times on all parts of her. The indentations were so slight that a fresh coat of paint almost rendered them invisible, with the exception of the pilot-house, where a ball striking, bent and cracked a huge iron beam, nine inches by twelve, pressing it inward one and a half inches. Where the prow of the Merrimac came in contact with the side of the Monitor, an insignificant dent on the outside was the only mark of the encounter. No official report of the losses on board the Merrimac was ever published. The Norfolk Day Book stated that nine were killed and eleven wounded. Others of the rebel papers denied that there was any loss of life. The Minnesota was subsequently got off the shoal, having received no material damage.

Before the Monitor sailed, Capt. Ericsson told the officers particularly to instruct the men not to be frightened at the terrible concussions of the enemy's balls against the outside of the turret. It might stun, but it would not hurt them. The concussion of shot, weighing 100 pounds, moving at the rate of a third of a mile a second, and striking a hollow, iron-cased chamber, within a foot of a man's head, can hardly be imagined. Castiron shot, striking fairly the iron mail, will crumble almost to powder. The Monitor carried out fifty wrought-iron shot. But orders were issued that they should not be used. They were exactly fitted to the bore of the guns, and it was feared that, by their expansion at the moment of being fired, they might burst the guns. Others were subsequently made, a little smaller, which would allow of expansion. The Monitor drew but ten feet water, and could consequently go almost anywhere.

One is not a little perplexed to know what comment to make upon this whole affair. The providential arrival of the Monitor, just at that hour, saved the national cause from a disaster which one shudders to contemplate. And yet it had been known for months, that the Merrimac was in progress. Three weeks before she appeared, it is stated that Gen. Wool, at Fortress Monroe, sent word both to the War and Navy Departments, that she would soon come out, giving an accurate description, which he had obtained from a trustworthy source, of her build and armament, and stating that there was nothing at Hampton Roads which could present any resistance. The Government, in consequence of this want of preparation, lost two of our finest frigates, including property to the amount of two or three millions of dollars, and about two hundred valuable lives. And, but for the private enterprise which devised and pushed forward the Monitor, national disasters might have ensued which can hardly be exaggerated.

The night succeeding the battle, there was another scene of horror. At midnight, the thousands at Fortress Monroe were awakened by fearful cries from the water of "Fire! fire! O God save us!" They rushed to the shore. At a little distance, the national gun-boat Whitehall was all in flames. There were no boats near the camp. There seemed to be no hope for the crew, but to be burned or drowned. It was a terrible sight, as the whole scene was illumined as with the light of day by the fire. The balls from shotted guns of the burning steamer were flying in all directions, endangering those who looked on. One shell struck the hospital, causing fearful terror,--as the inmates supposed that the dreaded Merrimac had returned, and was shelling the forts. The conflagration

was caused by a red-hot shot, which the Merrimac, during the day, had thrown through the Whitehall, and which had left between the timbers a smouldering spark. Four only of the poor seamen perished in the flames or water. The rest, by God's interposing kindness, succeeded in reaching the shore. Thus ended this eventful conflict-a battle never to be forgotten, and which inaugurates a new era in naval warfare.

Immediately after this conflict, Mr. Bentinck said, in the British Parliament, "Coast fortresses are henceforth rendered perfectly useless, by the invention of invulnerable war-ships." The massive fortresses, which now frown along the coasts of all civilized nations, and which have been reared at the expense of millions of money, are doubtless destined to stand, in the future, like the crumbling castles of feudal Europe, as the monuments of an age, in military science, gone by. Plate a stationary land battery as thickly as you please, and mount upon it guns of whatever calibre, to throw balls to any distance, and still a ship can get out of range, while the battery is loading with its second charge. And a squadron of such Monitors, selecting their positions, and bringing a hundred guns to bear upon a particular point, can batter that fortress down. Whatever ordnance can be mounted upon the land, will also float upon the sea. And a moveable battery must always have a vast advantage over one that is stationary. Already guns are cast which will throw balls weighing nearly five hundred pounds. And a Monitor is said to be now in contemplation, which will carry heavier ordnance than this, the turret to be cov ered with a plating of twenty-four inches of solid iron.

