially interested in the general details of duty on board this vessel. He is of staid, solid habits.”* Officer Goldsborough and General Burnside issued the following joint proclamation, in words of earnest entreaty, addressed to the people of North Carolina : Elizabeth City was taken possession of "The mission of our joint expedition by the Union forces the day after the en- is not to invade any of your rights, but gagement. On the 12th, Edenton, at the to assert the authority of the United west end of Albemarle Sound, was visit-States, and to close with you the desolaed by a portion of the flotilla under com- ting war brought upon your state by mand of Lieutenant A. Maury. On the comparatively a few bad men in your approach of the vessels to the town, part of a flying artillery regiment, variously estimated at from one to three hundred, fled precipitately without firing a shot. "Among the results of the expedition," adds Lieutenant Maury in his report, "are the destruction of eight cannon, and one schooner on the stocks at Edenton. We captured two schooners in the Sound; one loaded with four thousand bushels of corn. We also took six bales of cotton from the custom-house wharf." Lieutenant Jeffers, the next day, with several of the vessels of the fleet, proceeded to the Chesapeake and Albemarle canal, the thoroughfare between Currituck and the upper counties, for the purpose of obstructing its use. A body of rebels were found engaged with the same object. They fled on the arrival of the Union party, who completed their work by sinking two schooners in the mouth of the canal. A few days after, on the 19th, the flotilla, under Commander Rowan, set out from Edenton for a reconnoissance of the Chowan river as far as Winton and the Roanoke river, on the opposite side of the Sound to Plymouth. On approaching Winton, the United States steamer Perry, having on board Colonel Hawkins with a company of his regiment, was fired into with a volley of musketry from the high bank on the shore. In retaliation, the town was shelled, and, with the exception of the church, which was spared, burnt by the Union troops. On the 18th of February, Flag *Correspondence, etc., Evening Post, July 5, 1862. midst. Influenced infinitely more by the worst passions of human nature than by any show of elevated reason, they are still urging you astray, to gratify their unholy purposes. They impose upon your credulity by telling of wicked and even diabolical intentions on our part; of our desire to destroy your freedom, demolish your property, liberate your slaves, injure your women, and such like enormities; all of which, we assure you, is not only ridiculous, but utterly and willfully false. We are Christians as well as yourselves, and we profess to know full well, and to feel profoundly, the sacred obligations of the character. No apprehensions need be entertained that the demands of humanity or justice will be disregarded. We shall inflict no injury, unless forced to do so by your own acts, and upon this you may confidently rely. Those men are your worst enemies. They, in truth, have drawn you into your present condition, and are the real disturbers of your peace and the happiness of your firesides. We invite you, in the name of the Constitution, and in that of virtuous loyalty and civilization, to separate yourselves at once from these malign influences, to return to your allegiance, and not compel us to resort further to the force under our control. The Government asks only that its authority may be recognized; and, we repeat, in no manner or way does it desire to interfere with your laws, constitutionally established, your institutions of any kind whatever, your property of any sort, or your usages in any respect." WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY. 255 our zeal and animate by example. I call upon the brave and patriotic men of our state to volunteer, from the mountains to the sea."* A proclamation of Governor Henry T. Clark, of North Carolina, issued a few days after, was in striking contrast with this generous appeal. Calling upon the citizens to supply the requisition for The two proclamations clearly enough troops of the president of the Confeder- indicate the spirit in which the war was ate States and to volunteer for the de- fought. Conciliatory, forbearing, delifence of the state, the governor denounced cate, scrupulous, on the one side; on the the advance of the Union forces as an other fierce and stubborn in opposition, attempt "to deprive us of liberty, prop- rousing the passions of the people by the erty, and all that we hold dear as a self- worst misrepresentations of those who governing and free people. We must would not call themselves their foes. resist him at all hazards and by every The Union commanders and the Adminmeans in our power. He wages a war istration at Washington appeared anxious for our subjugation-a war forced upon to conduct the contest, as far as possible, us in wrong and