Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [283]
The news had terrified government officials, who feared that the invincible Merrimac might sail up the Potomac to attack Washington or even continue on to New York. “It is a disgrace to the country that the rebels, without resources, have built a vessel with which we cannot cope,” General Meigs had grumbled. An emergency cabinet meeting was convened, during which Stanton unfairly faulted Welles for the disaster. His attack was so personal, according to Welles’s biographer, that the navy secretary “found it very difficult for a time even to be civil in [Stanton’s] presence.”
In fact, the navy had been more than adequately prepared to deal with the Merrimac. The very next day, the Monitor, a strange ironclad vessel resembling a “cheese box on a raft,” engaged the Merrimac in battle. Though the little Monitor seemed “a pigmy to a giant,” it proved far more maneuverable. Commanded by Lieutenant John L. Worden, who directed two large guns from a revolving turret, the Monitor fought the Merrimac to a draw and sent the Confederate vessel back to the harbor. When Stanton learned that Worden might lose one eye as a result of the struggle, he said: “Then we will fill the other with diamonds.”
To Herman Melville, as to many others, the battle of the two ironclads marked the beginning of a new epoch in warfare. “The ringing of those plates on plates/Still ringeth round the world,” he wrote. “War yet shall be, but warriors/Are now but operatives.”
As the president and his advisers huddled over maps of Fort Monroe, Norfolk, and the surrounding area, they could not understand why McClellan had not ordered an attack on Norfolk immediately after his occupation of Yorktown. The Confederate retreat up the Peninsula had left the city and the Navy Yard vulnerable. Though the Monitor had held its own against the Merrimac, there was no assurance that this feat would be repeated. If Norfolk were captured, perhaps the Merrimac could be captured as well. With McClellan and his troops about twenty miles away, Lincoln and his little group came to a decision of their own. If General John E. Wool, commander of Fort Monroe, had sufficient forces at his disposal, an immediate attack should be made on Norfolk. Disconcerted by the prospect, the seventy-eight-year-old General Wool insisted on consulting Commodore Louis Goldsborough, since the navy’s warships would have to immobilize the Confederate batteries before any troops could be safely landed.
In the black of night, the Miami could not easily pull aside the Minnesota, Goldsborough’s flagship, so Lincoln’s party climbed into a tugboat and approached the port side of the Minnesota. The steps leading up to the deck were very “narrow,” Chase wrote, “with the guiding ropes on either hand, hardly visible in the darkness. It seemed to me very high and a little fearsome. But etiquette required the President to go first and he went. Etiquette required the Secretary of the Treasury to follow.” Stanton, climbing immediately behind Chase, must have overcome even greater trepidation, for an accident when he was younger had left one leg permanently damaged and he suffered, besides, from frequent attacks of vertigo. Fortunately, they all made it aboard without mishap. Though Lincoln was probably unfamiliar with Commodore Goldsborough, Chase had known him for several decades—the distinguished naval officer had won the hand of William Wirt’s daughter, Elizabeth, at a time when Chase had not been deemed an appropriate suitor.
Goldsborough approved the idea of attack in theory, but feared that so long as the Merrimac was still a factor, it was too risky to carry troops across the water. Lincoln disagreed, and orders were given to begin shelling the Confederate batteries. Before long, “a smoke curled up over the woods,” Chase recalled, “and each man, almost, said to the other, ‘There comes the Merrimac,’ and, sure enough, it was the Merrimac.” However, upon