federate army under General Bragg, and forced into a retrograde movement which carried it back to Louisville. More deplorable, however, than either of these errors of judgment was Halleck's neglect to seize the opportune moment when, by a vigorous movement in coöperation with the brilliant naval victories under Flag-Officer Farragut, commanding a formidable fleet of Union war-ships, he might have completed the overshadowing military task of opening the Mississippi River.

The Blockade-Hatteras Inlet-Roanoke Island-Fort Pulaski-Merrimac and Monitor-The Cumberland Sunk-The Congress Burned-Battle of the Ironclads -Flag-Officer Farragut-Forts Jackson and St. Philip -New Orleans Captured-Farragut at Vicksburg— Farragut's Second Expedition to Vicksburg-Return to New Orleans

IN

N addition to its heavy work of maintaining the Atlantic blockade, the navy of the United States contributed signally toward the suppression of the rebellion by three brilliant victories which it gained during the first half of the year 1862. After careful preparation during several months, a joint expedition under the command of General Ambrose E. Burnside and Flag-Officer Goldsborough, consisting of more than twelve thousand men and twenty ships of war, accompanied by numerous transports, sailed from Fort Monroe on January 11, with the object of occupying the interior waters of the North Carolina coast. Before the larger vessels could effect their entrance through Hatteras Inlet, captured in the previous August, a furious storm set in, which delayed the expedition nearly a month. By February 7, however, that and other serious difficulties were overcome, and on the following day the expedition captured Roanoke Island, and thus completely opened the whole interior water-system of Albemarle and Pamlico sounds to the easy approach of the Union fleet and forces.

From Roanoke Island as a base, minor expeditions within a short period effected the destruction of the not very formidable fleet which the enemy had been able to organize, and the reduction of Fort Macon and the rebel defenses of Elizabeth City, New Berne, and other smaller places. An eventual advance upon Goldsboro' formed part of the original plan; but, before it could be executed, circumstances intervened effectually to thwart that object.

While the gradual occupation of the North Carolina coast was going on, two other expeditions of a similar nature were making steady progress. One of them, under the direction of General Quincy A. Gillmore, carried on a remarkable siege operation against Fort Pulaski, standing on an isolated sea marsh at the mouth of the Savannah River. Here not only the difficulties of approach, but the apparently insurmountable obstacle of making the soft, unctuous mud sustain heavy batteries, was overcome, and the fort compelled to surrender on April 11, after an effective bombardment. The second was an expedition of nineteen ships, which, within a few days during the month of March, without serious resistance, occupied the whole remaining Atlantic coast southward as far as St. Augustine.

When, at the outbreak of the rebellion, the navy-yard at Norfolk, Virginia, had to be abandoned to the enemy, the destruction at that time attempted by Commodore Paulding remained very incomplete. Among the vessels set on fire, the screw-frigate Merrimac, which had been scuttled, was burned only to the water's edge, leaving her hull and machinery entirely uninjured. In due time she was raised by the Confederates, covered with a sloping roof of railroad iron, provided with a huge wedge-shaped prow of cast iron, and armed with a formidable battery of ten guns. Secret infor

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mation came to the Navy Department of the progress of this work, and such a possibility was kept in mind by the board of officers that decided upon the construction of the three experimental ironclads in September, 1861.

The particular one of these three especially intended for this peculiar emergency was a ship of entirely novel design, made by the celebrated inventor John Ericsson, a Swede by birth, but American by adoption—a man who combined great original genius with long scientific study and experience. His invention may be most quickly described as having a small, very low hull, covered by a much longer and wider flat deck only a foot or two above the water-line, upon which was placed a revolving iron turret twenty feet in diameter, nine feet high, and eight inches thick, on the inside of which were two eleven-inch guns trained side by side and revolving with the turret. This unique naval structure was promptly nicknamed "a cheese-box on a raft," and the designation was not at all inapt. Naval experts at once recognized that her sea-going qualities were bad; but compensation was thought to exist in the belief that her iron turret would resist shot and shell, and that the thin edge of her flat deck would offer only a minimum mark to an enemy's guns: in other words, that she was no cruiser, but would prove a formidable floating battery; and this belief she abundantly justified.

The test of her fighting qualities was attended by what almost suggested a miraculous coincidence. On Saturday, March 8, 1862, about noon, a strange-looking craft resembling a huge turtle was seen coming into Hampton Roads out of the mouth of Elizabeth River, and it quickly became certain that this was the much talked of rebel ironclad Merrimac, or, as the Confederates had renamed her, the Virginia. She steamed

rapidly toward Newport News, three miles to the southwest, where the Union ships Congress and Cumberland lay at anchor. These saw the uncouth monster coming and prepared for action. The Minnesota, the St. Lawrence, and the Roanoke, lying at Fortress Monroe also saw her and gave chase, but, the water being low, they all soon grounded. The broadsides of the Congress, as the Merrimac passed her at three hundred yards' distance, seemed to produce absolutely no effect upon her sloping iron roof. Neither did the broadsides of her intended prey, nor the fire of the shore batteries, for even an instant arrest her speed as, rushing on, she struck the Cumberland, and with her iron prow broke a hole as large as a hogshead in her side. Then backing away and hovering over her victim at convenient distance, she raked her decks with shot and shell until, after three quarters of an hour's combat, the Cumberland and her heroic defenders, who had maintained the fight with unyielding stubbornness, went to the bottom in fifty feet of water with colors flying.

Having sunk the Cumberland, the Merrimac next turned her attention to the Congress, which had meanwhile run into shoal water and grounded where the rebel vessel could not follow. But the Merrimac, being herself apparently proof against shot and shell by her iron plating, took up a raking position two cables' length away, and during an hour's firing deliberately reduced the Congress to helplessness and to surrender -her commander being killed and the vessel set on fire. The approach, the manoeuvering, and the two successive combats consumed the afternoon, and toward nightfall the Merrimac and her three small consorts that had taken little part in the action withdrew to the rebel batteries on the Virginia shore: not alone because of the approaching darkness and the fatigue of