prosecuted without right, on the principle of peace; the Confedand in a spirit of vengeful wickedness erates, from the beginning, urged unmitiwithout a parallel in the history of war- gated, determined war. Was it to be fare among civilized nations. *** The wondered at, under these circumstances, enemy is redoubling his efforts and that, the National Government failing straining every nerve to overrun our adequately to exert its strength, the concountry and subjugate us to his domina- test was protracted by the resolution of tion-his avarice and ambition. Already the party inferior in numbers and reis it proposed in their Congress to estab- sources? lish a territorial government in a portion. * Governor Clark's Proclamation, Raleigh, February 22, of our state. Now is the time to prove | 1862. CHAPTER LV. FEBRUARY 22d, 1862. THE birthday of Washington, 1862, the meeting of the electoral college, and marks an important period in the history of the war. On both sides the occasion was accepted to give renewed vigor and impetus to the struggle. At Richmond, it was memorable as the day of the inauguration of Jefferson Davis, as President of the Confederate States. In accordance with the constitution which had been adopted, the Provisional Government under which he had previously acted, was now to give place to a more formal authority. By the terms of the constitution, the provisional congress was to prescribe the time for holding the election of President and Vice-President, for for counting the votes, and inaugurating the President. The election having been held in the several states, the votes were formally opened in the presence of both houses of the Confederate Congress, on the 19th of February, when 109 votes were received from eleven States, all of which were given to Jefferson Davis for President, and Alexander H. Stevens for Vice-President. Of this number, Alabama cast 11; Arkansas, 6; Florida, 4; Georgia, 12; Louisiana, 8; Mississippi, 9; North Carolina, 12; South Carolina, 8; Tennessee, 15; Texas, 8: and Virginia, 18 electoral votes. The inaugura tion was fixed for the 22d. The cere- my own unworthiness. In return for monies, on the appointed day, generally their kindness, I can only offer assuranfollowed the old order of proceeding at ces of the gratitude with which it is reWashington. The Senate and House ofceived, and can but pledge a zealous Representatives met in the forenoon, in devotion of every faculty to the service the hall of the House of Delegates of Vir- of those who have chosen me as their ginia, where, with the Governor of the Chief Magistrate." State and the officials, they received the President-elect. The whole company then moved in procession to the statue of Washington, on the public square, where a platform was erected for the services of the day. A prayer was offered by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Johns, Episcopal Bishop of Virginia, when an Inaugural Address was delivered by the Presidentelect, after which the oath of office was administered by the President of the Senate, and Jefferson Davis was proclaimed President of the Confederate States for the ensuing six years. The inaugural address was well written, politic, with an air of calmness and dignity and assurance of ultimate success. The speaker commenced with a graceful allusion to the day. "Fellow CitizensOn this the birthday of the man most identified with the establishment of American Independence, and beneath the monument erected to commemorate his heroic virtues, and those of his compatriots, we have assembled to usher into existence the permanent government of the Confederate States. Through this instrumentality, under the favor of Divine Providence, we hope to perpetuate the principles of our revolutionary fathers. The day, the memory, and the purpose seem fitly associated." "It is with mingled feelings of humility and pride,” he continued, "that I appear, to take, in the presence of the people and before high Heaven, the oath prescribed as a qualification for the exalted station to which the unanimous voice of the people has called me. Deeply sensible of all that is implied by this manifestation of the people's confidence, I am yet more profoundly impressed by the vast responsibility of the office, and humbly feel After these brief preliminaries, the speaker passed to a denunciation of the United States, professing to find in certain measures of the government in Maryland, and elsewhere, growing out of the war, a justification of the alleged policy of the South, in withdrawing from what he was pleased to consider an assured despotism. How far his comparison of the freedom of the North and South was likely to be borne out by the realities of the case may be judged by the necessities, arising from their position, of the two portions of the country. The ample resources, and generally undisturbed loyalty of the North, required but little effort on the part of the administration to sustain