onal delegation one of
the most influential men in the Senate, and one of the most influential
men in the lower house. These two men had been worse than lukewarm about
building up the navy, and had scoffed at the idea of there ever being
any danger from any foreign power. With the advent of war the feelings
of their constituents, and therefore their own feelings, suffered an
immediate change, and they demanded that a ship be anchored in the
harbor of their city as a protection. Getting no comfort from me, they
went "higher up," and became a kind of permanent committee in attendance
upon the President. They were very influential men in the Houses, with
whom it was important for the Administration to keep on good terms; and,
moreover, they possessed a pertinacity as great as the widow who won her
case from the unjust judge. Finally the President gave in and notified
me to see that a ship was sent to the city in question. I was bound
that, as long as a ship had to be sent, it should not be a ship worth
anything. Accordingly a Civil War Monitor, with one smooth-bore gun,
managed by a crew of about twenty-one naval militia, was sent to the
city in question, under convoy of a tug. It was a hazardous trip for the
unfortunate naval militiamen, but it was safely accomplished; and joy
and peace descended upon the Senator and the Congressman, and upon the
President whom they had jointly harassed. Incidentally, the fact that
the protecting war-vessel would not have been a formidable foe to
any antagonists of much more modern construction than the galleys of
Alcibiades seemed to disturb nobody.

This was one side of the picture. The other side was that the crisis at
once brought to the front any amount of latent fighting strength. There
were plenty of Congressmen who showed cool-headed wisdom and resolution.
The plain people, the men and women back of the persons who lost their
heads, set seriously to work to see that we did whatever was necessary,
and made the job a thorough one. The young men swarmed to enlist. In
time of peace it had been difficult to fill the scanty regular army and
navy, and there were innumerable desertions; now the ships and regiments
were over-enlisted, and so many deserters returned in order to fight
that it became difficult to decide what to do with them. England, and
to a less degree Japan, were friendly. The great powers of Continental
Europe were all unfriendly. They jeered at our ships and men, and with