 On the eve of the Civil War, when South Carolina was constructing its experimental floating battery to protect against attacks from Fort Sumter, people on both sides were skeptical. One Union journalist wrote about the unveiling of the battery quote. Arrived at Palmetto Wharf, I saw a small crowd gathering, which each moment increased as the news spread through the town. By 8 and a quarter o'clock, at least 5,000 people were present, and the unknown quantity, called by many the slaughter pin, rolled heavily and clumsily into her new element. They haven't christened her, and when they do, it is my private opinion that it will be done in the blood of all who embark in her." In Fort Sumter, some of Major Robert Anderson's officers agreed. Captain John Foster wrote a report saying, quote, I do not think this floating battery will prove very formidable. It can be destroyed by hour of fire before it has time to do much damage, end quote. The battery had iron plating on one side, and it sat only 600 feet from the Union cannons. If it didn't sink, it would likely prove an inescapable death trap for the people inside, especially if the tide turned it so that the unarmored side faced Sumter. But when the bombardment on Fort Sumter commenced, the few who had faith in the iron-armored floating battery were vindicated. Iron balls that landed against it were deflected harmlessly into the water, and none of them broke through the plating. One of the artillery commanders in Fort Sumter wrote about his cannons that fired against it, quote, Some curiosity was felt as to the effect of such shot on the iron-clad battery. The gunners made excellent practice, but the shots were seen to bounce off its sides like peas, end quote. In the first test of artillery versus iron, iron would win. Only a year later, when the idea was put to a movable steam-powered warship, the USS Mary Mac that had been rechristened to the CSS Virginia, a new test would be conducted, an iron warship facing a wooden fleet. I'm Chris Calton, and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. In the previous episode, we learned about the Confederate efforts to turn the salvaged Mary Mac into an iron-clad warship to counter the large US Navy. On the very first day it took to the oceans, it would face combat off the coast of Hampton Roads, Virginia, and that is the story I will be telling in today's episode. The Mary Mac would face three of the US Navy's most powerful ships, the USS Cumberland, a sloop of war, the USS Congress, a sailing frigate, and the most powerful of the three was the USS Minnesota, a heavily armed steam frigate. The Cumberland alone was armed with more than 30 of the most powerful naval cannons available at the time, mostly 9-inch Dolgrins, and one of the cannons was a 70-pound rifled cannon, a parrot rifle, that had been mounted at her stern and could rotate a full 180 degrees. This powerful cannon was not generally used on ships, as I mentioned in the previous episode, but it was only recently that the Cumberland was fixed with this gun specifically in response to the rumors of the Confederacy's iron-clad Mary Mac. If this gun couldn't pierce the Mary Mac's iron plating, nothing would be able to. When the Mary Mac was in range, Franklin Buchanan's plan was to try to ram the Cumberland, knowing that this rifled gun was the biggest threat to his iron ship. There were other Union ships around Hampton Roads as well, but they would run aground almost as soon as the battle started. Just after noon, Lieutenant Thomas Sulfridge Jr., the Cumberland's officer on deck, saw some black smoke rising in the distance, coming from the direction of Norfolk. He ordered some of the men on a nearby tug, the Zwaav, to find out what it was, and one of them described, quote, What to all appearances looked like the roof of a very big barn belching forth smoke, as though from a chimney on fire, end quote. This of course was the Mary Mac, with its angled iron truss being the only part of the ship visible above the waterline. Union newspapers had gotten wind of the Confederacy's iron-clad, but nobody had any idea what it would look like. They almost certainly didn't anticipate it being almost entirely submerged, but when one Union sailor spotted the Confederate flag, they knew what they were about to face. The Zwaav had two cannons on it, both land guns, a 30-pound rifle and a 24-pound howitzer, and it was the first to engage the Mary Mac. The Zwaav fired a total of six shots from its rifled cannon and were surprised that the Mary Mac didn't seem to even take notice. When the Cumberland raised a flag signaling for them to pull back, they disengaged, having earned the honor of firing the first shot against the Confederate iron-clad. On the Mary Mac, the Confederate sailors were entirely aware of the Zwaav firing at them, but Franklin Buchanan was not concerned with any of the Union's tiny tugs, so he ignored