The Navy of the United States, at the commencement of Mr. Lincoln’s administration, was feeble, and in no condition for belligerent operations. Most of the vessels in commission were on foreign service; only three or four, and they of an inferior class, were available for active duty. Neither the retiring administration nor Congress seemed to have been aware of the actual condition of public affairs, or to have apprehended serious difficulty. No preparations had been made for portentous coming events. The assault upon Sumter, followed by proclamations to blockade the whole coast, from the Chesapeake to the Rio Grande, a distance of more than three thousand miles, necessitated prompt and energetic action by the Navy Department, to make the blockade effectual. Steps were immediately taken to fit out and put in commission every naval vessel, and to secure and arm every suitable vessel that could be procured from the merchant service. Commerce and the shipping interest were, for a time, so paralyzed by the war that a large number of excellent vessels were purchased on terms highly advantageous to the government. There was, in fact, an extraordinary pressure, by owners, to induce the Navy Department to take not only good, but old vessels, such as were not, from their size or defects, adapted to the service required. Large and expensive steamers, thrown out of employment, were tendered, at almost any price, by parties in interest, who, desirous to assist the government in that emergency, as well as to get rid of their steamers, were actuated by patriotic as well as interested motives. The Vanderbilt, the Baltic, the Illinois, and other steamers of immense tonnage, costing a large amount to purchase, in the first instance, and which would have been a great expense to move and keep afloat. Vessels wholly unfit, from their great draught, to perform blockade duty on our shallow coast, were urged upon the Department, which declined to purchase them, and was soundly berated for declining. Economy and efficiency required a smaller and different class of vessels. The Secretary of the Navy was compelled to act without legislative authority or appropriation, and without funds, he, on his own responsibility, entered into contract for thirty gunboats, each of about five hundred tons.

The Government was wholly destitute of iron-clad steamers or floating batteries; little interest had been given the subject, but the attention of Congress was invited thereto, at the extra session in July. The suggestions of the Secretary were approved, and an act was passed on the third of August, placing at the disposal of the Navy Department one and a-half millions of dollars, to carry his recommendation into effect. On the seventh of August an advertisement was issued, inviting plans and proposals for armed vessels. On the next day, the eighth of August, a board of naval officers was appointed to receive and report upon the plans which might be submitted within twenty-five days.

Commodore Joseph Smith, Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, was the senior officer and chairman of this Board, and with him were associated Commodore Hiram Paulding and Captain Charles H. Davis. All were officers of merit, but Commodore Smith, in addition to great nautical and civil experience, possessed a singularly mechanical and practical mind. On him devolved, ultimately, the chief responsibility and supervision of the execution of the plans adopted. My personal relations and acquaintance with him were not only friendly, but I may say intimate. We were each made Chief of a Naval Bureau, in the spring of 1846, and from the acquaintance then first commenced, I had confidence in his ability and intelligence, which was increased when, fifteen years later, I was called to preside over the Navy Department, where he had remained on continuous duty. I had, therefore, whenever required, the benefit of his counsel and judgment.

Before the limit of twenty-five days for receiving proposals for iron-clads expired, I went to Hartford, which place I had not revisited after leaving, in February, on Mr. Lincoln’s invitation to become a member of his Cabinet. While at Hartford, Mr. Cornelius S. Bushnell laid before me a model, invented by John Ericsson, for a turreted vessel, or floating battery, which impressed me favorably, as possessing some extraordinary and valuable features, tending to the development of certain principles, then being studied, for our coast and river blockade, involving a revolution in naval warfare. The twenty-five days for receiving proposals had, I think, expired; but I was so interested in this novel proposition that I directed Mr. Bushnell to proceed immediately to Washington, and submit the model to the Board for examination and report. But, deeming the subject of great importance, and fearing the Board would be restrained by the limit of twenty-five days, I immediately followed, and arrived in Washington almost as soon as Mr. Bushnell with the model.

Seventeen plans for armored vessels were submitted, and propositions made, by different parties, for their construction. Three of them received a favorable report, among them Ericsson’s turret vessel, with guns of immense calibre, which, when built, was called, by his request, the “Monitor.”

A contract for this vessel was made and signed on the fourth of October, 1861. It was stipulated that she should be complete in all her parts and appurtenances; should have a speed of eight knots per hour, with security or successful working of the turret and guns, with safety to the vessel and the men in the turrets, and “that said vessel and equipments, in all respects, shall be completed and ready for sea in one hundred days from the date of this indenture.” It was agreed by the Navy Department, that the Government should pay therefor $275,000, in payments of $50,000, with the usual reservation of 25 per cent. as the work progressed, and that the final payment should be made after tests, satisfactory to the Navy Department, but which tests should be within ninety days after she was turned over to the Government.

Unfortunately for the design of the Navy Department, and, perhaps, for the country, there was delay on the part of the contractors. Instead of completing and delivering the vessel as stipulated, in one hundred days, which would have been in January, she was not turned over to the Government until the third of March-forty days later than was agreed upon and expected. This delay of forty days defeated an arrangement which the Navy Department originally designed, if successful, should be a satisfactory test of the capabilities of this extraordinary vessel. That test may now be stated.

The steamship “Merrimac,” a naval vessel, which the rebels scuttled and sunk the day previous to the abandonment of the Navy Yard at Norfolk, they subsequently raised and took into the dry-dock, where she was being repaired and clothed with iron armor, when the contract for the “Monitor” was made. We, of course, felt great solicitude in regard to this proceeding of the rebels, not lessened by the fact that extraordinary pains were taken by them to keep secret from us their labors and purposes. Their efforts to withhold information, though rigid, were not wholly successful, for we contrived to get occasional vague intelligence of the work as it progressed. When the contract for the “Monitor” was made, in October, with a primary condition that she should be ready for sea in one hundred days, the Navy Department intended that the battery should, immediately after reaching Hampton Roads, proceed up Elizabeth river to the Navy Yard at Norfolk, place herself opposite the dry-dock, and with her heavy guns destroy both the dock and the “Merrimac.” This was our secret. The “Monitor” could easily have done what was required, for her appearance at Norfolk would have been a surprise. But the hundred days expired, weeks passed on, and the “Monitor” was not ready.

Late in February, a negro woman, who resided in Norfolk, came to the Navy Department and desired a private interview with me. She and others had closely watched the work upon the “Merrimac,” and she, by their request, had come to report that the ship was nearly finished, had come out of the dock, and was about receiving her armament. The woman had passed through the lines, at great risk to herself, to bring me the information, and, in confirmation of her statement, she took from the bosom of her dress a letter from a Union man, a mechanic in the Navy Yard, giving briefly the facts as stated by her. This news, of course, put an end to the test, which had been originally designed, of destroying the “Merrimac” in the dry-dock; but made us not less anxious for the speedy completion of the battery.

The capitalists who were associated with Mr. Ericsson in the contract for the “Monitor,” even though delinquent as to time, are entitled to great credit for what they did, although, in addition to patriotic impulses, it was with them a business transaction, for which they claimed and received consideration in subsequent contracts. But, while acknowledging their merits, injustice should not be done to others.

The “Monitor” was one of the early, and, it may be said, one of the most prominent practical developments of what may be called the American idea evolved by our civil war, which has wrought a change in naval warfare — that of concentrating the weight of metal in the smallest possible compass, and presenting the slightest possible...