ck was felt on board the rammed ship, and no
apprehension of damage was experienced; but it was afterward found that
the enemy's stem had entered between two frames, and crushed both the
outer and inner planking. A few moments earlier the Brooklyn had been
thrown across the current by the chances of the night. Had the ram then
struck her in the same place, carrying the four knots additional
velocity of the current, it is entirely possible that the mortification
of the Confederate defeat would have derived some consolation from the
sinking of one of Farragut's best ships. Such were the results obtained
by a man of singular and resolute character, who drove his tiny vessel
through the powerful broadsides of the hostile fleet, and dared
afterward to follow its triumphant course up the river, in hopes of
snatching another chance from the jaws of defeat.

Another example, equally daring and more successful, of the power of the
ram, was given that same night by Kennon, also an ex-officer of the
United States Navy; but the other ram commanders did not draw from their
antecedent training and habits of thought the constancy and pride, which
could carry their frail vessels into the midst of ships that had thus
victoriously broken their way through the bulwarks of the Mississippi.
The River-Defense Fleet, as it was called, was a separate organization,
which owned no allegiance and would receive no orders from the navy; and
its absurd privileges were jealously guarded by a government whose
essential principle was the independence of local rights from all
central authority. Captains of Mississippi River steamboats, their
commanders held to the full the common American opinion that the
profession of arms differs from all others in the fact that it requires
no previous training, involves no special habits of thought, is
characterized by no moral tone which only early education or years of
custom can impart. Rejecting all suggestion and neglecting all
preparation, they cherished the most inordinate confidence in the raw
native valor which they were persuaded would inspire them at the
critical moment; and, incredible as it would seem, some of the men who
in the battle could find no other use for their boats but to run them
ashore and burn them, ventured to tell Warley the night before that
their mission was to show naval officers how to fight. They did not
lack courage, but that military habit upon whose influence Farragut had
so acutel