When the civil war broke out, the Navy Department, like every other branch of the government, was totally unprepared for the event.

The right of secession had been openly declared in the Senate and House of Representatives, and Southern members were daily leaving their seats; yet the Administration held back, and, deluded by Confederate sympathizers, sat still and looked on with dismay at the dismemberment of the country without seeming to take any steps to prevent it.

No department of the government seemed to rise to the occasion, and the Navy Department was no exception to the rule. The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Gideon Welles, was not a naval man in any sense of the word. His life had been passed amid civil pursuits, and the only connection he had ever had with the Navy was for a short time when he was Chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing — a purely political appointment. He had spent many years of his life as editor of a newspaper, and during his administration of affairs in the Navy Department gave evidence of ability in the use of his pen. The numerous dispatches and reports which he wrote during the war showed that as a literary man he had few superiors.

But Mr. Welles was far advanced in years when he took charge of the Navy, and had reached a period when men generally desire to retire to the shades of private life, and follow pursuits more congenial to their tastes. He was not a rapid thinker — was cautious by nature and extremely methodical in all he did. Having been at the head of a bureau where he constantly came in contact with contractors, he naturally surrounded himself with guards of all kinds, and introduced so much red tape into the Department, that it must have been a bold man who would have attempted to break through it all with the hope of overreaching the chief or his assistants.

Some of the bureau officers were inoculated with secession sentiments, and their rooms were daily filled with officers who exchanged opinions hostile to the government, meanwhile leaving the Secretary to assume that they were loyal. The Secretary, as a matter of course, received no aid from these men; on the contrary, they held him back and delayed his doing what good he attempted.

Mr. Welles began to find out gradually that he was not surrounded by the kind of men it was desirable to have about him under the circumstances, and he called to his aid in the department Commodore Stringham, the best dock-yard officer in the Navy and a thorough seaman, loyal to the last degree and of a most honorable character. But he possessed no administrative abilities, disliked an office life, and soon sought relief from it by applying for active duty afloat. He was therefore appointed to the command of a small squadron, to attempt the capture of the forts at Hatteras Inlet, which he succeeded in doing.

To show how slowly secretaries or officers had risen to the occasion, and how little all concerned could form any estimate of what was actually necessary to be done at the breaking out of the civil war (though the coming events cast their shadows plainly before them), the Hatteras expedition was looked upon as a great event, and it was thought that the success of it was likely to carry such terror into the hearts of the Confederates that it would break up any further attempt to fortify the Southern coast!

Commodore Paulding relieved Commodore Stringham in the Navy Department. He was a faithful officer, who looked upon the flag of his country as the emblem of all that was great and glorious. He regarded secession as the worm at the root of the flower, sure to destroy it unless speedily removed, and he was in favor of exterminating every man in the Navy of whose loyalty there was even a doubt. He had served many years of his life in active duty at sea, but he now began to show the advance of age, and did not at once realize the gravity of the situation. Running in a groove, as he had done for so many years, he was not able to change his nature suddenly and adopt new methods.

He soon found that he did not suit the place, nor the place him, and as his ideas of naval discipline were so dissimilar to the system which governed a civil department that he had at times to defer to the opinions of the chief clerk, and the associations were not pleasant, he soon tired of the position, especially when he found that he would have to bear responsibilities which he did not care to shoulder.

In fact, Commodore Paulding disliked the atmosphere of the Navy Department as much as Commodore Stringham had done, and soon obtained duty at the New York Navy Yard, where he thought he could be of more service to his country. But before he left the Department he not only rooted out the disloyal officers who were attached to the different bureaus, but forbade any man who uttered disloyal sentiments. or who hesitated to espouse the Union cause, from entering the building.

It never struck these loyal old officers, when they heard that the Confederates were building iron-clads, that something might be done in that direction by the North. They had fought their battles on the open decks of ships and they thought that was a good-enough way for any one to fight. They did not believe in men who would resort to a shelter of iron for protection against shot or shell, and rather had a contempt for any one who would suggest such a mode of fighting. Consequently, their thoughts did not run in the direction of iron-clads.