it. So far, the ship's engines were operating perfectly, but it was incredibly difficult to steer. It could move forward well enough, but it might take more than a half an hour to turn. On the coast, spectators gathered to watch the coming spectacle. The Mary Mac was already famous in the north, but it was so far only the stuff of rumors. Nobody knew what it could do, and civilians crowded to find out, yelling down the lines, the Mary Mac is coming. The Union officers signaled for the nearby warships to get ready to engage, and the Minnesota and the Congress started to move in to help the Cumberland. The sailors on the Cumberland started to sprinkle sand on the deck of the ship to help the gun crews maintain sure footing during the battle. On either side of the Mary Mac were the two Confederate wooden steamers, the Bufert and the Raleigh. The Bufert, you may remember from two episodes ago, is the only ship from North Carolina's mosquito fleet to have survived the Battle of Elizabeth City a month earlier, and its captain was the same Captain Parker that saw the fleet massacred by some of the same Union ships they were facing again today. The Union battery on the coast started to fire at the ships, their shells splashing into the water. Captain Parker became impatient at the lack of Confederate response, and he ordered the first cannon fired at the Congress around one in the afternoon. The sailors on the Mary Mac were more nervous. One sailor wrote that he was, quote, down in the fire room, 20 feet underwater, with no little anxiety, I confess, as to what the issue would be to this experiment of naval warfare, and not a little weak need, too, end quote. Even though he was in the safest part of the ship, he said that he would rather be on the deck, exposed to cannon fire, than confined underwater, with no idea what was going on above him. It wasn't alone in his apprehension. One of the ship's powder boys, I don't know how old he was, but the powder boys would have been the youngest members of the crew, went up to Henry Marmaduke, his gun's captain, and handed him his purse, saying, quote, Mr. Marmaduke, I'm likely to be killed in this fight. If I am, will you send my money to my father, end quote. Finally, when the Mary Mac was within 1,500 yards of the Cumberland, Brooks' seven-inch rivals got their first battlefield test, firing on the wooden ship, sending giant shards of wood, referred to at the time as splinters, flying dangerously in random directions. On the Cumberland, Lieutenant Salfridge wrote of the first shot from the Mary Mac, quote, that first shot passed through the starboard hammock netting, killing and wounding nine Marines. These men, the first to fall, were promptly carried below, and their groans were something new to us, and served as an introduction to a scene of carnage unparalleled in the war, end quote. The Cumberland returned fire, but their shot went wide and fell harmlessly into the water. Before they could try again, they suffered another blow, as Salfridge described it, quote, the shell burst among the crew as they were running the gun out, after loading for a second shot, and literally destroyed the whole crew, except the powder boy, and disabled the gun for the remainder of the action. The captain of the gun had both arms taken off at the shoulder as he was holding his hand spike and guiding the gun. He passed me when being carried below, but not a groan escaped him, end quote. As Buchanan was targeting the Cumberland, the Mary Mac sailed past the Congress. Lieutenant Eagleston, captain of two of the Mary Mac's guns, saw it move past the window of his gunport. Eagleston had once served aboard the Congress before he joined the Confederacy. Writing about the battle later, he said, quote, little did I think then that I should ever lift a hand for her destruction, end quote. But he could hardly afford to be sentimental now. With his former ship only 100 yards away, Eagleston watched the Congress fire its 35 guns against the Mary Mac. This time, unlike the Cumberland, the shots from the Congress did not miss. They landed hard against the ship's iron plating, sending a deafening reverberation through the Mary Mac. Ashton Ramsey, the Mary Mac's engineer in chief, said, quote, we were met by a veritable storm of shells, which must have sunk any ship within a float, except the Mary Mac. They struck our sloping sides, were deflected upward to burst harmlessly in the air, or rolled down and fell hissing into the water, dashing the spray up into our ports, end quote. In response, even as the Mary Mac was still focused on the Cumberland, the four broadside guns that faced to the Congress responded with their own shells. One of the Congress's officers described the devastation when the shell, quote, dismounted an eight inch gun and either killed or wounded every one of the gun's crew, while the slaughter at the other guns was fearful. There were