It is a clear case, that the nations of the earth have got to arm themselves anew, and at an enormous expense, unless they can consent to live in peace. The mail-clad Warrior cost England five millions of dollars. If England is to maintain her vaunted naval supremacy, she must build ships stronger now than the Warrior, and must have at least four hundred of them. Is England prepared for this expense of two thousand millions of dollars? France can build La Gloires, and America Monitors, as fast as England can rear her mail-clads. Vigorous competition in this line would exhaust the finances of all these governments. England's naval supremacy is gone forever. As a military force, exclusive of the naval arm, she is already but a fifth or sixth-rate power. Such is the position in which the Monitor has placed Great Britain. It is a kind Providence which has thus disarmed this most arrogant and quarrelsome of the nations. England will speak more meekly when another "Trent affair" shall arise. The United States Government is now building between twenty and thirty Monitors, some of them at an expense of over a million of dollars. It is safe to say, that when these lines shall be read, the United States, in naval strength, will be second to no other nation upon the globe.

In view of this new state of things, it is not impossible, that the great maritime powers may enter into a compromise, engaging to employ these mailed floating batteries-these resistless engines of destruction-for the defense of their harbors only; not for aggressive ocean warfare. God grant that all swords may soon be beaten to ploughshares, and that the nations of the earth may learn war no more.

CHAPTER XV.

FLORIDA.

COAST OF FLORIDA.-APPEAL OF SOUTH CAROLINA.-MASSIVE FORTIFICATIONS OF PENSACOLA HARBOR.-ASSIGNED REASONS FOR SECESSION. SEIZURE OF PENSACOLA.-LIEUT. SLEMMER.— TRAITORS AND HEROES CONTRASTED.-HEROIC RE-ENFORCEMENT OF FORT PICKENS.-EXHAUSTING LABORS OF LIEUT. SLEMMER AND HIS COMMAND.-ENERGY OF COL. BROWN. DARING ADVENTURE OF LIEUT. SHEPLEY.-SURPRISE OF WILSON'S ZOUAVES BY A STRONG REBEL FORCE.-ITS RESULTS.-CRITICAL POSITION OF FORT PICKENS.-ENGAGEMENT OF REBEL BATTERIES.-EVACUATION OF PENSACOLA-RECEPTION OF OUR SOLDIERS.-AMELIA ISLAND.

FERNANDINA.

THE State Convention of Florida, called by the slaveholders to vote that State out of the Union, met at Tallahassee, Jan. 3, 1861. There was but little diversity of sentiment among the delegates of that cotton growing community. They represented a population, according to the census of 1860, of 78,686 whites. There were also 61,753 slaves. Few doubted that Florida would be among the first to follow South Carolina in renouncing the authority of the National Government. The peninsula was purchased of Spain, by the United States, at the expense of several millions of dollars. A large portion of the territory consisted of a region of pine forests, dismal swamps and sandy plains, of little value for agriculture or commerce. There were, however, a few fine harbors on the coast, and some positions of great importance for the construction of forts to protect our rapidly growing commerce in the gulf. The South demanded the purchase of Florida, to promote the interests of slavery, by adding another Slave State to be represented in Congress. There was a small but heroic tribe of Seminole Indians occupying the everglades of this marshy, uninviting realm. Occasionally slaves, from the surrounding regions, would run away, and take shelter among these Indians, who ever received themkindly. The slaveholders demanded that these Indians should be driven, from the lands where their fathers, for countless ages, had lived and died.. The Government was under the control of the slaveholders, and of course. obeyed their commands. War was waged against these unoffending: natives. They fought heroically for their homes. Thirty-five millions of dollars were expended by the National Government, in expelling these Indians, and transporting them beyond the Mississippi. It was now necessary to erect forts for the protection of our National commerce. The whole region was surveyed, commanding positions selected, and magnificent fortresses reared, at a cost to the National treasury of over six millions

of dollars. Thus the National Government had expended upon Florida nearly fifty millions of dollars.

And now the few white inhabitants of this State, amounting in all to less than 80,000, scattered over its vast solitudes, assumed the right of voting that Florida no longer belonged to the United States, but that, with all its millions of acres of unsold lands, all its harbors, and all its forts, it belonged to the few people who had chanced to settle in it, with the right to cede it back to Spain, or to sell it to England or France, or even to Furrender it to a Congress of Confederate rebels. Was there ever before such a claim heard outside of a mad-house?