It was absolutely necessary that Mr. Welles should have an adviser in his department who could take charge of the practical part of naval affairs, and who by his knowledge of the wants of the Navy could assist him to meet the difficulties which were daily accumulating, and almost overpowering him. It would not have been looked upon favorably had he selected a naval officer below the highest grades, no matter what his abilities were, for such a thing had never occurred in the Navy! That was argument enough, without mentioning that it would have been a reflection upon the older officers. It was for this reason that Mr. G. V. Fox, late a lieutenant in the Navy, was selected by President Lincoln as naval adviser, and finally appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy. It was not until Mr. Fox was appointed that due attention was paid to the building of iron-clads and other vessels appropriate for coast and river service, and it was to Mr. Fox that we were indebted during the war for the life and energy that pervaded the naval administration, and his ready compliance with the requisitions of officers, which enabled them to carry on naval operations with vigor.

Secretary Welles was not an eminent statesman, yet he had qualities of a high order. He was loyal to his government, held no intercourse with men of disloyal sentiments, and drove out of the service all those officers who wavered in their allegiance. He was a man of good judgment in many matters relating to the business that came before him, and he never showed more wisdom than when he acquiesced in the President's appointment of Mr. Fox as his naval adviser.

The civil war had now assumed such large proportions, and so rapidly, that even the wisest men were at fault as to what should be done to meet the style of warfare which the Confederates were inaugurating all over the South. With the assumed resources of the North, every step the Confederates made in military or naval warfare should have been more than met by a corresponding move on the Federal side; but this was not done. It was known early in the war that the Confederates were building iron-clads of a peculiar character, but no one seemed to know exactly what their character was.

There is no doubt of one thing, viz., that long before the prominent secession leaders had signified their intention of leaving their seats in Congress, every move had been determined. It was known exactly how many small arms were wanted, and how many great guns and pieces of artillery; and it was known that for a beginning there were enough of these arms stowed away in the Government arsenals scattered through the Southern States, to say nothing of the great armament that had been supplied from time to time to the States for the use of their militia. It is thus seen that in respect to arms the Confederates had no right to complain of deficiencies. At the battle of Bull Run they were as well supplied with all the appliances of war as were the government troops, who were forced to retreat on that day before the fire of this first army of the insurgents.

For some time all these matters had been considered by the southern leaders; and when the time came to act, eleven States rose as one man, and the government had not only to put down the State of South Carolina, with a small number of insurrectionists, but millions of people from Kentucky to Maryland, all armed and equipped and formed into battalions, as if they had been the great reserve of the nation, ready to jump to their arms at the call of the general government. This system of preparation extended to the Navy as well as to the Army. The Confederate leaders knew, two years before the war, what officers of the Navy would unite with them in humiliating the old flag, and though these officers made no pledges, and doubtless hoped that the event would never take place that would disturb their position under the United States Government, yet they had made up their minds what to do in case the struggle ensued.

It is not likely that the Southern leaders would lose any opportunity of gaining information from Southern officers that would enable them to carry out their plans, and it is free to presume, from what we now know. that a full discussion of all matters was carried on between the promoters of secession and officers of the Army and Navy up to the last moment; many of the latter may have entered into these discussions and given all the desired information without realizing that they were unfaithful to the trusts confided to them by their lawful government.

We believe that all the iron-clads that finally got afloat or were burned on the stocks were calculated for before the war, the places of building them decided upon, the difficulties the Federal Government would have to contend with to get at them, the material required for their construction, the time required to build them, and the officers and artisans who were to be employed in the work selected. This may seem doubtful, but the Confederates could never, with all their energy and determination to win, have achieved such work as they performed in the building of an iron-clad navy without having had preconceived plans.

It is a compliment to their energy and ingenuity to say that they could build anything at all at the South beyond their light river-steamers. They had so long depended upon the Northern machine-shops for all heavy work needed in the South, that they had no great factories of their own. Even the Tredegar Works at Richmond, which supplied a large number of the Brooke rifles for the Confederacy, owed its existence to the fact that it was sustained by the United States Government in the first instance, and by large contracts given it for naval ordnance up to 1861, some of which was on the lathe when Sumter fired the first gun.