comparatively few wounded, the fragments of the huge shells she threw, killing outright as a general thing. Our clean and handsome deck was in an instant changed into a slaughter pin, with lopped off legs and arms and bleeding blackened bodies scattered about by the shells. One poor fellow had his chest transfixed by a splinter of oak as thick as the wrist, but the shell wounds were even worse. End quote. But even witnessing the destruction of the Congress, inflicted casually as the Mary Mac passed by it, did not deter from self-rigid's confidence from aboard the Cumberland. He wrote that it, quote, caused us neither surprise nor shaken confidence in our powers, since the Congress armament could fire nothing to compare with the solid shot of 80 pounds which we could deliver, end quote. But those shots from the Cumberland that did land against the Mary Mac's iron plating fared no better, as the shots bounced in the words of one of the crewmen, quote, upon her mailed side like India rubber, end quote. But as I mentioned earlier, Buchanan feared the parrot rifle on the Cumberland and had already decided to ram her. As the Mary Mac approached, spectators who had heard stories of the Confederate ship's old style ram realized that this was the plan. One journalist who witnessed the scene, wrote, quote, now she nears the Cumberland, silent and still, weird and mysterious, like some devilish and superhuman monster or the horrible creation of a nightmare. Now but a biscuit toss from the ship and from the sides of both pour out a living tide of fire and smoke, of solid shot and heavy shell, end quote. The pilot of the Cumberland described the charging Mary Mac this way, quote, as she came plowing through the water right onward to our port bow, she looked like a huge half submerged crocodile. At her prow, I could see the iron ram projecting straightforward, somewhat above the water's edge and apparently a mass of iron, end quote. Another colorful description described the ship as moving, quote, like a rhinoceros who sinks down her head in frightful horn, end quote. In response to the Confederate torpedoes, the newly designed floating mines that they had already begun using, the Cumberland had hung logs against the side of its ship as protection. The Mary Mac's ram made quick work of them, slicing through them like butter. With a force of more than 3,000 tons propelled by the most powerful steam engines of the time, the Mary Mac's ram easily pierced the Cumberland. The New York Times correspondent wrote, quote, with a dead, soul rendering crunch. She pierces her in the starboard bow, lifting her up as a man does a toy. The hull was big enough to, quote, drive in a horse cart according to one of the Cumberland's crew. This was a bit of an exaggeration. The hull was about seven feet wide, but this was still more than sufficient to sink the ship. But as the Cumberland started to sink, the Mary Mac found that its ram was very much a double-edged sword. The ram was stuck in the hull of the 1,700-pound sloop of war, and as the ship sank, it pushed down on the front of the Mary Mac as well. Selfridge wrote, quote, as the Cumberland began to sink, the Mary Mac was also carried down until her forward deck was underwater, end quote. Inside the ironclad's engine room, 20 feet underwater, one of the workers was nearly thrown off his seat when the Mary Mac made contact. And now, as the front of the ship started to be pulled underwater, he described his experience blind to what was taking place, quote, there was at first a settling motion to our vessel that aroused suspicions that our own ship had been injured to and was sinking, end quote. Ramsay sent the signal for the engine room to reverse the ship. This was done by clanging three times in a gong. But we have to consider what these men were facing at this point. The people in the engine room were basically enclosed in an underwater room. And with the ship being pulled downward from the front, they had no level ground to stand on as they were expected to put the ship into reverse and shovel coal into the engines to create new speed. This must have been terrifying. Ramsay wrote, quote, there was an ominous pause and a crash shaking us all off our feet. The engines labored. The vessel was shaken in every fiber. Our bow was visibly depressed. We seemed to be bearing down with a weight on our prow. Thud, thud, thud, came the rain of shot on our shield from the double decked battery of the Congress, end quote. The people in the engine room had only the sounds of the outside battle to inform them of what was going on. They thought a boiler exploded at one point, only to realize that it was just the reverberations of a shell that had exploded harmlessly against the iron plating on the outside above them. It's very likely that the Merrimack would have sunk here and the story would be over had it not been for a fortunate mistake that had taken