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[516] gun, and its capacity to penetrate armor-plates, as also of the feasibility and advantage of an attempt to supply in part our deficiency in ordnance of its manufacture. The commission submitted an elaborate report. They were unanimously in favor of the gun, and recommended that the State should enter into a contract for one hundred 100-pounder rifled guns of that pattern, and make such an appropriation as would admit of the construction of a greater number, if their early success should render such an increase desirable. Professor Treadwell and his responsible associates were ready to engage to establish a foundery which should deliver ten of these guns within six months, and the remainder within eighteen months. Under such a contract, the State would have made use of the erection of a new foundery capable of turning out the largest guns in great numbers. It would, if the Treadwell guns had succeeded, have provided for their rapid multiplication at a cost about two-thirds that of the Armstrong gun of the British Government, while, if this particular gun had failed, the State would have lost nothing, and the foundery and machinery might have been employed to advantage in other ways. The report was laid before a committee of the Legislature, who on the 24th of April, 1862, reported a resolve, which would have enabled the Governor to enter into such a contract. The resolve passed the House without a division, and was defeated by a single vote in the Senate, in its passage to be enacted in the last hour of the session.

The prospect of being able to effect any thing was now discouraging, while the danger became even more imminent, and the want more pressing. In December, 1862, General Totten wrote to the Governor,—

It cannot be too strongly insisted on, that guns are needed; that we want many more, and those extremely large guns; and that the fabrication of them should be expedited, extended, and multiplied.

In his message to the Legislature in January, 1863, the Governor reviewed the history of his past efforts, and again pressed the matter upon their attention; and on the 30th of March, 1863, the act was passed appropriating one million of dollars for the defence of the coast of Massachusetts. By this act it was provided,

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