Posted By:	Donald Hoffman
	Email:
	Subject:	Re: Percival Drayton 1812-1865 Civil War Navy
	Post Date:	March 04, 2003 at 18:18:47
	Message URL:	http://genforum.genealogy.com/drayton/messages/170.html
	Forum:	Drayton Family Genealogy Forum
	Forum URL:	http://genforum.genealogy.com/drayton/

Dean When I originally saw your posting I knew I had this somewhere. Imagine you are no longer in need of it but will post it anyway. From Ralph Newman's Civil War Scrapbook: Drayton Brothers Play Heroic Roles on Opposite Sides From the beginning of the Civil War, families were divided by opposing allegiances. Male kin often met on the field of battle, bent on destroying each other. What happened to the Draytons, a fine old South Carolina family, was typical of the bitter and unforgiving character of these breaks. As the war began, Thomas F. Drayton, an 1823 West Point graduate, was managing his plantation. In July, 1861, he wrote; "If the war continues much longer... I will follow the footsteps of my father in 1812 and do my duty as a soldier on some active field and leave the consequences to God." Soon thereafter he was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate army and assigned to command the coastal military district of Port Royal, S.C. His younger brother, Percival, had been in the United States navy since 1827 and, when war broke out, was on duty at the Philadelphia navy yard. Tho offered high command in the Confederate navy, he remained loyal to the Union, saying: "Rather than interfere with the success of the war I am reaady to sacrifice every relative I have, painful as it will be." The Union gunboat Pocahontas under his command participated in the attack on Port Royal in November, and his brother's house at Fort Walker on Hilton Head was riddled with shells from the ship. Thomas continued in active Confederate service thruout the war. Percival, a favoirte of Farragut, was his fleet captain in the 1864 Mobile bay engagement when, aboard the Hartford, the admiral spoke his famous words: "Damn the torpedoes! Captain Drayton, go ahead! Jouett, full speed!" For his loyalty to the Union, South Carolina officially outlawed Captain Drayton, declaring him "infamous." Percival died in August, 1865, in Washington, where he was stationed at the navy department. The war over at last, his friends sought to have his body returned to his home for burial. The family said he was unworthy of burial in South Carolina and refused to have any thing to do with it's "traitor". His body was then interred in a Washington cemetery. But in his will, Percival Drayton left $27,000 to his brother, Thomas. Impoverished by the war, Thomas accepted the legacy and bought a farm in Georgia. Too proud to forgive or bury his brother, Thomas nevertheless owed his post-war rehabilitation to the family "traitor."