place during its rushed construction. When the ram was being fitted onto the ship, the worker fastening it accidentally cracked one of the flanges that held the ram to the ship. Normally this would have been repaired, but they were working on a strict timeline and had to leave the ram weakly attached with the unrepaired flange. There's no telling what the result would have been if the ram had been properly fastened, but this mistake may have saved the ship. As the Cumberland sank deeper into the water, the ram broke completely off of the Merrimack. Ramsey later wrote quote, we had left our cast iron beak in the side of the Cumberland like a wasp. We could sting but once leaving the sting in the wound. End quote. Even as their ship was sinking, the gun crews on the Cumberland continued to fire on the Merrimack hoping to take advantage of the devastatingly close range. One of these shots took out the muzzle of the gun that Marmaduke was in charge of, killing one of the crewmen and taking out Marmaduke's arm. The powder boy who had earlier entrusted Marmaduke with his earnings came back now and said quote, oh Mr. Marmaduke, you're going to die. Give me back my money. I don't know what came of the powder boy or his money but Marmaduke did survive. Even with the gun's muzzle gone and one of the crew dead, the rest of the men in Marmaduke's team continued firing against the Cumberland hoping to hasten its slow descent. The Cumberland got it shots in before it was done starting a grease fire on the deck of the Merrimack ignited by bacon grease from the crew's rations. As the delicious smell of bacon clashed with the noxious smell of sulfur from burning powder, one man said quote, don't this smell like hell? To which one of his comrades replied quote, it certainly does. And I think we'll all be there in a few minutes. It took a good half hour for the Cumberland to sink. And during all this time, the two ships exchanged fire at point blank range. The men on the Merrimack had no time to tend to their wounded as they fired their cannons as quickly as they could reload them. And one well placed shot from the Merrimack according to one of the Cumberland's crewmen, quote, the shot and shell from the Merrimack crashed through the wooden sides of the Cumberland as if they had been made of paper carrying huge splinters with them and dealing death and destruction on every hand. Several shot and shell entered on one side and passed out through the other carrying everything before them, end quote. The parrot rifle that was so feared by Buchanan was destroyed by Confederate fire before it could ever fire a single shot of its own. Possibly because they knew they were dying and they were determined to take as many Confederates with them as they could, the crew of the Cumberland fought with incredible tenacity. One gunner lost both his legs in the battle but he stayed in the fight as long as he could, crawling on his elbows to yank the lanyard for a final shot against the Merrimack before his terrible wounds took his life. Another man with both arms blown away could do nothing more than encourage his comrades to, quote, give him fits as he lay dying on the deck of the sinking ship. Selfridge described the mayhem, quote, no one flinched but everyone went on rapidly loading and firing, the places of the killed and wounded being taken promptly by others. The carnage was frightful, great splinters torn from the ship's sides and decks caused more casualties than the enemy's shell. Every first and second captain of the guns of their first division was killed or wounded and with a box of cannon primers in my pocket, I went from gun to gun firing them as fast as the decimated crews could load, end quote. Another survivor later remembered, quote, the once clean and beautiful deck was slippery with blood, blackened with powder and looked like a slaughterhouse, end quote. The wounded were taken below deck out of the way of the cannon fire, but of course this meant that the water would close in on them first and Selfridge remembered hearing the, quote, heartrending cries from the poor fellows as they realized to their helplessness to escape slow death from drowning, end quote. When the officers on the Merrimack called for the Cumberland to surrender, one of the ship's officers, apparently speaking for the rest of the crew, answered, quote, never will sink alongside her. So the Merrimack kept firing on the sinking ship while the Cumberland continued to try to fire back with every gun it could. As the gun crews were decimated, the same officer who refused to surrender cobbled together new crews from survivors to bring forward a cannon that was on the other side of the ship. In the words of Selfridge, quote, the tackles had been scarcely hooked when a shell passing through the starboard bow burst among them, killing and maiming the greater number, end quote. Moving further into the ocean, the water