Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1864-03-31
Edward Everett on our Army and Navy and the
Alabama.

EDWARD EVERETT, who presided at the din
ner given by the merchants of Boston to the
Naval Committee of Congress on SATURDAY.
made an eloquent speech concerning our ma
W and Its work. After abiding to the extra
ordinary growth of our naval force since the
beginning Of the war, he said:
Every ship-yard, public and private. ha:
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 series of results achieved without a
parallel, as l believe, when the disadvantages
f..e considered under which the navy labored
at the commencement, in naval history. Let
Norfolk, Hatteras, Roanoke Island, Port Roy
al, Pensacola, the Rio Grande, Fort Henry and
Fort Donaldson, Island No. Ten Memphis.
Vicksburg Port Hudson, the shattered frag-
meDts of Sumter, Fort Jackson and Fort St.
Phillip, the city of New Orleans; the atlanta
demolished by five shots from the Weehaachen :
/, 045 vessels captured from the enemy I'D to
the lst Of November and from 79 to 80 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 efficiency of this arm of the SER
vice. L need not, Of course, disclaim any
thought OF undertaking what has been done
by our 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 to the efficient CO.
operation of the navy.
And then that marvellous creation Of the
genius and skill of Ericsson, the wonder of
the age, the turreted monitors. If there is
an incident in the history of the war which
more than any other deserves to be referred
to a direct intelpositiOn of an oyerruling
Providence, it is the arrival of the heaven
directed little vessel at Fortress Monroe, af-
ter her rough, uncomfortable voyage from
New York on the evening Of the Sth of
March, 1862 at the close of a day of havoc,
had almost said of terror. The mind recoils
at the contemplation of the state of things
which would have existed had the ravages Of
the AaTin10c been renewed on the morning
of the 9th. But the avenger was at hand !;
after an all but sleepless voyage from New
York of fifty-six hours, in vessel whose con-
structi0n-whOse strange enginery-whose
COMMUNICATIONS capacity for offensive or
defensive service were all untried, the gallant
WOrden, at sunrise the next morning, bore
calmly down to the encounter with his gigan-
tic adversary, amidst the wrecks of his yes
terday's devastations, (the topmasts of the
sunken Cumberland peering mournfully above
the waters, the Congoess burned to the waters
edge, the Minnesota, marked out as the next
victim, helplessly aground) went round and
round him, to use the graphic language of an
eyewitness, cas- cooper goes round cask,'
and drove him crippled and discounted back
to his harbor, never more to leave it until he
went up sef-destrOyed in fragments to the
y
young commander of the Monitor dropped
lacerated, blackened, and bleeding, with
scarce a vestige of humanity in lis manly
countenance, he had inaugurated a new era
in naval warfare =! When the iron-clads and
monitors now in course of construction are
completed we shall have, upon our coasts
and in our harbors, a defensive force which
will relieve us from all possibility of foreign
aggression.
But this torpid, inefficient, fossil navy
don't catch the Alabama No, nor did tor
pid, inefficient, lazy Nelson, in command of
the fleet with which he fought the battle of
the Nile, catch Napoleon with force in ships
of war and transports of more than four hun
dred vessels, shadowing the sea for miles,
though he chased him or rather thought he
chased him, round the Mediterranean, from
the 18th OF May till the lst of August, as the
cat chases her tail, Napoleon stopping, by
way OF episode, to capture Malta on the way,
and on the 22d of June actually crossing the
track Of Nelson few hours before Neither
was he caught by the English, Russian and
Turkish feets-the English still commanded
by Nelson,-when the following year he re-
turned by voyage OF six or seven weeks from
Egypt to France, passing week with his re-
lations at Ajaccio by the way. Neither was
he caught in 1915 on his passage from Elba,
though the English knew he was plotting his
escape and French cruiser hailed him on
the way, and hearing his corvette was from
Elba, enquired how the Emperor was, who
answered in person that he "was perfectly
we'll" The Mediterranean is but a mill-po
compared with the seas over which the Ala
bama roams, and whenever the pirate is hard
pressed, he slips into neutral port. APP
plause. 1t of course must be by mere chance
if he is ever captured"