I spent the summer of 1860 at Rye Beach, Boston, and in Canada. When I returned I found the animosity between the two great political parties very bitter. Slavery, for the first time in the history of the United States, had consolidated all the "isms" and all parties against the South, and nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency, save only the Democratic party, and that was divided. On my journey home I found intense excitement all the way on account of a sectional nomination for President, and the election of Lincoln was deemed an open declaration of hostility to the people of the South, and drove them to the act of secession. And the people of Mississippi, in convention assembled, repealed all the laws and ordinances by which she became a member of the Federal Union, and on January 9, 1861, she was a sovereign and independent State.

About the middle of February I received a verbal message from the Governor, J. J. Pettus, that he wished to see me, and soon after I went to Jackson. The Governor informed me that I had been appointed a lieutenant colonel and chief of ordnance in the army of the State of Mississippi on February 12, 1861.

On assuming the duties of the office I found the State destitute of all military supplies and without arms. Investigation showed that a mercantile firm in New Orleans had offered, immediately after the act of secession, to furnish arms from England or Belgium, but it was declined.

Weeks after, the Governor sent an agent to Europe to purchase arms, but it was too late to get any in England; but in Belgium he obtained some muskets, and shipped them on a vessel that reached the mouth of the Mississippi river just as the blockading ships arrived there. Discovering the blockade, the vessel bore away for Havana, and stored the arms there. From Havana they were afterwards brought over and landed in small quantities. I built a powder house, and asked permission to go to St. Louis and purchase powder, and it was refused on the ground or belief that I would be arrested there, and that he, the Governor, would have to arrest a person as a hostage in my place. Afterwards I wrote to a friend in St. Louis, and obtained two hundred kegs (I think that was the number) of powder and fifty-four sets of artillery harness, and this was done after the town of Cairo, Ill., was garrisoned by Gen. Grant.

I purchased every yard of flannel that could be obtained in New Orleans, Natchez, Vicksburg, and other towns for artillery cartridges, and all the paper suitable for making cartridges for small arms, even including wall paper, and could not get enough. I was offered by a person whom I knew in Philadelphia a machine for molding lead balls with die for all caliber of small arms (made for the Governor General of Cuba) for a moderate sum, but the Governor disapproved of getting it. Then I made arrangements to have one thousand large Colt's pistols with holsters, etc., sent me from Philadelphia. Twenty thousand dollars in the treasury was placed to the order of the express agent in Jackson, payable to him on delivery of the goods. He succeeded in getting them as far as Baltimore, and there they were seized or stopped. This was in April.

When all arrangements were made for putting up ammunition, the Confederate government could not send me a person that had ever seen a cartridge made, and I had to teach the women how they were put up. The same was true of artillery ammunition. The guns were cast in Richmond, Va., but the carriages were made in Jackson. In making artillery harness difficulty was experienced in procuring leather, and not one person could be found in the State that had ever made a leather horse collar, so dependent were the people of the South for most of the manufactured articles in common use.

As for arms for the infantry and cavalry, we literally had none fit for use. The flintlock muskets found in the arsenal at Baton Rouge, I shipped from time to time to my merchant, Walter Cox, in New Orleans, who employed a gunsmith to alter them to percussion lock; and caps for the guns came in small quantities smuggled over the line from Tennessee. However, as fast as possible the organized companies were supplied with arms such as we had and very good ammunition, and went to their homes to await orders.

When the supply of arms was exhausted I was directed by the Army Board to issue an order for the purchase of shotguns, with which the Governor was bent on arming the troops. He would "o' nights" come to my room and tell me long yarns about how his father, or grandfather, once with a party armed with shotguns loaded with buckshot waylaid a band of Indians, and killed them all. Elated with this legendary story, he wanted his army to be supplied with shotguns, so that he might annihilate the pestiferous Yankees, should they invade his domain. Gens. Alcorn, Dahlgreen, and O'Farrel were to superintend the collection of these deadly shotguns in their respective departments, and I was ordered to write out instructions for their guidance. Now, lest we should be burdened with a lot of worthless arms, they were informed that it was not expected they would purchase the costly shotguns at high figures, nor were they to buy guns made of "two-penny skip iron," nor "sham-dam barrels," cast-iron barrels, etc.