started to pour onto the deck until, quoting Selfridge again, it was covered with the dead and wounded and slippery with blood. Some guns were left run in from their last shot, rammers and sponges broken in powder blackened lay in every direction. The large galley was demolished and its scattered contents added to the general blood spattered confusion, end quote. Even still, the crew of the Cumberland kept firing on the Merrimack with whatever guns were still working, but with the water gushing onto the deck, it was sinking faster. Finally, the crew abandoned their posts and started looking to escape over the side. The final shot of the Cumberland was fired by a mortally injured crewman who was determined to get off one last round before dying with his ship. When the Cumberland finally took to its final resting place at the bottom of the ocean, it took the bodies of 121 dead or wounded Union soldiers with it. The men on board the Congress watched the Cumberland become engulfed by the ocean, but when it was sunk, they saw the Merrimack steam away. While the Confederates on deck were busy putting out the grease fire that had been set off by one of the Union hotshots, the Union observers thought that perhaps the Cumberland's sacrifice had not been in vain. Maybe they did real damage to the Confederacy's ironclad. They would be disappointed. Buchanan had already turned his sights on the Congress as his next target. He was merely slowed down by the poor maneuverability of the Merrimack. The Cumberland had also landed a lucky shell against the Merrimack's stack, creating a few holes that allowed flames to escape, diminishing the power created by the steam from the engines. The ship wasn't immobilized, but it couldn't achieve the speed that it was capable of at the start of the battle. But even as it slowly turned, the Merrimack's gunners fired at everything that their guns came in line with. Even with this casual, non-priority fighting, they blew up a transport steamer, sunk a schooner, and captured another schooner that members of either the Buford or the Raleigh were able to take back to Norfolk. And while the Merrimack had taken some damage, mine as it was, by clearing the ships around Hampton Roads, Buchanan freed up Confederate gun boats that had been confined to the Virginia Riverways. In addition to the Buford and the Raleigh, he now had the Patrick Henry, the Teaser, and the Jamestown steaming in to complete the James River Squadron. The gun boats were much faster and more maneuverable than the Merrimack, so as the giant ironclad tediously positioned itself in the water, the gun boats were able to steam around it, providing more agile support. As the Merrimack turned in the water, the men on the Congress had been cheering its apparent retreat until it continued to turn and made it clear that they were its next target. When Joseph Smith, captain of the Congress, saw that the Merrimack was coming for him, he ordered the small steamer, the Zwaave, to come and tow his sailing frigate to the shore to ground her. This was a decision that sailors hated to make, but it meant that the Congress, though immobile, was also unsinkable. It was now essentially a wooden fortress. But with the Merrimack's poor maneuverability and near invulnerability, this made the assault that much easier. Buchanan parked his ship 200 yards from the Congress. This was as close as he could get without grounding the Merrimack, and he commenced the bombardment. The fight was remarkably one-sided. It was like a cavalry against a tank, as described by one of the Congress's crewmen, the guns from the Merrimack, Buford and Raleigh, quote, raked her for an aft, overthrowing several of the guns and killing a number of the crew, end quote. The Congress's ship surgeon was already overcome by the sight of the injured after only the first round of artillery. In his words, he was surrounded by, quote, lopped off arms and legs and bleeding blackened body scattered by the shells while blood and brains actually dripped from the beams, end quote. As the ship took even more of a beating, things only grew worse, quote. In the ward room and steerage, the bulkheads were all knocked down by shell and axmen making way for the hose, forming a scene of perfect ruin and desolation. Clothing, books, glass, China, photographs, chairs, bedding and table were all mixed in one confused heap, end quote. This was a massacre. The first crewman I, quote, had described the blood that was, quote, running from the Congress scuppers onto our deck like water on a washdeck morning, end quote. Even the Zwa of the small steamer that towed the Congress into place got destroyed by crossfire with the men manning one of its few guns taken out of commission by stray shells. The Captain Joseph Smith refused to yield and he kept his men firing until finally at around 4.30 in the afternoon, he was decapitated by Confederate shell. With the