Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies

[81] walls, as our regiment watched the battle; and sailors must have prayed, too, as never before.

The Merrimack, after a few minutes of astounded silence, opened the contest. She tried to sink her puny foe at once by a broadside, and be no longer delayed from the Minnesota, whose capture she had determined upon. After the smoke of the cannonade had cleared away, we looked fearing, and the crew of the Merrimack looked hoping that the Monitor had sunk to rise no more. But she still lived. There she was, with the white wreaths of smoke crowning her tower, as if a coronet of glory. And valiantly she returned the fire, too; and for five hours such a lively cannonading as was heard, shaking earth and sea, was never heard before. Literally, I believe that never have ships carrying such heavy guns met, till that Sabbath morning. Every manoeuvre was exhausted by the enemy. The Yorktown approached to mingle in the fray. One shot was enough to send her quickly back, a lame duck upon the waters, though she, too, is iron-clad. The Merrimack tried to run the Monitor down, and thus sink her; she only got fiercer shots by the opportunity she thus gave her little antagonist. And so it went on till the proud Merrimack, disabled, was glad to retire, and, making signals of distress, was towed away by her sorrowing consorts. David had conquered Goliath with his smooth stones, or wrought-iron balls, from his little sling, or shot-tower. Israel rejoiced in her deliverance, through the power of God, who had sent that little champion of his cause, in our direst extremity, to the battle. Since then the Merrimack has not shown herself; and the enemy confess her disabled, and her commander, Buchanan,— ominous name,— severely wounded, four of her crew killed, and seventeen wounded.

The regiment occupied Norfolk and Portsmouth and Suffolk for a time; then joined the Peninsular army, and had war and suffering in earnest, being attached to Hooker's division. Chaplain Fuller had just obtained a furlough, but refused to avail himself of it. Their first serious skirmish was on June 19, near the scene of the battle of Fair Oaks. When the regiment was ordered out, the Chaplain was lying in his tent, suffering with a severe sick-headache. Hearing one of the soldiers say, in passing near the tent, that he wished he had a sick-headache, the Chaplain at once rose, went to the field, and happening to get under a dangerous cross-fire, behaved with such