e should have learned the lesson that
the United States, while it ought not to become an overgrown military
power, should always have a first-class navy, formidable from the number
of its ships, and formidable still more from the excellence of the
individual ships and the high character of the officers and men.
Farragut saw the war of 1812, in which, though our few frigates and
sloops fought some glorious actions, our coasts were blockaded and
insulted, and the Capitol at Washington burned, because our statesmen
and our people had been too short-sighted to build a big fighting navy;
and Farragut was able to perform his great feats on the Gulf coast
because, when the Civil War broke out, we had a navy which, though too
small in point of numbers, was composed of ships as good as any afloat.

Another lesson to be learned by a study of his career is that no man
in a profession so highly technical as that of the navy can win a great
success unless he has been brought up in and specially trained for that
profession, and has devoted his life to the work. This fact was made
plainly evident in the desperate hurly-burly of the night battle with
the Confederate flotilla below New Orleans--the incidents of this
hurly-burly being, perhaps, best described by the officer who, in
his report of his own share in it, remarked that "all sorts of things
happened." Of the Confederate rams there were two, commanded by trained
officers formerly in the United States navy, Lieutenants Kennon and
Warley. Both of these men handled their little vessels with remarkable
courage, skill, and success, fighting them to the last, and inflicting
serious and heavy damage upon the Union fleet. The other vessels of the
flotilla were commanded by men who had not been in the regular navy, who
were merely Mississippi River captains, and the like. These men were,
doubtless, naturally as brave as any of the regular officers; but, with
one or two exceptions, they failed ignobly in the time of trial, and
showed a fairly startling contrast with the regular naval officers
beside or against whom they fought. This is a fact which may well be
pondered by the ignorant or unpatriotic people who believe that the
United States does not need a navy, or that it can improvise one, and
improvise officers to handle it, whenever the moment of need arises.

When a boy, Farragut had sailed as a midshipman on the Essex in her
famous cruise to the South Pacific, and lived through the