128 Transactions of the American Institute. 



eventful Sunday when the morning brought us news of the devas- 

 tation of the Merrimac in Hampton Roads, and you all remember 

 how, after a day of trepidation and apprehension, the evening 

 brought us tidings that her career had been checked by the sud- 

 den appearance of the little Monitor — " a cheese-box on a raft" — 

 which l]ad been fitted out in New York only twenty-four or thirty- 

 six hours before. It was the critical moment. Three days thence 

 might have seen Washington devastated or burned, and all the 

 enormous stores of war material there collected might have been 

 the spoil of the enemy if that little vessel had not been ready for 

 service until two days later. Our war showed great national 

 resources, not on one side only, but on both. At the beginning, we 

 were tempted to undervalue the mechanical skill and resources of 

 our adversaries. We believed that all mechanical knowledge was in 

 the North, and only the need of it in the South; but, "necessity is 

 the mother of invention," and before the contest had continued 

 long, we were compelled to respect and defend ourselves against 

 a skill in the invention of torpedoes, and even of armored vessels, 

 which we had no conception had any existence among our oppo- 

 nents. Their harbor defences were among the best that were ever 

 contrived on the face of the earth, with equal material and pecu- 

 niary resources, and from them, at that time, we learned not to des- 

 pise the capacity of any people who are earnest and resolute. Sixty 

 years ago, there were American statesmen of no mean capacity, and 

 of decided influence, who believed it wisest to keep this wholly an 

 agricultural country. They admitted that an agricultural people 

 was not likely to be a wealthy people, nor a remarkably powerful 

 people, except on their own soil ; but they said, " There are so many 

 errors, so many defects and vices, that follow in the train of manu- 

 factures, that we may 'better keep them in Europe, and minister by 

 cur ao-riculture to her wants as she ministers to ours." While 

 our people lived on the tide- water, that was a plausible though not 

 a sound theory; but when we became a nation spread over 1,500 

 miles inland, as well as 3,000 miles of coast, it became an entirely 

 impracticable theory. To-day, not half our agricultural products 

 would pay for their transportation to the Old World. It is not 

 possible to-day to export the timber, the fuel, the ore, the coal, 

 that make up so much of this nation's wealth, at any rate what- 

 ever. We have been compelled to be a manufacturing and 

 mechanical nation by the necessity of our position, hy our expan- 

 sion, by the thousand needs of our extended national existence. 



