carried on each broadside by the
steam-frigates, if these could get near enough. At New Orleans, even
the less numerous pieces of the sloops beat down opposition so long as
they remained in front of Fort St. Philip and close to; but when they
passed on, so the first lieutenant of one of them told me, the enemy
returned to his guns and hammered them severely. This showed that the
fort was not seriously injured nor its armament decisively crippled,
but that the personnel was completely dominated by the fire of many
heavy guns during the critical period required for the smaller as well
as larger vessels to pass. As most of the river work was, of this
character, the broadsides of the sloops were determinative, and those
of the frigates would have been more so, could they have been brought
to the scene; but they could not. Much labor was expended in the
attempt to drag the _Colorado_, sister ship to the _Wabash_, across
the bar of the Mississippi, but fruitlessly.

For the reason named, the screw-frigates built in the fifties had
little active share in the Civil War. Were they then, from a national
stand-point, uselessly built? Not unless preparation for war is to be
rejected, and reliance placed upon extemporized means. To this resort
our people have always been inclined to trust unduly, owing to a false
or partial reading of history; but to it they were excusably compelled
by the extensive demands of the War of Secession, which could scarcely
have been anticipated. At the time these frigates were built, they
were, by their dimensions and the character of their armaments, much
the most formidable ships of their class afloat, or as yet designed.
Though correctly styled frigates--having but one covered deck of
guns--they were open to the charge, brought against our frigates in
1812 by the British, of being ships-of-the-line in disguise; and being
homogeneous in qualities, they would, in acting together, have
presented a line of battle extorting very serious consideration from
any probable foreign enemy. It was for such purpose they were built;
and it was no reproach to their designers that, being intended to meet
a probable contingency, they were too big for one which very few men
thought likely. At that moment, when the portentous evolution of naval
material which my time has witnessed was but just beginning, they were
thoroughly up-to-date, abreast and rather ahead of the conclusions as
yet reached by contemporary opinion.