Captain dead and the battle clearly unwinnable, Smith's second in command, Lieutenant Austin Pindergrast, waved the white flag of surrender. The Confederate stopped firing and Captain Parker, in charge of the Bufert, sailed up to claim the Congress and sent his midshipman, Charles Mallory, to accept her surrender. Once Mallory was on deck of the burning Union frigate, he announced that the ship was now under his charge and he casually commenced picking up stray cutlasses, probably his trophies, including the cutlass of the now headless Captain Smith. As he did this, Parker brought the Bufert up to the side of the Congress to take the officers and wounded men as prisoners and under Buchanan's orders to let the rest of the crew escape to the shore. Once everybody was safely off the ship, he was to burn it. When Parker came aboard the Congress, Mallory handed him the cutlass that had Joseph B. Smith engraved on its blade. Before secession, Parker and Smith had been students together in the Naval Academy that Franklin Buchanan had started in the 1840s. They had been close friends. Parker took the sword, but instead of keeping it, he made sure that it was eventually returned to Smith's father, himself a Commodore in the US Navy. Parker also sent a man on board to fetch the body of the deceased Union Captain and when the man climbed on board the Congress, all he saw was that, quote, confusion, death and pitiful suffering reigned supreme and the horrors of war quenched the passion of the months, end quote. Here again, we see the early romanticism fading as people found themselves face to face with the harsh realities of warfare. As the Confederates carried the wounded onto the Bufert, one injured Union man was heard saying to himself, quote, my God, this is terrible. I wish this war was over, end quote. Pendergrass refused to follow Navy formality in surrendering to Parker, handing him only a standard issue cutlass instead of his own officer sword. Parker was irritated by this and told him he had orders to set the ship on fire, but the Congress was already in flames from the beating it took and Parker was apparently not so cold-hearted as to burn the ship while wounded men were still alive inside it. But while he stood arguing with Pendergrass, Union General Joseph Mansfield, who was on shore with two regiments of soldiers, unhappily observed the Congress's surrender. He told his men, quote, I know the damned ship surrendered, but we haven't. With this, he ordered his men to fire on the Bufert. He also had two rifled cannons and a howitzer that were now manned by 14 of the Cumberland survivors who made it to shore. The unexpected volley of mini-balls took out nearly everyone on the deck aside from Parker and Pendergrass. Parker jumped into action. As he later told the story, quote, I now blew the steam whistle and my men came tumbling on board. The fire of the enemy still continuing from the shore. I cast off from the Congress and steamed ahead so that I could bring my bow gun to bear. I had no idea of being fired at any longer without returning it. And we had several deaths to avenge. We opened fire, but could make little impression with our single gun upon the large number of men firing from entrenchments on shore. The sides and masts of the Bufert looked like the top of a pepper box from the bullets, which went on one side and out the other, end quote. But the Bufert wasn't as powerful as the Merrimack. So Parker took a ship and sailed back to Confederate territory, handing over the Union prisoners he had. Many of the Union wounded were left on the still burning Congress, having been abandoned by the Confederates who were unwilling to risk their own lives to save those of the enemy. Parker didn't bother to give any report to Buchanan before he went. And Buchanan wasn't aware of exactly what was happening. He only knew that the Union had resumed firing on the Confederates, and he assumed that the firing had come from the Congress itself. For a ship to have surrendered, only to return fire as an ambush was among the most egregious crimes of war somebody could commit. He resumed firing on the Congress, which compelled the Zwaab to start firing again, adding to the confusion and entrenching Buchanan in his belief that the Congress had lured them into an ambush with the quote, unquote, dastardly, cowardly act of false surrender. Buchanan ordered the Congress to be burned, this time without risking the lives of his men to bring the wounded Union soldiers to safety before doing so. So two episodes ago, I told the story about how in the battle of New Bern, one Union commander made the decision to fire artillery that he knew would kill Union soldiers because he thought they were worth the sacrifice to damage the enemy as well. While many people may defend the tactic as a pragmatic strategy that may at least potentially save more Union men than were killed, there's no way