the Union; and President Lincoln was perfectly justified in calling for
troops after the seizure of the forts and arsenals. One of those present
remarked impatiently that a person with such sentiments could not live
in Norfolk, and this feeling was evidently shared by the bystanders;
there was, indeed, some danger, in those excited moments, of personal
violence to those who dared gainsay the popular passion. "Very well,"
replied Farragut, "I can live somewhere else." No time was needed to
take a decision already contingently formed, and for executing which he
had, with his customary foresight, been accumulating the necessary
funds. He at once went to his house and told his wife the time had come
for her to decide whether she would remain with her own kinsfolk or
follow him North. Her choice was as instant as his own, and that evening
they, with their only son, left Norfolk, never to return to it as their
home. Mrs. Farragut's sister and her young family accompanied them in
the steamer to Baltimore. Upon reaching the latter city they found it
also boiling over with excitement. The attack upon the Massachusetts
troops had just taken place, and the railroad bridges over the
Susquehanna were then burning. The usual means of communication being
thus broken off, Farragut and his party had to take passage for
Philadelphia in a canal boat, on which were crowded some three hundred
passengers, many of them refugees like themselves. It is a curious
illustration of the hardships attending a flight under such exigency,
even in so rich a country as our own, that a baby in the company had to
be fed on biscuit steeped in brandy for want of proper nourishment.

From Philadelphia the journey to New York was easy, and Farragut there
settled his family in a small cottage in the village of Hastings, on the
Hudson River. Here he awaited events, hoping for employment; but it is
one of the cruel circumstances attending civil strife that confidence is
shaken, and the suspicions that arise, however unjust, defy reason and
constrain the Government to defer to them. No man could have given
stronger proof than Farragut had of his perfect loyalty; but all shades
of opinion were known to exist among officers of Southern origin, even
when they remained in the service, and there were those who, though
refusing to follow the South, would willingly have avoided striking a
blow against the seceding States. Men were heard to say that they would
not go with