Davis and Stephens had been inaugurated President and Vice-President of the Confederate States of America, February 18, 1860, at Montgomery, and those States only embraced the seven cotton States.  I recall a conversation at the tea-table, one evening, at the St. Louis Hotel.  When Bragg was speaking of Beauregard’s promotion, Mrs. Bragg, turning to me, said, “You know that my husband is not a favorite with the new President.”  My mind was resting on Mr. Lincoln as the new President, and I said I did not know that Bragg had ever met Mr. Lincoln, when Mrs. Bragg said, quite pointedly, “I didn’t mean your President, but our President.”  I knew that Bragg hated Davis bitterly, and that he had resigned from the army in 1855, or 1856, because Davis, as Secretary of War, had ordered him, with his battery, from Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, to Fort Smith or Fort Washita, in the Indian country, as Bragg expressed it, “to chase Indians with six-pounders.”

I visited the quartermaster, Colonel A. C. Myers, who had resigned from the army, January 28, 1861, and had accepted service under the new regime.  His office was in the same old room in the Lafayette Square building, which he had in 1853, when I was there a commissary, with the same pictures on the wall, and the letters “U.  S.” on every thing, including his desk, papers, etc.  I asked him if he did not feel funny.  “No, not at all.  The thing was inevitable, secession was a complete success; there would be no war, but the two Governments would settle all matters of business in a friendly spirit, and each would go on in its allotted sphere, without further confusion.”  About this date, February 16th, General Twiggs, Myers’s father-in-law, had surrendered his entire command, in the Department of Texas, to some State troops, with all the Government property, thus consummating the first serious step in the drama of the conspiracy, which was to form a confederacy of the cotton States, before working upon the other slave or border States, and before the 4th of March, the day for the inauguration of President Lincoln.

I walked the streets of New Orleans, and found business going along as usual.  Ships were strung for miles along the lower levee, and steamboats above, all discharging or receiving cargo.  The Pelican flag of Louisiana was flying over the Custom House, Mint, City Hall, and everywhere.  At the levee ships carried every flag on earth except that of the United States, and I was told that during a procession on the 22d of February, celebrating their emancipation from the despotism of the United States Government, only one national flag was shown from a house, and that the houses of Cuthbert Bullitt, on Lafayette Square.  He was commanded to take it down, but he refused, and defended it with his pistol.

The only officer of the army that I can recall, as being there at the time, who was faithful, was Colonel C. L. Kilburn, of the Commissary Department, and he was preparing to escape North.