“The Old Man of the Sea” was therefore, not a drag or a weight upon President Lincoln, and the Navy was not so far behind in making a good record as the picture would have the people of the world believe. It was not long after the Monitor’s victory that the United States Navy was the finest that ever plowed the seas. The building of the Monitor also revolutionized naval warfare.
McCLELLAN WAS “INTRENCHING.”
About a week after the Chicago Convention, a gentleman from New York called upon the President, in company with the Assistant Secretary of War, Mr. Dana.
In the course of conversation, the gentleman said: “What do you think, Mr. President, is the reason General McClellan does not reply to the letter from the Chicago Convention?”
“Oh!” replied Mr. Lincoln, with a characteristic twinkle of the eye, “he is intrenching!”
MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF IT, ANYWAY.
From the day of his nomination by the Chicago convention, gifts poured in upon Lincoln. Many of these came in the form of wearing apparel. Mr. George Lincoln, of Brooklyn, who brought to Springfield, in January, 1861, a handsome silk hat to the President-elect, the gift of a New York hatter, told some friends that in receiving the hat Lincoln laughed heartily over the gifts of clothing, and remarked to Mrs. Lincoln: “Well, wife, if nothing else comes out of this scrape, we are going to have some new clothes, are we not?”