If the Southerners did not make their plans before the war actually broke out, they deserve unbounded credit for the energy displayed in getting into existence such formidable vessels as they did before the North had done anything but build the little Monitor, which was ready nearly on the same day that the Merrimac created such consternation at Hampton Roads.

It is true, that through the enterprise and energy of a western man, Mr. James B. Eads, we got some iron-clads afloat on the Mississippi, but it was not until the 17th of June, 1861, that the Quartermaster-general of the Army issued proposals for building the vessels. Great progress was made upon these quasi iron-clads when the work was once under full headway; but with all the remarkable services they performed, what were they when compared with the Virginia, the Louisiana, the Albemarle, Atlanta, Mobile, and three large vessels built or building at Yazoo City — the Mississippi, burnt at New Orleans — the Tennessee, that fought a whole squadron (including three iron-clads) in Mobile Bay — and the Arkansas, that passed through a fleet of vessels (carrying 150 guns), without receiving more serious injury than the wounding of some fifteen men and the slight derangement of part of her armor and machinery?

Previous to the civil war it had been the aim of the United States Government to excel all other nations in the quality and size of its vessels-of-war. If a steam-frigate was built in Europe of large size and heavily armed, the U. S. Government at once laid down the lines of a larger vessel carrying many more guns, and these guns of a calibre hitherto unknown in naval warfare. We had, in fact, reached the point of excellence in our ships some years previous to the breaking out of the Rebellion, and the great steam-frigates which figured during the war in attacks on heavy earth-works were sample vessels of our Navy. They had all steamed to different parts of the world, and their appearance and power called forth the applause of all foreign officers who visited them. There were no vessels in Europe of this class that could compare with them; yet, with all these triumphs over foreigners, we had only one vessel at the time of the Merrimac's appearance that was able to compete with her. The only vessels we had building were the New Ironsides (a splendid ship of her class) and the Galena, a perfect failure as an iron-clad, as proved by her weakness on the James River, where she attacked the Confederate batteries.

It required some time for the Department to take in the true situation of affairs, and it was not until after the battle between the Monitor and Merrimac that they saw how nearly the nation escaped a great calamity, which had been averted by the invention of John Ericsson, and the gallant officer who fought the Union iron-clad with so much skill and bravery. Then the Navy Department rose to the occasion, and putting forth all its energy, more than redeemed itself for the apparent supineness of the past.

At first neither the constructors nor the Navy Department had a fair conception of what was needed in the Navy to meet the new order of vessels that were being built in the South. The Department was overwhelmed with a multiplicity of plans that were presented by outside parties, who were backed by strong political friends in Congress whom it was advisable the Secretary should conciliate. Some of these plans were so wild and impracticable that they could not be considered for a moment. The attention required by these claimants and their political backers hampered the Department greatly; and they were not so much indebted to John Ericsson for driving the Merrimac into port, as for getting rid of the pack of inventors and advisers who had been hanging about the doors of the Secretary of the Navy.until none but a person of Mr. Welles' placid temper or Mr. Fox's inflexible will could have been able to stand the strain. The little Monitor settled all these inventors at the same time that she settled the Merrimac, and Ericsson not only rose at once in the estimation of the public, but his standing with the Government became assured.

From that time forth the Navy Department may be said to have assumed new life and vigor, and the most hypercritical historian can scarcely find fault with it for want of energy displayed in building vessels of the new type, which, when finished, could bid defiance to the heaviest ships of any foreign navy.

There was at one time in England a large number of British naval officers who would not listen to the idea of having an iron-clad navy. The French were trying to introduce iron-clads into their service, but on a small scale; and their want of success did not encourage Englishmen to copy their traditional enemies. They still clung to their idols, the staunch old wooden three-deckers, seventy-fours and frigates, and scouted the idea of laying aside these noble structures for a class of vessel that had never been tested at sea, and which, in the opinion of many, would go to the bottom in the first gale of wind they encountered. They had in some cases partially protected the wood-work abreast of the guns, but not to any extent.

