ery outset. Later, a bill was passed for a
provisional navy, but there was no fleet for their occupation. The
department, therefore, used the discretion given it to confer a few
honorary titles, and to appoint a vast number of subordinate officers,
for shore duty in its work-shops and navy-yards.

The acceptability of Mr. Mallory to the people, at the outset of his
career, has been noted. They believed that his long experience in the
committee of naval affairs was guarantee for the important trust
confided to him. Moreover, he was known to be relied upon by Mr. Davis
as a man of solid intellect, of industry and perseverance. If his
knowledge of naval affairs was entirely theoretical, it mattered little
so long as he could turn that knowledge to practical account, by the
counsel and aid of some of the most efficient of the scientific sailors
of the Union.

Mr. Mallory took charge of the Navy Department in March, '61. At this
time the question of iron-clads had attention of naval builders on both
sides of the Atlantic; and deeming them indispensable to naval warfare,
the Secretary's first movement was a strong memoir to Congress, urging
immediate and heavy appropriations for their construction at New
Orleans and Mobile. With a treasury empty and immovably averse to
anything like decisive action, the astute lawgivers of Montgomery
hesitated and doubted. The most that could be forced from them were
small appropriations for the fitting out of privateers.

The first venture, the "Sumter," was bought, equipped and put into
commission at the end of April; and in the course of a few weeks she
ran out of New Orleans, in command of Raphael Semmes, and the stars and
bars were floating solitary, but defiant, over the seas. The history of
her cruise, the terror she spread among the enemy's shipping, and the
paralysis she sent to the very heart of his commerce, are too well
known to need repetition here. Badly-built craft as she was for such a
service, she was still more badly equipped; but so eminently successful
was she that both Government and Congress must have been incurably
blind, not to put a hundred like her upon every sea where the Union
flag could float.

Had one-twentieth the sum frittered away in useless iron-clads, and
worse than useless "gunboats," been put into saucy and swift wasps like
the "Sumter," their stings must have driven northern commerce from the
sea; and the United States ports would have been more effec