And the Cabinet session closed.
DIDN’T EVEN NEED STILTS.
As the President considered it his duty to keep in touch with all the improvements in the armament of the vessels belonging to the United States Navy, he was necessarily interested in the various types of these floating fortresses. Not only was it required of the Navy Department to furnish seagoing warships, deep-draught vessels for the great rivers and the lakes, but this Department also found use for little gunboats which could creep along in the shallowest of water and attack the Confederates in by-places and swamps.
The consequence of the interest taken by Mr. Lincoln in the Navy was that he was besieged, day and night, by steamboat contractors, each one eager to sell his product to the Washington Government. All sorts of experiments were tried, some being dire failures, while others were more than fairly successful. More than once had these tiny war vessels proved themselves of great service, and the United States Government had a large number of them built.
There was one particular contractor who bothered the President more than all the others put together. He was constantly impressing upon Mr. Lincoln the great superiority of his boats, because they would run in such shallow water.
“Oh, yes,” replied the President, “I’ve no doubt they’ll run anywhere where the ground is a little moist!”
“HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF THIS PLACE?”
“It seems to me,” remarked the President one day while reading, over some of the appealing telegrams sent to the War Department by General McClellan, “that McClellan has been wandering around and has sort of got lost. He’s been hollering for help ever since he went South—wants somebody to come to his deliverance and get him out of the place he’s got into.