The Nashville daily union. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1862-1866, 1864-03-23
Edward Everett on our Navy and the
Alabama

ton 10 the naval committee OF NOngress.
on Saturday, made an eloquent speech
concerning our navy and its work.
After abiding to the extraordinary
growth of our naval force since the be-
ginning of the war, he said:
Every ship-yard, public and private,
has been tested to Its utmost capacity,
every furnace in the country has been
kept at white heat night and day. and
an amount of work has been performed
on the coast and rivers, and a series of
results achieved, without a parallel, as
believe, when the disadvantages are
considered under which the navy labor
ed at the commencement, in naval his
tory. Let Norfolk, Hatteras, Roanoke
Island, Port ROYAL, Pensacola, the
Rio Grande, Fort Henry and Fort Don
elson, Island No Ten, Memphis, Vicks-
burg, Port Hudson, the shattered frag-
ments OF Sumter, Fort jackson and
Fort St. Phillip, the city of. New Or
leans; the Atlanta, demolished by five
shots from the Weehawken; l045 yes
sells captured from the enemy up TO the
lst of November, and from 70 to 50
since added the closure of every port
save one, and that guarded by twenty
vessels, on this immense line of coast.
bear witness to the activity and eff
cheney Of this arm Of the service. ]
need not, Of course, disclaim any
thought of undertaking whathas been
done by our noble armies and their
gallant commanders, who have borne
their full share in many Of these
achievements, but | am sure that they,
one and all, will DO justice 10 the eff
cient cooperation of the navy.
And then that marvellous creation Of
the genius and skill Of Ericsson, the
wonder Of the age, the tUrTeted moni-
tor If there IS an incident in the his
tory Of the war, which more than any
other deserves to be referred to a di-
rect interposition Of an overriding PROV
idence, it is the arrival Of the heaven.
directed little vessel at Fortress Mon
roe, after her rough, uncomfortable vOy-
age from New York, on the evening Of
the 9Th of March, 1862, at the close Of
a day of havoc, / had almost said Of
terror. The mind recoils from the con
temptation of the state of things which
would have existed had the rayages Of
the Merrimac been renewed on the
morning Of the 8th.
But the ayenger was at hand; after
an all but sleepless voyage from New
York Of fifty-six hours, in a vessel
whose construction-whOs strange en-
ginery-whose armament-whOse capa-
city for offensive or defensive service
were all untried, the gallant WOrden,
at sunrise the next morning, bore calm
" down to the encounter with his q
gantic adversary, amidst the wrecks Of
his yesterdays deYastations, (the top
masts Of the sunken Cumberland peer
ing mournfully above the waters, the
Congress burned to the waters age, the
Minnesota, marked out as the next VIC
tim, helplessly aground went round
and round him, TO use the graphic Ian
guage Of an eyewitness, las a cooper
goes ground a, cask, and drove him
crippled and discomftted back to his
harbor, never more to leave it until he
went up selfdGstroyed in fragments to
the sky Great applause)
When the noble young commander
of the Monitor dropped upon the floor
of his pilot house, stunned, lacerated
blackened and bleeding, with scarce
Yestige Of humanity in his manly coun-
tenance, he had inaugurated new era
in naval warfare When the iron-clads
and monitors, now in course Of CON
are completed, we shall have
upon our coasts and IN our harbors, a
defensive force which will relieve us
from all possibility Of foreign aggres
sion,
But this torpid, inefficient fossil navy
don't catch the Alabama No, nor did
torpid, inefficient, lazy Nelson, in com
mand of the feet with which he fought (
the battle of the Nile, catch Napoleon |
with force in ships of war and tran /.
sports of more than four hundred YES !
sels, shadowing the sea for miles, though !
he chased him, or rather, thought he |
chased him, round the Mediterranean. /.
from the 10th Of May till the lst of Au- /
gust, as the cat chases her tail, Napo- /
leon stopping, by way of episode, to cap /
ture Malta on the way, and on the I'D .
Of June actually crossing the track of /
Nelson a few hours before
Neither was he caught by the Eng /
fish, Russian and Turkish Heets-the |
English still commanded by Nelson
when the following year he returned by I
a voyage Of six or seven weeks irom
Egypt to France, passing a week with
his relations at Ajaccio, by the way
Neither was he caught in 1915 on his
passage from Elba, though the English
knew he was plotting ms escape and
French cruiser hailed him on the way,
and hearing his corvette was from Elba,
snquired how the Emperor was, who
in person that he was per
iectly we'll The Mediterranean is but
/ millpond compared with the seas over
which the Alabama roams, and when
ever the pirate is hard pressed, he slips
nto a neutral port Applause. 1t of
course must be by mere chance If he
IS ever captured