Point and the commissions in the army had been held in much larger
proportion (according to the population) by men of Southern birth. This
was less the case in the navy because the marine interests of New
England and of the Middle States had educated a larger number of
Northern men for naval interests. When the war began, a very
considerable number of the best trained and most valuable officers in
the army resigned to take part with their States. The army lost the
service of men like Lee, Johnston, Beauregard, and many others. A few
good Southerners, such as Thomas of Virginia and Anderson of Kentucky,
took the ground that their duty to the Union and to the flag was greater
than their obligation to their State. In the navy, Maury, Semmes,
Buchanan, and other men of ability resigned their commissions and
devoted themselves to the (by no means easy) task of building up a navy
for the South; but Farragut of Tennessee remained with the navy to carry
the flag of his country to New Orleans and to Mobile.

It was easy and natural during the heat of 1861 to characterise as
traitors the men who went with their States to fight against the flag of
their country. Looking at the matter now, forty-seven years later, we
are better able to estimate the character and the integrity of the
motives by which they were actuated. We do not need to-day to use the
term traitors for men like Lee and Johnston. It was not at all unnatural
that with their understanding of the government of the States in which
they had been born, and with their belief that these States had a right
to take action for themselves, they should have decided that their
obligation lay to the State rather than to what they had persisted in
thinking of not as a nation but as a mere confederation. We may rather
believe that Lee was as honest in his way as Thomas and Farragut in
theirs, but the view that the United States is a nation has been
maintained through the loyal services of the men who held with Thomas