PRIVATE MILES O'REILLY.

THE IRON-CLADS.

MY

CHAPTER I.

DU PONT'S ATTACK ON SUMTER.

IN CAMP, FOLLY ISLAND, S. C., April 25, 1863.

Y DEAR N: Our friend, Major Wright, showed me one paragraph of your letter to him, in which you referred, apparently with surprise, to the fact that the attack on Charleston by the iron-clads should have been discontinued "when so few casualties had occurred." This is so obvious a reflection,

on the first hasty view of the affair, and one so radically unjust when we look calmly at the facts, that, in Major Wright's absence (he has gone down the posts along the Florida coast on a tour of inspection) I will venture to occupy your time a few moments on the subject.

With

In ordinary warfare the amount of casualties will give a fair idea of the strength of the resistance and the power and persistency of the attack. wooden vessels, your remark, as previously quoted— and I know it to be an all but universal one-would apply with truth; and it is because we have all become so accustomed to measure battles on land or sea by the amount of slaughter and maiming inflicted, that we are apt to err in judging an utterly uncommon and unprecedented battle by the ordinary or common standard. Let me also add that this standard is both a vulgar and false one. McClellan's victory at Yorktown was a bloodless one, but, nevertheless, a triumph of the highest importance in its results. Of Halleck's siege and capture of Corinth, the same may be said that victory, although a bloodless one, having thrown open the doors of the entire South-West to the conquering advance of our armies. And now, let me submit to you, more in detail,

some few hasty reflections on the subject of the recent operations for the capture of Charleston :—

1. It is to be borne in mind that this (so far as the navy was concerned) was purely an experiment as tc the possibility of taking a city by machinery. The Monitors might be called blood-saving instruments, with this penalty attached to them: that whenever the loss of life should begin, it would involve the almost certain destruction of every man on board. The number of men in the whole iron-clad squadron was less than a regiment; and these few hundred men, rushing against thirty or forty thousand behind powerful fortifications, were to have no other part in the fight than to supply the necessary power for working the machines. If Charleston were to fall, it was by machinery; and the moment the experiment was tested to the point of proving that the machines were inadequate to their work, it was wisdom to withdraw them, and would have been dangerous foolhardiness to have held them longer exposed.

2. The experiment was fully prosecuted up to this point, with a magnificence of gallantry before which every generous and just spectator, not directly involved in the attack, must have bowed in reverence. The machines were untried, and the conflict was the

first practical test we have ever had of the power of the new kinds of ordnance and ordnance material employed against them. I refer to the Blakely and Whitworth English guns, firing bolts and steel-pointed shot. The warfare was almost as new to Admiral Du Pont and his Captains as it would have been to you or myself-new kinds of projectiles raining on them from above; vast torpedoes known to be underneath their keels, and every channel of entrance blocked up with triple rows of torpedo-armed obstructions.

3. After less than an hour's conflict, five out of the eight Monitors were disabled-the Keokuk sinking. Behind the forts, calmly waiting their opportunity, lay three of the enemy's iron-clads in plain view: vessels not able in fair fight to live an hour before one of our Monitors; but held in readiness to cruise out and capture any Monitor disabled by the artillery practice of the forts and batteries. This should not be let out of sight.

4. With two or three of our vessels of this kind disabled, captured, repaired, and in the enemy's service, what force would it require to maintain the blockade of Charleston? Wooden vessels-our gunboats and steam-sloops-would be useless; and our