There was no master-mind to take hold of the subject, and to evoke a system that would at once show up the weakness of the British navy, and convince the authorities that the days of the wooden monarchs of the sea were numbered.

The Federal Navy Department long before had its eyes on the great English navy that made no move in the direction of changing the character of its vessels — a navy full of clever and scientific men, who should have been ever alive to any theory that makes one navy superior to another, but who now refused to listen to the talk about iron-clad ships and scouted the idea of adopting them.

It would have been a bold man, indeed, who, as Secretary of the Navy, would have taken the responsibility of building any number of untried Monitors without something to justify him in doing so. The Secretary of the Navy himself and those about him had no positive belief at first in the success of Ericsson's Monitor. The plan was so contrary to all preconceived ideas of a fighting-ship that they could not believe it would do what Ericsson predicted for it.

The chief constructor of the navy, Mr. John Lenthall, at first condemned the Monitor in toto, and he was at that time the ablest naval architect in any country, having built some of the most effective ships afloat.

All these things were enough to have deterred Secretary Welles from embarking in the iron-clad business; but he did take hold of the Ericsson plan, and in view of the fact that it was necessary to have something With which to meet the Merrimac, he made a contract with this inventor which in the end led to much larger vessels. As soon as the invulnerability of the Monitor was established by her encounter with the most powerful iron-clad afloat, Secretary Welles was no longer backward in advocating this class of vessel.

To show how little was known about iron-clads in the U. S. Navy and how little support the Department received from that direction: A Board, established by Act of Congress, to consist of three skillful line officers of the Navy, was appointed to look into the subject of ironclads; and, if their report was favorable, the Secretary of the Navy was to be authorized to build one or more armored or iron-clad, or steel-clad, steamships or floating batteries, etc., etc. This law was passed in September, 1861. The Board of Officers appointed to decide upon this matter approached the subject very carefully, saying: Distrustful of our own ability to discharge this duty, which the law requires should be performed by three skillful naval officers, we approach the subject with diffidence, having no experience and but scanty knowledge in this branch of naval architecture.

This Board was governed very much in their reports by the information and opinions which they could obtain from English authorities. They recommended three out of seventeen plans that had been submitted (one of them John Ericsson's), but with reservations and a proviso (which was enough to frighten off any constructor) that the vessels must be a success in all respects, or else be thrown back on the hands of the contractors!

The Board on their own account recommended that armor and heavy guns be placed on one of our river craft; or, if none will bear it, to construct a scow that will answer, to plate and shield the guns for river service on the Potomac; to be constructed or prepared at the Washington Navy Yard for immediate use! The Board did not say how this iron-clad warrior was to be propelled.

When three of the most skillful officers of the Navy could give the Secretary no better information than this, it is no wonder that he was doubtful of his own ability to decide in such a case; but he did decide. and in favor of Ericsson, who proposed not only the most reasonable price for his vessels, but the unity of the design seemed to strike the Board as something likely to succeed. The New Ironsides was also contracted for with Cramp & Sons in Philadelphia, and the Galena, to be armored with three-inch iron, to be built by Bushnell & Co., New Haven, Connecticut. These three vessels, it is said, were to represent the three types of the American idea of iron-clads-though, with the exception of the New Ironsides, very few persons had any faith in them.

This was the first attempt at building an iron-clad navy for operations on the coast, and the Monitor was the only one of them that was ready to meet the enemy's greatest fighting-machine, just in the nick of time.

There was one thing which the Navy Department lost sight of altogether, and that was that the Merrimac was simply a large frigate being metamorphosed into an iron-clad. We had five vessels similar to the Merrimac, and any two of them could have been cut down and armored much more effectively than the Merrimac was. The work could have been done at our northern navy yards in half of the time it could be done by the Confederates, and we would have had two heavy ironclads ready to meet the Confederate monster if ever she should get out of Norfolk.