to know if that's true, but that would be the defense people would make. In this case, no such defense exists. General Mansfield knew that his firing on the Confederates could have no bearing on the outcome of the naval battle against the Merrimack. All it could accomplish was to take out a small handful of Confederate sailors, but the effect of this emotional and strategically valueless action was to doom the wounded Union men on the Congress to being burned alive instead of being removed from the ship before its destruction. Even if we might not be willing to justify that decision, the Confederate reaction would hardly have been surprising to Mansfield. This was an officer who in his anger at the enemy was willing to sacrifice other people, his own people for no purpose other than to satisfy his own vengeful satisfaction. But Buchanan himself gave in to his own emotions when he believed the Congress to have deceptively surrendered, ordering his men to, quote, destroy that damned ship, end quote, he grabbed a rifled musket himself and took to the deck of the Merrimack to take aim at the Union officers. His self-indulgence, reckless as it was, at least did not put anybody else in any more danger, and Buchanan paid for his rashness by taking a bullet in his left thigh, just below his femoral artery. Had it been a touch higher, he would have killed him, but instead he was left with an excruciating and mobilizing injury that he would survive. The command of the Merrimack transferred to Lieutenant Catsby Jones. As Buchanan was being carried away to have his injury tended to, he gave Jones a final order, quote, plug hotshot into her and don't leave her until she's a fire. They might look after their own wounded since they won't let us, end quote. With this, according to one of the crewmen, the Merrimack, quote, raked the Congress four and aft with hotshot and shell till out of pity we stopped without waiting for orders, end quote. After Parker dropped off the Union prisoners, he actually allowed Pendergrass to return to the ship to help tend to the wounded on board. What would the destruction underway? Pendergrass fled to safety on the Union shore. He received criticism for leaving his wounded men to die, but Parker actually would go on to defend him. After all, what choice did he have? He could stay and die with his men or he could save himself. They were doomed either way, thanks to Mansfield's unwillingness to let Pendergrass surrender. March 8th, 1862 was thus the worst day the United States Navy had ever experienced up to that point. And it would really see no parallel until the bombing of Pearl Harbor nearly a century later. Estimates for the Union losses between the Congress and the Cumberland numbered at nearly 400 men killed, wounded or missing, which is nothing for a land battle but was remarkably high for a relatively small naval battle. And the Confederate casualties amounted to less than 60 between all the ships involved. The Merrimack took enough of a beating to not pursue the Minnesota, which they determined they would come back for. But while the Confederates celebrated the astounding victory of their iron warship, Franklin Buchanan could not share their joy. I mentioned in the previous episode that he was a Marylander who resigned from the U.S. Navy, then asked for Gideon Wells to reinstate him before he decided to move south and join the Confederacy. And thus the men doubted his loyalty. After today's victory, his loyalty was no longer suspect. As his officers gathered around their injured captain, Buchanan somberly informed them, quote, my brother, Paymaster Buchanan, was on board the Congress. McKean Buchanan would actually be able to count himself as one of the survivors of the destroyed ship. But Buchanan had no way of knowing that at this time. It's difficult to convey the tremendous psychological effect that the Merrimack's victory had in the North. On the one hand, the men who died facing it were martyrs to the Union cause. When the Congress's surgeon took Captain Joseph Smith's watch to see that it was returned to his family, it was stolen by robbers before it made it home. When newspapers reported that theft and revealed who the watch belonged to, the robbers actually mailed the watch to his family with a note saying that had they known it was Captain Smith's watch, they never would have taken it. Thomas Salfridge later wrote that upon making it safely to the Union shore after the sinking of the Cumberland, he was, quote, furious over the loss of the ship in which I had taken such pride, shivering with cold from soaking wet and scanty clothing, the reaction from the long endured, frightful experiences of battle, impelled me to tears, and I sobbed like a child. End quote. When word of the Merrimack's astounding performance reached Washington, Northern newspapers spread the story quickly and dread engulfed the citizenry. One newspaper