CHAPTER VII
THREE days after the emancipation meeting of the 6th of March, I returned to Washington and made my report to Mr. Lincoln. He was in high spirits over the event which, on the preceding day, had taken place in Hampton Roads. It was the epoch-making naval battle between the “Merrimac” and the “Monitor”—the introduction of the ironclad war-vessel to the history of the world. There was, indeed, ample reason for congratulating ourselves upon a narrow escape from incalculable disaster. On March 8th, the famous “Merrimac,” an old vessel which had been sunk in Norfolk Harbor and then raised by the rebels, and which had been covered with a thick coat of metal plates and armed with an iron ram and a formidable battery, steamed out of the mouth of Elizabeth River, sunk or destroyed a number of United States men-of-war assembled in Hampton Roads, without being harmed in the least by their artillery, and thus demonstrated her ability to overpower any war-ship in our navy then afloat. When the news reached Washington, the members of the Cabinet rushed to the White House in a state of utter consternation. Some of them already saw that dreadful monster, carrying an apparently invulnerable armament, easily break up our blockade of Southern ports, or lay our seaport cities under contribution, or ascend the Potomac, and, with its shells, drive the government out of the National Capital. The next morning the terrible dragon came forth from Norfolk Harbor again to continue the work of unimpeded ruin. Then, all of a sudden, an insignificant-looking thing, resembling a small “raft with a large iron cheese-box”
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