The vacancies made by the wholesale action of 1854 remedied this for a
while. The lieutenants who owed their rank to it became such after
seven or eight years, or at, twenty-three or four; and this meant
really passing out of pupilage into manhood. The change being effected
immediately, anticipated the reaction in public opinion and in
Congress, which rejected the findings of the board and compelled a
review of the whole procedure. Many restorations were made; and, as
these swelled the lists beyond the number then authorized by law,
there was established a reduced pay for those whose recent promotion
made them in excess. For them was adopted, in naval colloquialism, the
inelegant but suggestive term "jackass" lieutenants. It should be
explained to the outsider, perhaps even many professional readers now
may not know, that the word was formerly used for a class of so-called
frigates which intervened between the frigate-class proper and the
sloop-of-war proper, and like all hybrids, such as the armored
cruiser, shared more in the defects than in the virtues of either. It
was therefore not a new coinage, and its uncomplimentary suggestion
applied rather to the grudging legislation than to the unlucky
victims. Of course, promotion was stopped till this block was worked
off; but the immediate gain was retained. Before the trouble came on
afresh the War of Secession, causing a large number of Southerners to
leave the service, introduced a very different problem;--namely, how
to find officers enough to meet the expansion of the navy caused by
the vast demands of the contest. The men of my time became lieutenants
between twenty and twenty-three. My own commission was dated a month
before my twenty-first birthday, and with what good further prospects,
even under the strict rule of seniority promotion, is evident, for
before I was twenty-five I was made lieutenant-commander,
corresponding to major in the army. Those were cheerful days in this
respect for the men who struck the crest of the wave; but already the
symptoms of inevitable reaction to old conditions of stagnancy were
observable to those careful to heed.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the benefit of this measure to the
nation, through the service, despite the subsequent reactionary
legislation. By a single act a large number of officers were advanced
from the most subordinate and irresponsible positions to those which
called all their faculties into play. "Respon