What matters it? some will say. The Monitor drove the Merrimac back, and demonstrated the superiority of the American type of iron-clad over the most powerful war-ship ever until that time built in any navy, placed us on an equality with England and France, and gave our government a sure plan they could follow with safety.

Yes, but we would have been saved the disgrace and disaster of seeing two of our finest frigates sunk or destroyed at Newport News, 250 gallant officers and men slain almost in cold blood, three frigates run on shore and at the mercy of the Merrimac, and every ship at Hampton Roads thrown into a state of panic, which unfortunately was witnessed by a foreign man-of-war lying at anchor off Fortress Monroe. It would have saved the government a shock which it did not recover from for some time, and the Northern people from the mortification of knowing that our entire fleet at Hampton Roads had been beaten by one Confederate vessel in the first naval encounter of the war.

With all this, the lesson learned was a useful one. It opened the eyes of Congress to the necessity of making more liberal appropriations for the Navy, and made them listen at last to the appeals of the Secretary of the Navy to strengthen this branch of the service.

The Board above referred to recommended that the Department should ask Congress, at the next session, to appropriate $10,000 for experiments on iron plates of different kinds! As if the Department could wait while the enemy was thundering at its doors! But it is due to the Navy Department to state that it was not at all influenced by such a procrastinating policy. Mr. Welles while Secretary of the Navy received his share of abuse, and on no point was he more severely criticised than on his selection of the Monitor as the type of American iron-clads, for the principle did not meet with favor among that class of officers who were expected to serve in them. Mr. Welles could not expect to be exempt from criticism, or be excused from the responsibility of any failure that might attend his experiments with the Navy. He was in the position of the commander of a fleet, being alone responsible for success or failure. Though his subordinates may do a great deal of the work, and make a great many suggestions, yet the Commander-in-chief is entitled to all the honors in case of success, and must also bear the blame of failure. Such has been the history of war since wars began. This rule also applies to heads of departments. They may have the ablest subordinates and be relieved of many of the cares of office, yet they must shoulder all responsibility and take the odium of every case of failure.

In writing history, one must be careful not to let his predilections in favor of one man lead him to do injustice to another, especially if this other is the head of a department and the responsible party.

No matter what the abilities of the subordinates are, or how much their services have conduced to the desired end, one must look only to the head of his department for reward, as a lieutenant does to his captain.

It is not always that men receive in their life-time the amount of credit due for their work; it oftener happens that they receive more honor after death. In the course of years history will do them justice. The patient, plodding historian will come along, and taking no account of time,will delve into the mass of records which lie at his disposal, when every word is carefully scanned, and the truth is sure to be evolved. Then men are weighed according to their merits, and assigned to their rightful positions.

All the sensational histories written during the war, or directly after it, have long since been consigned to that bourne from which sensational history never returns. He who now undertakes to write of the war must prepare himself for severe criticism if he tries to deprive any one of credit.

Time is a great promoter of good feeling and softener-down of asperities, enabling a writer of the present day to view things in a different light from what he did twenty years ago. It would be better, nevertheless, that a century should pass before the history of a war is written, when all the participators in it are dead; for history can be better told from the written or printed records of the day than from the recollections of any one who lived among the scenes he attempts to describe; but, if men will write, they must lay aside all personal feeling, and keeping the records before their eyes, do their duty thoa the heavens should fall.

Thus, in this history, in speaking of the work done by the Navy Department to bring to an end the terrible rebellion that was devastating the country, the writer can only recognize Mr. Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, as the one who controlled the great machine that was turning out ships, gun-boats, iron-clads, etc., with a rapidity that astonished the powers of Europe, who were looking on with amazement at the Federal Government while the latter was building a Navy capable of setting at defiance even France or England.

While Mr. Fox, the Assistant Secretary, was bending all his energies to devise the class of vessels best suited for the purposes of our war, and to meet the necessities of the occasion, and Mr. Faxon, the chief clerk, was giving his undivided attention to the civil branch of the Department, Mr. Welles was presiding over all and giving to each his moral support.

