rgy. The deeds of Farragut, his
compeers, and their followers, after exciting a moment's enthusiasm,
were powerless to sustain popular interest. Reaction ruled, as after
the War of 1812.

To whomsoever due, in the decade immediately preceding the War of
Secession there were two notable attempts at regeneration which had a
profound influence upon the fortunes of that contest. Of these, one
affected the personnel of the navy, the other the material. It had for
some time been recognized within the service that, owing partly to
easy-going toleration of offenders, partly to the absence of
authorized methods for dealing with the disabled, or the merely
incompetent, partly also, doubtless, to the effect of general
professional stagnation upon those naturally inclined to
worthlessness, there had accumulated a very considerable percentage of
officers who were useless; or, worse, unreliable. In measure, this was
also due to habits of drinking, much more common in all classes of men
then than now. Even within the ten years with which I am dealing, an
officer not much my senior remarked to me on the great improvement in
this respect in his own experience; and my contemporaries will bear me
out in saying that since then the advance has been so sustained that
the evil now is practically non-existent. But then the compassionate
expression, "A first-rate officer when he is not drinking," was
ominously frequent; and in the generation before too little attention
had been paid to the equally significant remark, that with a fool you
know what to count on, but with one who drank you never knew.

But drink was far from the only cause. There were regular
examinations, after six years of service, for promotion from the
warrant of midshipman to a lieutenant's commission; but, that
successfully passed, there was no further review of an officer's
qualifications, unless misconduct brought him before a court-martial.
Nor was there any provision for removing the physically incompetent.
Before I entered the navy I knew one such, who had been bed-ridden for
nearly ten years. He had been a midshipman with Farragut under Porter
in the old _Essex_, when captured by the _Phoebe_ and _Cherub_. A
gallant boy, specially named in the despatch, he had such aptitude
that at sixteen, as he told me himself, he wore an epaulette on the
left shoulder--the uniform of a lieutenant at that time; and a
contemporary assured me that in handling a ship he was the smarte