Alas! when these guns began to arrive the god of war never beheld such a wonderful collection of antique weapons as came in for the Governor. There were guns with only a vent, to be fired with a live coal, guns without ramrods, barrels without stocks, stocks without barrels, guns without cocks, cocks without pans. One gun, I remember, consisted of a barrel that flared out at the muzzle like a bell nailed on a crooked cypress rail, without cock, having only a pan and vent, requiring one man to hold it and another to "touch it off." It was a valuable collection for an antiquarian, but useless in war. I am particular in describing this remarkable collection of arms, because I never saw any of the arms sent South by Secretary J. B. Floyd, and I don't want any Northern writer to accuse him of having sent these shotguns privately to aid "rebellion." A private and confidential report of all the arms found in the various arsenals, and all arms in the possession of the Confederate States, was sent me by the Chief of Ordnance of the Confederate government. It showed a beggarly array of trash not unlike Pettus's collection turned over for me to issue to his troops, to ambush the Yankees should they invade his territory.

I must here, as a contribution to war history, say a few words about the Governor's grand strategy. Several companies of Mississippi troops crossed out of his State, and went to the front in Tennessee, and were received by the Confederate army then with Gen. G. J. Pillow to hold the enemy in check. For some offense a few of them were put in the guardhouse. They made their escape, and came to Jackson. The Governor, Wiley P. Harris, and myself were in his office, when two long-haired men came in, and asked for his excellency. "I am the Governor," was the reply. They told him how they had been put in the guardhouse, etc., and his reply was: "Go back to your company, and tell Gen. Pillow that, notwithstanding you have been mustered into the Confederate service, you are by fiction of law supposed to be in the State of Mississippi, and still in my command, and not subject to his orders," etc.

On another occasion Capt. Manlove had organized a company, and by purchase or otherwise had armed it with the Mississippi rifles. When the Governor learned that they contemplated going to Richmond, he told me to issue an order requiring them to turn in their arms. Capt. Manlove came over to see me about it. He was informed that it was an order of the Governor, and would have to be obeyed. After dinner he asked me privately what I would do if I were in his place. I told him I could not advise him, yet he could go home at once, muster his company, get on the night train, and in the morning be beyond his jurisdiction. He did this; but when the Governor learned that they had passed through the city during the night, he telegraphed Gen. Charles Clark, at Iuka, to stop the company and disarm them, which he refused to do. Capt. Sweet had an artillery company in Vicksburg with four guns, horses, and ammunition, complete for the field. He came over to see me lest his guns be taken, and in a few days after he was reported to be in Tennessee in front of the enemy. And so very properly the army of Mississippi became less and less, by the troops themselves going quietly to the front or by his sending or loaning troops for Pensacola and Tennessee, etc. I have no desire to make any reflections on the Governor, except to point out how his war policy would have been ruinous to the Confederate cause, had he been permitted to invite the enemy to invade the "sacred soil of Mississippi" to gratify his desire to ambush them and kill them with shotguns. This opportunity was afforded him in 1863.

By the latter part of August most of the Mississippi troops were in the Confederate army, and I had worked up and issued all the war material that could be obtained, and was comparatively idle.

In October I made a visit home in Greenville, and one night the servant came in with the mail. I opened the letters and read them, but among them was a yellow envelope from Greenville that I did not open, supposing it to be a bill, and turned my attention to the papers. When mother and sister rose to retire, I opened this envelope, and behold! it was a dispatch from the President, saying: "Will you accept an appointment of brigadier general? Answer." And the question then was, what should I do? Should I raise a company of cavalry or accept this appointment? They advised me to accept. Ten days after, I telegraphed the President accepting the appointment. During that time I was in Jackson closing my ordnance accounts. Why I did not accept the appointment at once I cannot understand now, unless it was so unexpected that I took time to reflect the matter over. The date of the appointment was October 23, 1861. I had been appointed a major of artillery in the regular army of the Confederacy April 2, 1861.