Mr. Welles was the responsible head; it was his judgment that decided almost all matters; it was his coolness and placidity of temper that controlled those around him and smoothed over the little asperities and jealousies which would spring up among his subordinates — with a smooth word he brought back to his proper position anyone who attempted to assume more than his rightful authority — in this way making a unit of the department. Mr. Fox was the able assistant, in charge of the general naval duties that had in years gone by pertained to the Board of Naval Commissioners, while Mr. Faxon was the chief clerk in charge of the Civil Department and the records.

Secretary Welles was the judicial, financial, and political head, under whose direction everything was done; all plans were submitted to him, and no movement was made without his consent, and he weighed every matter before coming to a conclusion. He knew everything that was going on in the Navy; and as a proof that he understood and appreciated all that was taking place, and that he was observing the proper steps to provide for the future, it is only necessary for one to read the numerous able reports he wrote from time to time on the condition of the Navy and its requirements, or his descriptions of the operations of the different squadrons. These documents will convince any one that Secretary Welles had abilities of no ordinary kind, and that, with few omissions, he did everything that could be done to put the Navy in a creditable condition.

That he could have accomplished all he did without Mr. Fox's assistance no one pretends to claim; but he showed his judgment in listening to this gentleman's recommendations, and by placing confidence in one who had the best interests of the service at heart. Hereafter, then, when speaking of the Navy Department, we shall regard Secretary Welles as the responsible head to whom all under him owed proper obedience and their best efforts to aid in the difficult task he had before him.

In all that regarded the general increase of the Navy, the Department had made good use of the means at its disposal. The Navy Yards and private establishments were full of work to overflowing. Mr. John Lenthall, a constructor of the highest order, was always ready, with his practical skill and science, for any emergency. He had planned the great frigates, Colorado, Wabash, Minnesota, Merrimac, and Franklin, which had elicited the applause of the world. He planned the 90-day gun-boats immediately after the breaking out of the war (a small class of vessel carrying one 11-inch gun forward and two light 32-pounders aft, drawing only eight or ten feet of water, and therefore able to enter any of the Southern ports). These vessels were of the greatest use during the war, and their value could not be overestimated.

On a requisition from Mr. Fox, Mr. Lenthall designed the double-enders, with their heavy batteries of 9 and 11-inch guns and ten feet draft of water, that could follow the 90-day gun-boats through the most narrow and tortuous streams, where, not having room to turn, they could go out again stern foremost, like a New York ferry-boat going from slip to slip.

And when Mr. Lenthall was notified that the Confederates were having built in England fast clippers armed with English guns, manned by English seamen, and commanded by Confederate officers, he at once designed a score of swift and beautiful corvettes, that were able to overtake any of the Confederate cruisers and capture them when they got them under their guns. One of these did actually destroy the Alabama.

Mr. Lenthall also designed those large ships-of-war of over 3,000 tons (on Mr. Fox's suggestion), the first of which made seventeen and one-half knots per hour for twenty-four consecutive hours, the greatest speed that had been attained at that time by any naval power. In this case the ability of Mr. Isherwood, chief of Bureau of Steam Engineering, was brought into play. He designed the engines and boilers of these ships, as he did the machinery of all others planned by Mr. Lenthall.

Mr. Lenthall could not at first be made to admit that a vessel of the Monitor's build could be made efficacious for war purposes, or live in a sea-way, and he did not hesitate to say, while she was building, that she would go down as soon as she was launched. It was not until after the battle of the Monitor and Merrimac that he had any confidence in the former. Then Mr. Lenthall's ideas underwent a radical change, and while lie sighed over what he knew would be the end of all his beautiful wooden vessels, with whose fine models he had spent so many hours of his life. his practical mind at once grasped the subject, with new ideas engrafted on the first project, and in the end he produced vessels of the Monitor type that had not their equals at that time in any European navy.

Whatever alterations may have been made in the Monitor system, the original idea was that of John Ericsson; any change