THE UNION AND CONFEDERATE NAVIES.

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substance. The commodore of the period was an august personage, whowent to sea in a great flag-ship, surrounded by a conventional grandeur whichwas calculated to inspire a becoming respect and awe. As the years of peacerolled on, this figure became more and more august, more and more conven-tional. The fatal defects of the system were not noticed until 1861, when thecrisis came and the service was unprepared to meet it; and to this cause waslargely due the feebleness of naval operations during the first year of the war.

In addition to the other elements of weakness, the junior grades at this timewere short of officers, owing to the recent establishment of the Naval Academy and the limitation of the power of appointment; and at the very moment whenstress was put upon the service, it lost through resignation a large number ofits members, many of them men of high professional reputation. To fill thesegaps, the course at the Academy was for the moment curtailed, and the upperclasses were ordered into active service. On the 1st of August, 1861, thetotal number of officers of all grades and corps holding regular appointmentsin the navy was 1457. This number was inadequate to supply the demandsof the newly expanded fleet, and it became necessary to employ volunteerofficers, 7500 of whom were enrolled in the navy during the war. Thesecame chiefly from the merchant marine. Many of them were brave and capable,but their want of naval (as distinguished from merely nautical) training delayedtheir development. A still larger increase took place in the force of enlistedmen. The normal strength of the corps of seamen was 7600, which roseduring the war to 51,500, although the utmost difficulty was found in obtain-ing recruits, and it became necessary toward the end of the war to offer enor-mous bounties. The same want of training was apparent in the blue-jacketsas in the volunteer officers, and while the army was able to rely from thebeginning upon a trained militia, the navy was compelled to create its militiaafter the war had begun. Although the organization of a trained navalreserve presents no serious difficulties, and although it is evident that such areserve is of prime importance in any considerable war, no steps had everbeen taken to form it.

This was, however, only one of the many points in which the workings ofthe department were defective. There seems to have been a total want ofinformation at the central office of administration in reference to the existingdemands of naval war, and the measures necessary to put the machine intoefficient operation. Everything in relation to the plan of a campaign, to thevulnerability of points on the coast,— and it must be remembered that thiswas our own coast, whose capacity for resisting attack should have been bet-ter known to the Navy Department than any other,— to the increase of theforce of officers and men, to the expansion of the fleet, to the acquisition ofthe most modern instruments of warfare,— in short, all problems relating tothe conduct of hostilities, the only purpose for which a navy really exists, hadto be worked out and solved after the war had begun. Indeed, it would seemthat the one subject with which the direction of naval affairs had never con-cerned itself was the subject of making war.

These circumstances placed the Secretary, at the opening of his adminis-