ough the North by its wonderful victory over the Merrimac. The
Confederates cut down a United States frigate at the Norfolk navy yard,
and transformed it into an ironclad ram, with a powerful beak. This
monster they sent against the Union fleet of wooden warships in Hampton
Roads. Broadsides had no effect on the Merrimac. The floating fortress
attacked the Cumberland, ramming that vessel, and breaking a great hole
in its side. The Cumberland sank with all on board. The Congress was
driven aground and compelled to surrender. Then the monster rested for
the night, intending to continue its mission of destruction on the
morrow. It seemed that not only the Union fleet, but the ports and
commerce of the North would be at the mercy of this novel and terrible
engine of destruction. The telegraph carried the news everywhere, and in
dread and anxiety the people awaited the fate of another day. When
morning came at Hampton Roads a small nondescript vessel, looking like an
oval raft with a turret, interposed between the Merrimac and its prey. It
was the Monitor, the invention of Captain John Ericsson, and it had
arrived during the night of March 8. The Monitor had been constructed at
Greenpoint, Long Island, and was towed to Hampton Roads by steamers. Her
turret was a revolving, bomb-proof fort, in which were mounted two
11-inch Dahlgren guns. As the turret revolved the great guns kept up a
steady discharge, battering the sides of the Merrimac. The latter hurled
enormous masses of iron on the Monitor, but made no impression whatever
on the little craft, and the duel continued until the Merrimac gave up
the fight, and ran back to shelter at Norfolk. Ericsson's praise was on
every tongue. The great Swedish engineer whose sanity had been questioned
when he submitted his ideas to the Navy Department, not only saved the
Union navy from destruction, and Northern harbors from devastation, but
he also revolutionized naval warfare.

* * *

Their first line broken in the Southwest, and now compelled to fight
within secession territory, the Confederates made a stand along a second
line from Memphis to Chattanooga, their forces being massed at Corinth.
In the great battle of Shiloh (April 6 and 7) 100,000 men were engaged;
the National loss in killed, wounded and prisoners was about 15,000, and
that of the Confederates over 10,000. The latter fought more desperately
than on any previous field, and for