Sold – After the Merrimac’s Battle With the Monitor, Davi

Jefferson Davis. President of the Confederate States. Stephen R. Mallory, his Secretary of the Navy, was in all probability one of the best qualified appointees to the Confede-rate Cabinet. He was experienced as an admiralty lawyer in his home state of Florida, and had served as the chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee while he was a United States Senator. Mallory originated the idea of ironclad ships and was their chief proponent. On March 8, 1862, the CSS Virginia, remembered by history as the Merrimac, officially got under way and steamed toward Newport News, Va. When it reached Hampton Roads, it ran into Union blockading forces which then consisted of five wooden-hulled frigates. In the ensuing battle, which lasted five hours, two Union ships were sunk, a third damaged, almost 300 Union sailors were killed and 100 were wounded. The following day the USS Monitor came out and fought the Virginia to a draw. It was immediately clear to Mallory and Davis that ironclads were going to be the key to naval supremacy, and both wanted more, and quickly. Since the south’s ability to build ship’s was very limited and it could not hope to match the north’s capacity to construct ironclads, Secretary Mallory envisioned the goal of obtaining them in Europe. On March 20, just twelve days after the famous ironclad battle, Davis approached the Confederate House of Representatives on the subject, indicating that the ships might well be made in Europe, and meanwhile asked Mallory for an estimate of the funds needed to pursue the project. On April 17, 1862, Davis receved a letter from Mallory stating that $1 million would be required for securing and producing iron and $1.4 million would be needed for agents in Europe to have the ironclads constructed there. That very day, and with this very letter, Davis went to Congress with the funding request, asking that it be approved. Letter Signed as President, 1 page 4to, Executive Department, April 17, 1862, addressed to “The Senate and House of Representatives. I herewith transmit [not present] for the information of Congress a communication from the Secretary of the Navy covering estimates of the amount required by the Navy Department for specified purposes. I recommend that an appropriation be made, of the sums, and for the objects mentioned.” Approval was obtained, but despite the effective leadership shown by Davis and Mallory in this letter, the Confederate Navy was never able to realize its dream of an ironclad fleet. It could not place sufficient domestically-built ironclads at sea to challenge the U.S. Navy, and the European project ran into delays on the other side of the Atlantic. In the end, the only European ironclad to be built especially for the Confederacy was the CSS Stonewall, which sailed from Europe early in 1865 and arrived in time to be surrendered to Union authorities after Lee’s surrender. Had this letter’s intent been lived up to, the blockade might have been broken and the war’s result affected. An extraordinarily important letter, one of Davis’s most significant naval letters of the war.