This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [85]
For twenty-four hours the Federal authorities were in a state of panic, the most panicky of the lot being that eccentric war minister, Secretary Edwin M. Stanton. Merrimac could destroy the whole Federal fleet, she could steam up the Potomac and destroy Washington, she could go up the coast and clean out New York Harbor, she could go down the coast and obliterate the blockading squadrons; perhaps, in this promising month of March, the whole war would be lost because of this ungainly waddling warship. (In actual fact, Merrimac drew too much water to ascend the Potomac and was far too unseaworthy to go out into the open ocean, but Washington did not realize this.) At the very least she could upset all plans for the lower Chesapeake Bay.
Then, just when all seemed lost, another wholly fantastic warship came into the lower bay to restore the balance.
This was U.S.S. Monitor, which had been designed, built, and commissioned in the very nick of time. In all the story of Civil War coincidences, none is more remarkable than the one that brought these two ships into Hampton Roads within twenty-four hours of each other.
Monitor was a flat raft, pointed at the ends, her deck hardly more than a foot above water. Near the bow there was a little wart of a pilothouse, near the stern a smokestack; between them there was a ponderous revolving turret containing two eleven-inch guns. She had no masts, she was heavily plated with iron, and she was as complete a departure as Merrimac herself from all conventional standards of what a vessel had a right to look like. Orthodox naval men had shaken their heads dolefully when Swedish designer John Ericsson presented the plans for her; the decision to build her seems to have been made largely by Abraham Lincoln himself, who possessed less than his normal allotment of orthodoxy. She was not much more seaworthy than Merrimac, had almost foundered steaming down from New York in a storm; and now, the morning after Merrimac’s spectacular debut, she came chuffing in through the Virginia capes, ready for battle.
The day was March 9, memorable for the most momentous drawn battle in history — a battle that nobody won but that made the navies of the world obsolete. Merrimac and Monitor circled one another, got in close, and then fired away furiously, but neither seemed able to do the other very much harm. Merrimac tried to ram once, but the blow was ineffective — her iron beak had been twisted off the day before in the process of sinking a Federal frigate — and at day’s end each warship hauled off, battered and dented but fully operational.3
Washington was jubilant: Merrimac had met her match. But so, for that matter, had Monitor — which meant trouble for McClellan. The navy people were too well aware that until more ironclads were built the one they had must be preserved at all costs, and so Monitor was kept strictly on the defensive; if she went out and provoked a finish fight she might conceivably get sunk — a disaster too horrible to think about. So for two months the rival ironclads glowered at one another from opposite sides of Hampton Roads … and when McClellan asked the navy to go up the James and outflank Joe Johnston’s defensive line on the peninsula the navy could not do it. Just by staying afloat Merrimac was paralyzing Union activity on the James River.
So McClellan spent all of April preparing to attack the Confederate defenses. He finally got all of his heavy guns into position, ready for a scientific bombardment that would flatten the opposing works, and on May 4 — just as he was about to touch it off — he found that the works were empty. Johnston, outnumbered two to one and greatly mistrusting the strength of his fortifications, had waited until the last moment and then ordered a retreat.
That was the end of Merrimac. When Johnston retreated the Confederates had to evacuate Norfolk, which the Federals immediately occupied, and Merrimac no longer had a home. Her deep draught kept her from