The business of the widely scattered population of Florida, most of them living a semi-civilized life, in log-houses, surrounded by their negroes, without churches or schools, was raising cotton and sugar. They were generally an exceedingly unintelligent people, led by a few ambitious demagogues, and consequently in sentiment radically pro-slavery. So far as the population of Florida was concerned, they had received nothing but favors from the Government, for which favors they had made, and could make, no return. It was, essential to the nationality of the United States, that a promontory so important, jutting down almost to the West India Islands, should not be in the possession of any foreign power; and, therefore, the National Government secured it, at the above-mentioned vast expense, and would have done so, had Florida been but one solid rock, or an expanse of desert and verdureless sand. These people, fostered and pampered, were among the first to cry out against the tyranny of the National Government;-a tyranny which consisted simply in requiring that Florida, like all the other States, should respect the Constitution of the United States, as interpreted by the Supreme Court. The Government did not lift a finger to control a local interest in Florida. The State was left entirely untrammeled and unmeddled with, to manage its own State concerns. The Government did not ask for the change of a "jot or a tittle" in the Constitution. It asked for no modification whatever, in that admirably adjusted balance of State rights, and National sovereignty, which in less than a century had placed America among the leading nations on the globe. It simply said to the Floridians, manage your own local concerns precisely as you please, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. Does any one ask, How could such a people revolt? The answer, as we have before shown, is plain. They loved slavery better than the Union. And it was manifest to the leaders, that by the continuance of the Union, and the natural and legitimate operation of the Constitution of the United States, slavery must die.*

* The Governor of Florida, in his Message to the Legislature, Nov. 26, says: "I most decidedly declare that the proper action is secession from our faithless, perjured confederates. But some Southern men object to secession until some overt act of unconstitutional power shall have been committed by the General Government; that we ought not to secede, until the President and Congress unite in passing an act unequivocally hostile to our institutions, and fraught with immediate danger to our rights of property. But why wait for this overt act of the General Government ?" Here, then, is the admission, 1. That secession is to save slavery; 2. That the General Government has in no way interfered with State rights; and 3. It is denounced as faithless and perjured, with the confession that it had committed no "act of unconstitutional power.'

The address of South Carolina to the slaveholding States, urging their united secession, contains avowals, upon this point, worthy of historic record. This address was adopted by the South Carolina Convention, Dec. 24, 1860. The following are its prominent utterances :

"Responsibility follows power. If the people of the North have the power, by Congress, 'to promote the general welfare of the United States,' by any means they deem expedient, why should they not assail and overthrow the institution of slavery in the South? They are responsible for its continuance or existence, in proportion to their power. The Union of the Constitution was a Union of slaveholding States. It rests on slavery, by prescribing a representation in Congress for three-fifths of our slaves. There is nothing in the proceedings of the Convention which framed the Constitution, to show that the Southern States would have formed any other Union; and still less that they would have formed a Union with more powerful non-slaveholding States, having a majority in both branches of the legislature of the Government. They were guilty of no such folly. Time and the progress of things have totally altered the relations between the Northern and Southern States, since the Union was first established. In spite of all disclaimers and professions, there can be but one end to the submission, by the South, to the rule of a sectional anti-slavery Government at Washington; and that end, directly or indirectly, must be the emancipation of the slaves of the South. The people of the non-slaveholding States are not, and can not be, safe associates of the slaveholding South, under a common Government. South Carolina, acting in her sovereign capacity, now thinks proper to secede from the Union. Citizens of the slaveholding States of the United States! circumstances beyond our control have placed us in the van of the great controversy, between the Northern and Southern States. Providence has cast our lot together, by extending over us an identity of pursuits, interests and institutions. South Carolina desires no destiny separate from yours. To be one of a great slaveholding Confederacy, stretching its arms over a territory larger than any power in Europe possesses, with a population four times greater than that of the whole United States when they achieved their independence of the British empire, with productions which make our existence more important to the world than that of any other people inhabiting it, with common institutions to defend, and common dangers to encounter, we ask your sympathy and confederation. We ask you to join us in forming a Confederacy of slaveholding States."

As was natural, the rebels turned their first attention to Pensacola. This was the largest and finest harbor on the Gulf of Mexico, and as such had been selected as the naval depot of the Gulf fleet. The Government had established here a navy yard, with all its costly appliances, a marine hospital, an arsenal, and a very valuable floating dry dock. The little hamlet of Pensacola was thus lifted into importance, and the town soon contained nearly 3,000 inhabitants, many of whom were employed upon governmental works. Opposite the town is the long, low, sandy island of Santa Rosa, which protects the harbor from the Gulf. At the western extremity of this island, commanding the entrance to the harbor, the