editorial wrote, quote, the most alarming crisis of the Civil War was at hand as the sun went down that night over Hampton roads, every union hard in the fleet and in the fortress, throbbed with despair. There was no gleam of hope. The Merrimack was impervious to balls and could go where she pleased. In the morning, it would be easy work for her to destroy our whole fleet. She could then shell Newport News and Fortress Monroe at her leisure, setting everything combustible in flames and driving every man from the guns. As the news of the terrible disaster was flashed over the country by the telegraph wires, all faces wore an expression of consternation. The writer was in Washington at the time. Congress was in session. The panic cannot be described. There was absolutely nothing to prevent the Merrimack from ascending the Potomac and laying the capital in ashes. Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Portland were in a state of terror. The Merrimack could laugh at forts, end quote. When the day began, the ironclad Merrimack was an unknown. Many people thought it would sink and even if it could fight, the effectiveness of the iron plating was an uncertainty when facing real combat from the union's well-equipped ships. But now after learning about the havoc that this one ship was able to wreak on some of the union's most powerful vessels, many Northerners thought the war was lost. By the standards of 1861, the Merrimack looked like a super weapon. Wars were won by navies and an impervious ship toting rifled naval cannons could, people believed, wipe out the entire union navy and its coastal defenses. Nobody doubted that it was planning to come back to finish off the Minnesota, the union's flagship vessel and it wouldn't stand a chance. The Lincoln administration shared these fears. Upon receiving the telegram of the Merrimack's victory, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton said, quote, not unlikely we shall have a shell of cannonball from her guns in the White House before we leave this room, end quote. He then, according to Gideon Wells, quote, telegraphed to the governors of the Northern states and the mayors of some of the cities, warning them of the danger and advising, as I was told, that rafts of timber and other obstructions should be placed in the mouths of the harbors, end quote. I'm trying to think of modern analogs to the fear that people felt on the evening of March 8th, maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis, which sounds hyperbolic to modern years, but before the modern idea of WMDs was born, the Merrimack looked very much like a potential weapon of mass destruction, not so much because it was able to level a city with a single blow, but because it's apparent invulnerability would allow it to send as many blows as it would need to level a port city without fear of recourse. The crew of the Minnesota also knew they were going to be the Merrimacks' next target, even as it was retiring for the day. After what they witnessed today, they believed that their deaths had already been determined. There would be no surviving the coming assault. But in the hour of need, they would receive the assistance of an unexpected protector. As the Minnesota awaited its doom, inceled the Union's own iron ship, the response to the Confederate iron clad, and it arrived in the words of Gustavus Fox, quote, at the moment, the novelist would have produced her, end quote, dubbed the USS Monitor. The ship was dwarfed by the gigantic Minnesota, and to many of the people on board, their reinforcement was pitiful. What could this tiny ship, not even 200 feet long, do against the iron behemoth they saw take out the Congress in the Cumberland with such ease? I described the Merrimack as resembling a semi-submersible submarine once it was covered in iron plating, but the Monitor is actually cited as the first technically classified semi-submersible. This speck of a ship was only 172 feet long, compared to the Minnesota's 265, and the only thing that broke above the water was a circular turret that had a diameter of a mere 20 feet, which was an engineering novelty with a measly two guns encased inside it. The sense of impending doom that the crew of the Minnesota felt was hardly abated at the sight of the Union's pitiful looking response. But when the iron clad Merrimack would face the fully iron monitor on March 9th, both sides would find that the Monitor could hold its own against anything in the water. The incredible story of the genius who designed the Monitor, a piece of technological innovation that far outstripped the iron clad Merrimack, will be the subject of the next episode. Historical controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If you would like to support the show, please subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher, and leave a positive review. 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