The leading points only can be summarized.

The question of armored ships was in the air. The advantages of armor
had been already demonstrated on the French ship "Gloire" and others in
connection with the naval part of the Crimean War, and there was a
feeling that ironclads of some kind were a necessity of the situation.
These facts were perhaps more clearly realized at the South than at the
North; and early in 1861 we find Mr. Stephen R. Mallory, the Confederate
Secretary of the Navy, taking active steps to raise the "Merrimac,"
which had been sunken at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and convert her into an
armor-clad. Information regarding this project naturally became known to
the Federal authorities, and occasioned President Lincoln and the entire
Cabinet the most serious anxiety. At length on August 3, 1861, the
appointment of a Board was authorized, the duty of which it should be to
examine into the question fully, obtain plans, and recommend the
construction of such armor-clads as they should judge best suited to the
demands of the situation.

Shortly after this, Ericsson forwarded to President Lincoln a
communication in which he offered to construct a vessel "for the
destruction of the Rebel fleet at Norfolk and for scouring the Southern
rivers and inlets of all craft protected by Rebel batteries." For one
reason or another this communication does not seem to have produced any
immediate result. Later, however, when the Board made its report dated
September 16, they registered the opinion that the present demand called
for "vessels invulnerable to shot, of light draft of water, before going
into a more perfect system of large iron-clad seagoing vessels of war."
In pursuance of this idea they recommended the construction of three
vessels,--Ericsson's floating battery, a broadside vessel later known as
the "Ironsides," and the "Galena." Mr. C.S. Bushnell, who was
instrumental in bringing Ericsson's plans actually before the Board,
later associated with himself and Ericsson in the project two gentlemen
of means, and large manufacturers of iron plate, Mr. John A. Griswold
and Mr. John F. Winslow, who advanced most of the money needed, Mr.
Bushnell supplying the remainder. The keel was laid Oct. 25, 1861, and
the "Monitor," as she was named by Ericsson, was launched Jan. 30, 1862,
and was turned over to the Government Feb. 19, 1862. This brief record
of construction leaves untold all history of the ceaseless struggle
agains