the war; indeed, the government fell short of the demands of the people in pressing it on. In the South, with inferior means and resources, however prompt the public might be to submit, the war necessarily demanded a despotic exercise of authority. When a long course of class legislation," said President Davis, "directed not to the general welfare, but to the aggrandizement of the northern section of the Union, culminated in a warfare on the domestic institutions of the Southern States-when the dogmas of a sectional party, substituted for the provisions of the constitutional compact, threatened to destroy the sovereign rights of the States, six of those States, withdrawing from the Union, confederated together, to exercise the right and perform the duty of instituting a government which would better secure the liberties for the preservation of which that Union was established. Whatever of hope some may have entertained, that a returning sense of justice would remove the danger with JEFFERSON DAVIS' INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 257 crimination, submission to which would be inconsistent with their welfare, and intolerable to a proud people. They therefore determined to sever its bonds and establish a new confederacy for themselves. The experiment instituted by our Revolutionary fathers, of a voluntary union of sovereign States for purposes specified in a solemn compact, had been perverted by those who, feeling power and forgetting right, were determined to respect no which our rights were threatened, and render it possible to preserve the Union of the constitution, must have been dispelled by the malignity and barbarity of the Northern States, in the prosecution of the existing war. The confidence of the most hopeful among us, must have been destroyed by the disregard they have recently exhibited for all the timehonored bulwarks of civil and religious liberty. Bastiles, filled with prisoners, arrested without civil process or indict-law but their own will. The government ment duly found; the writ of habeas had ceased to answer the ends for which corpus suspended by Executive man- it was ordained and established. To save date; a State Legislature controlled by ourselves from a revolution, which, in its the imprisonment of members whose silent but rapid progress, was about to avowed principles suggested to the fed- place us under the despotism of numbers, eral Executive, that there might be an- and to preserve in spirit, as well as in other added to the list of the seceded form, a system of government we beStates; elections held under threats of a lieved to be peculiarly fitted to our conmilitary power; civil officers, peaceful dition, and full of promise for mankind, citizens, and gentle women incarcerated we determined to make a new associafor opinion's sake, proclaimed the inca- tion, composed of States homogeneous in pacity of our late associates to adminis- interest, in policy, and in feeling. True ter a government as free, liberal, and to our traditions of peace and our love humane, as that established for our com- of justice, we sent commissioners to the mon use. For proof of the sincerity of United States to propose a fair and amiour purpose, to maintain our ancient in- cable settlement of all questions of public stitutions, we may point to the constitu- debt or property, which might be in tion of the confederacy, and the laws dispute. But the government at Washenacted under it, as well as to the fact, ington, denying our right to self-governthat, through all the necessities of an un-ment, refused even to listen to any proequal struggle, there has been no act on posals for a peaceful separation. Nothing our part to impair personal liberty or the was then left to us but to prepare for freedom of speech, of thought, or of the war." press. The courts have been open, the judicial functions fully executed, and every right of the peaceful citizen maintained, as securely as if a war of invasion had not disturbed the land. From this defence or apology of the course of the Confederates, the President passed to a brief review of the events of the year; in which, impressed with the recent surrender of Fort Henry, Donel"The people of the States now con- son, and Roanoke, he did not disguise the federated, became convinced that the difficulties and perils which had been engovernment of the United States had countered and which yet were in prosfallen into the hands of a sectional ma-pect, adroitly mingling with these admisjority, who would pervert that most sions the hope to be derived from the sacred of all trusts, to the destruction of financial embarrassments of the North, the rights which it was pledged to pro- the growth of industry, and encouragetect. They believed, that to remain ment from heroism at home, and suggestlonger in the Union, would subject them ing to foreign nations the value of Southto a continuance of a disparaging dis-ern commercial products, with other ap |