CHAP. XII. armor, and this vulnerable point was not overlooked. The Constitution placed the District of Columbia exclusively under the legislation of Congress, and by their rebellious withdrawal from their seats in the two Houses the Southern Senators and Representatives had voluntarily surrendered this citadel of their propagandism. 1862. 1862. President Lincoln had not specifically recommended abolishment in the District in his annual message; but he had introduced a bill for such a purpose when he was a Member of Congress in 1849, and it was well known that his views had undergone no change. Later on, the already recited special message of March 6 embraced the subject in its larger aspects and recommendations. Thus, with perfect knowledge that it would receive Executive sanction, the Senate on April 3 (yeas, 29; nays, 14), and the House on April 11 (yeas, 92; nays, 38), passed an act of immediate emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia, with compensation to the owners, to be distributed by a commission, the whole not to exceed an aggregate of $300 per slave. The act also appropriated the sum of $100,000 for expenses of voluntary emigration to Hayti or Liberia. President Lincoln signed the act on the 16th of April, and in his short message of approval said: "I have never doubted the constitutional authority of Congress to abolish slavery in this District; and I have ever desired to see the national capital freed from the institution in some satisfactory way. Hence there has never been in my mind any question upon the subject except the one of expediency, arising in view of all the circumstances. . . I am "Globe," April 16, gratified that the two principles of compensation CHAP. XII. and colonization are both recognized and practically applied in the act." Certain omissions in the law, which the President pointed out, were remedied by supplementary enactments, which among other provisions added to the boon of freedom the privilege of education by opening public schools to colored children. IN CHAPTER XIII 66 Na great war such as that of the rebellion an inventive people like the Americans could not fail to originate novelties and develop progress in methods of fighting. The most critical point of the contest on both sides was the possibility of foreign intervention. This compelled the North to find effective means to enforce the long and difficult sea-coast blockade; while for the South it constituted a prime object to break it. Both sides therefore turned eagerly to experiments in the new system of iron-clad ships. In the destruction of the Gosport navy yard at the outbreak of the war, the United States steam-frigate Merrimac was burned to the water's edge and sunk. The rebels soon raised her, and finding her hull undamaged, and the engines yet serviceable, they proceeded by help of the Tredegar iron-works, at Richmond, to convert her into an ironclad. A wedge-shaped prow of cast-iron, weighing 1500 pounds, was fastened to the stem two feet under water, and projecting about two feet in front. A roof of wood two feet thick, with its sides inclining at thirty-six degrees to the water's edge, was made to cover about two-thirds of the hull, being the central part; this was plated with iron armor composed of two plates, each two inches thick. Within this protection was placed a battery of ten guns, four on each broadside, and one each at the stem and stern. Joseph Smith, H. Paulding, Report, Sept. 16, 1861. Vessels," pp. 2-7. The Navy Department at Washington was no less prompt to study the question of ironclads. The special session of Congress appropriated one and a half million of dollars for the work. A public advertisement invited plans and offers of construction. A competent board of naval officers examined the devices presented, and recommended three of the most promising, which by way of trial were put under contract. "Our immediate demands," said their report," seem to require, first, so c. H. Davis, far as practicable, vessels invulnerable to shot, of light draft of water, to penetrate our shoal har- "Armored bors, rivers, and bayous." Of the three plans adopted the one presented by John Ericsson of New York, a Swede by birth but an American citizen by adoption, a man of original genius, of great scientific acquirements, and of long experience in engineering service, proved in the end to conform best to these requirements. The board had doubts of its sea-going qualities, but at once recognized it as "a plan which will render the battery shot and shell proof." The hull, 127 feet long, 36 feet wide, and 12 feet deep, was covered by a flat, overhanging deck, slightly wider but much longer, pointed at both ends, closed and made water-tight, and rising only one or two feet above the waterline. On this stood a revolving turret, twenty feet in diameter and nine feet high, composed of wrought-iron plates bolted together to a total CH. XIII. thickness of eight inches. Inside this were two 11-inch Dahlgren guns, trained side by side and revolving with the turret. Ericsson named his novel ship the Monitor. When public humor afterwards christened his invention by calling it a "cheese-box on a raft," the designation expressed the exact intention of his model. In observing the movements of timber-rafts down the Norwegian coast, he had noticed that they suffered no danger from the waves, which simply rolled over them. So the closed platform of the Monitor, which would permit the waves to roll freely over its surface, required only its comparatively thin edge above and below the water-line to be protected with heavy iron armor. By this clever device, weight, which is the main difficulty in armored ships, was reduced to a minimum, and enabled him to combine great thickness of mail with the utmost lightness of draft. Wool to Gen. Scott, W. R. Vol. IV., p. 620. Information concerning the progress of the work on these first American ironclads reached both belligerents. The officers at Fort Monroe reported in October, 1861, that the Merrimac (she was named Oct. 6, 1861. the Virginia by the rebels) would probably make an effort to get to sea. This proved a premature rumor. Late in the following February the Navy Department had more trustworthy information, "Annals of through a Union mechanic then at work upon her, that she was nearly finished. The rebels doubtless had similar information concerning the ironclads building at the North. But in each case such clandestine knowledge was necessarily vague and fragmentary. Enough, however, was known in Washington to make it probable that the Merrimac Welles in the War," p. 20. |