; in this respect
he resisted party influence and party connection, and was the friend and
advocate of the navy. Sir, I commend him for it. He showed his wisdom.
That gallant little navy soon fought itself into favor, and showed that
no man who had placed reliance on it had been disappointed.

Well, Sir, in all this I was exactly of the opinion of the honorable
gentleman.

Sir, I do not know when my opinion of the importance of a naval force to
the United States had its origin. I can give no date to my present
sentiments on this subject, because I never entertained different
sentiments. I remember, Sir, that immediately after coming into my
profession, at a period when the navy was most unpopular, when it was
called by all sorts of hard names and designated by many coarse
epithets, on one of those occasions on which young men address their
neighbors, I ventured to put forth a boy's hand in defence of the navy.
I insisted on its importance, its adaptation to our circumstances and to
our national character, and its indispensable necessity, if we intended
to maintain and extend our commerce. These opinions and sentiments I
brought into Congress; and the first time in which I presumed to speak
on the topics of the day, I attempted to urge on the House a greater
attention to the naval service. There were divers modes of prosecuting
the war. On these modes, or on the degree of attention and expense which
should be bestowed on each, different men held different opinions. I
confess I looked with most hope to the results of naval warfare, and
therefore I invoked government to invigorate and strengthen that arm of
the national defence. I invoked it to seek its enemy upon the seas, to
go where every auspicious indication pointed, and where the whole heart
and soul of the country would go with it.

Sir, we were at war with the greatest maritime power on earth. England
had gained an ascendency on the seas over all the combined powers of
Europe. She had been at war twenty years. She had tried her fortunes on
the Continent, but generally with no success. At one time the whole
Continent had been closed against her. A long line of armed exterior, an
unbroken hostile array, frowned upon her from the Gulf of Archangel,
round the promontory of Spain and Portugal, to the extreme point of
Italy. There was not a port which an English ship could enter.
Everywhere on the land the genius of her great enemy had triumphed. He
had defeated armie