it is very doubtful if the amount
destroyed was not more than balanced by the amount expended.

Thus, with varying fortunes--but with unceasing endeavor and unfailing
courage--the navy worked on. That hue and cry against it--which a
brilliant success would partially paralyze--soon gathered force in its
intervals of enforced inaction. Just after the triumph of Hampton Roads
was, perhaps, the brightest hour for the navy in public estimation.
People then began to waver in their belief that its administration was
utterly and hopelessly wrong; and to think that its chief had not
perhaps sinned quite as much as he had been sinned against.

The old adage about giving a bad name, however, was more than illustrated
in Mr. Mallory's case. He had no doubt been unfortunate; but that he
really was guilty of one-half the errors and mishaps laid at his door
was simply impossible. Not taking time--and, perhaps, without the
requisite knowledge--to compare the vast discrepancy of force between
the two governments, the masses only saw the rapid increase of the
Federal navy and felt the serious effects of its efficiency. Then they
grumbled that the Confederate secretary--with few work-shops, scattered
navy-yards, little money and less transportation--did not proceed _pari
passu_ to meet these preparations. Every result of circumstance, every
accident, every inefficiency of a subordinate was visited upon Mr.
Mallory's head. Public censure always makes the meat it feeds on; and
the secretary soon became the target for shafts of pitiable malice, or
of unreflecting ridicule. When the enemy's gunboats--built at secure
points and fitted out without stint of cost, labor or material--ascended
to Nashville, a howl was raised that the Navy Department should have
had the water defenses ready. True, Congress had appropriated half a
million for the defenses of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers; but
the censorious public forgot that the money had been voted too late.
Even then it was quite notorious, that in the red-tape system of
requisition and delay that hedged the Treasury--an _appropriation_ and
the _money_ it named were totally diverse things.

When New Orleans fell, curses loud and deep went up against the Navy
Department. Doubtless there was some want of energy in pushing the
iron-clads there; but again in this case the money was voted very late;
and even Confederate machine-shops and Confederate laborers could not
be expected to give their