CHAPTER VIII.

DAVID GLASCOE FARRAGUT.

The Lesson of the Rebellion to Monarchs-The Strength of the United StatesThe U. S. Naval Service-The Last War-State of the Navy in 1861 Admiral Farragut Represents the Old Navy and the New-Charlemagne's Physician, Farraguth-The Admiral's Letter about his Family-His BirthHis Cruise with Porter when a Boy of Nine-The Destruction of the EssexFarragut in Peace Times-Expected to go with the South-Refuses, is Threatened, and goes North-The Opening of the Mississippi-The Bay Fight at Mobile-The Admiral's Health-Farragut and the Tobacco Bishop.

THE course and character and result of the Rebellion taught many a great new lesson; in political morals and in political economy; in international law; in the theory of governing; in the significance of just principles on this earth. Perhaps all those lessons, taught so tremendously to the civilized world, might be summed in one expression; the Astounding Strength of a Christian Republic. For, whichever phase of the Rebellion we examine in considering it as a chapter of novelties in the world's history, we still come back to that one splendid, heart-filling remembrance;-How unexpected, how unbelieved, how inexhaustible, how magnificent beyond all history, the strength of the United States!

"There goes your Model Republic," sneered all the Upper Classes of Europe, "knocked into splinters in the course of one man's life! A good riddance!" And reactionary Europe set instantly to work to league 311 20

itself with our own traitors, now that the United States was dead, to bury it effectively. But the Imperial Republic, even more utterly unconscious than its enemies, of what it could suffer and could do, stunned at first and reeling under a blow the most tremendous ever aimed, at any government, clung close to Right and Justice, and rising in its own blood, went down wounded as it was, into the thunder and the mingled blinding lightning and darkness of the great conflict, unknowing and unfearing whether life or death was close before. As its day, so was its strength. As the nation's need grew deeper and more desperate, in like measure the nation's courage, the conscious calmness, the unmoved resolution, the knowledge of strength and wealth and power, grew more high and strong, and whereas the world knew that no nation had ever survived such an assault, and knew, it said, that ours would not, lo and behold, the United States achieved things beyond all comparison more unheard of, more wonderful, than even the treasonable explosion for whose deadly catastrophe all the monarchists stood joyfully waiting. They were disappointed. And ever since, they know that if the Rebellion was not the death-toll of Republics, it was the death-toll of many other things, and ever since, all the kings are setting their houses in order.

There were three great national material instrumentalities which the Free Christian People of the United States created in their peril, being the sole means which could have won in the war, and being moreover exactly the means which England and Europe asserted that we were peculiarly unable to create or to use;

THE NAVY IN 1861.

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they were the Supply of Money; the Army on the land, and the Fleet on the sea.

Of these three, the story of the fleet has a peculiar interest of its own. The United States Navy was always a popular service in the country, for the adventurous genius and inventive faculties of our people, developed and stimulated by its successful prosecution of commerce, had easily dealt with the naval problems of fifty years ago. In the war of 1812, the superior skill of our shipbuilders and sailors launched and navigated a small but swift and powerful and well managed navy, and the single common-sense application of sights for aiming, to our ship-guns, in like manner as to muskets, gave our sailors a murderous superiority in sea fights which won us many a victory.

But in times of peace, a free nation almost necessarily falls behind a standing army nation in respect of military and naval mechanism and stored material and readiness of organization; and accordingly, after forty years of little but disuse, our navy, as the muscles of an arm shrink away if it is left unmoved, showed little of the latest improvements in construction and armament, and indeed there was very little navy to show at all. At Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, the whole navy of the United States consisted of seventy-six vessels, carrying 1,783 guns; and of these, only twelve were within reach, so effectively had Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of the Navy, Toucey, dispersed them in readiness. for the secession schemes of his fellows in the cabinet. And even of those twelve, but a few were in Northern ports. The navy conspirators had no mind to have a southern blockade brought down on them, and so took