The United States Navy.
The Navy of the
United States has had an inglorious part to play in this war. It was once the pride of the nation.
The Army was jealous of its glory, and had reason to be. In the very infancy of the nation, the Navy made itself a name.
In encounters with English and French frigates, it proved that a new and formidable naval power was rising in the
West.
In the last war with
England, it astonished the world.
Whilst our successes on land were varying, the Navy ran one long and almost unbroken career of glory.
Wherever the
American banner (not the stars and stripes, which "old flag" was not adopted till 1817,) floated, it was the master of the seas.
If there was any special department of British prowess that
John Bull particularly prided himself upon, and with justice, it was his Navy. "Britannia rules the seas," was his favorite ditty.
He might confess that his enemies had sometimes got the better of him on land, but never on water.
He whipped every thing he came across on that element.
The war of 1812 took the starch out of that portion of his stiffening in the most unexpected manner.
It hit him between the very joints of his harness.
It struck him under the fifth rib, and doubled him up with amazement and indignation.
He has never forgiven it to this day, and if he lives to the age of Methuselah, his memory of the naval transactions of 1812 will be forever green.
Then began the halcyon days of the
American Navy.
Its officers were lionized at home and abroad.
New ships were built; splendid, roomy vessels, with powerful armaments; broad- shouldered sons of
Neptune at every gun; and fierce little fellows, in cocked hats, on the quarter-deck, who looked proudly upon the broad, grand ocean, and considered themselves monarchs of a nobler domain than that of king or emperor.
A more inspiring sight than a splendid American frigate in those days, away out on the broad sea, her swelling canvas towering to the skies, and the masses of silent, belligerent humanity upon her decks, was not often to be seen.
No one cared about entering the army in those times.
The Navy was the natural passion, and well it might be.
"How are the mighty fallen." How has the glory departed!
What has become of the ancient prestige and renown of the
American sea kings?
Departed forever!--Gone with the
Confederates; gone with
Semmes,
Moffitt, and others, who are the only representatives of its ancient supremacy.
The broad ocean is no longer the theatre of the United States Navy.
It is rarely seen a dozen miles from shore.
It prowis about muddy rivers and narrow bayous; it bombards country villages and defenceless farm houses; it steals sheep, negroes, and chickens.
Whereas it used to turn up its nose in supreme contempt at the army, it is now the army's body servant; it follows its master like his shadow, and fetches and carries, fights and runs, as he directs.
It is at the back and call of militia
Generals, and plays second fiddle to pot-house politicians, dressed up in uniform and strutting about in the grandeur of a little brief authority.
Nor does it seem to deserve any better fate.
Augmented to a number of ships which would fit it to cope with any
European power, and provided with engines of war such as the world had never before seen, it has never performed one achievement during the whole of this contest which has added a single laurel to the clustering glories of the old service.
The seventy ships of the old Navy were respected throughout the world.
The four hundred ships of the new have not been able to drive the
Alabama and
Florida from the ocean.
They have had to beg their old English enemy not to build any more ships for the rebels, for two against four hundred were more than they could manage.
They have even tried to have ships built in
England to catch the
Alabama and the
Florida.
What a confession of weakness!
What object humiliation.
It is enough to make the hones of the great
Commodores of 1812 rise from their graves.
Verily,
England has had her revenge, and may well chuckle over their tribulations.
