In April, 1862, the Navy Department called Eads to Washington to make designs for more ironclads,—or rather boats made wholly of iron. These were to be of very light draught and turreted. He submitted plans for boats drawing five feet. The department insisted on lighter draught, but still on heavy plating. So he revised his designs once, and then once more. Finally the draught was reduced to only three and a half feet. Eads has himself described his going back to his room in the hotel, and in a few hours making over his designs. When these boats were finished they were found to draw even less than had been contracted for, so that extra armor was ordered for them, and three of them exceeded the contract speed. At first two boats were ordered, later four others. For the turrets Eads submitted designs of his own, but as it was then only a month after the Monitor's fight, Ericsson's turrets were insisted on for the first two boats, although modifications were allowed. As the other four had two turrets each, Eads was allowed on two of them to try one turret of his own, with the guns worked by steam, on condition of replacing them at his own cost with Ericsson's in case of failure. This was the first manipulation of heavy artillery by steam. The guns were fired every forty-five seconds, or seven times as fast as in Ericsson's turrets.
In addition to the fourteen gunboats, Eads also converted seven transports into musket-proof "tinclads," and built four mortarboats. "Such men," says Boynton, "deserve a place in history by the side of those who fought our battles."
The career of some of the gunboats subsequent to the war is interesting. In 1880 the Chickasaw and the Winnebago, which were two of the six iron boats, and both of which took part in the naval campaign at Mobile, had come into the hands of Peru; and old as they were, they were used very effectively against some of the larger and more modern boats of the Chileans.
During those trying war times all of Eads's tremendous energy had by no means been exhausted by the gunboats. In more ways than one he had been showing himself a good citizen and a kind-hearted man. Much as his fortune had been drained by the boats, he still found money to give to the sufferers in the war. Out of a belated partial payment on the Benton he at once sent money to Foote for use in relief work, and with characteristic persistence he sent several letters and telegrams to make sure of the money's arriving. A month or so later he sent a check from Washington to Saint Louis to the Sanitary Commission, asking that its receipt might not be made public. In the letter sent with this he speaks of the war as "an accursed contest between brothers," but adds that the "cause is most worthy of the sacrifice." From the niece of the Secretary of the Navy we also find a letter of acknowledgment of money to be used in relief. But it was not only to the soldiers that he showed his tenderness: to Foote, the gallant "Christian commander" of his fleet, he sent various friendly gifts when that brave man lay dying,—grapes from his own vines, a portrait he had had painted of his friend. And even to those on the other side he showed an unusual consideration. Towards the end of the war there seemed to be no means of feeding the many refugees in Saint Louis but by levying a tax upon Southern sympathizers. Eads, who foresaw what bitterness such a course would produce, offered, in the name of a bank in which he was a director, $1000 to start a subscription to be used instead, and the invidious assessment was never levied again.
To his personal friends he was always generous and thoughtful, sending them many presents, defending them from misrepresentation, and helping them in their chosen careers. By means of his influence and tact he procured the release of an indiscreet person who had talked himself into McDowell's College prison as a suspected enemy to the government. Giving to others seemed a trait in Eads's character which afforded him an intense pleasure; and though a man of great dignity, he used with his intimate friends a charming playfulness and affection. He could be extremely mild in correcting faults; and while he was inclined to bear with others, he could be stern. His manners were rather those one expects in a European gentleman of leisure and high breeding, than in a former steamboat clerk and a man who had worked hard most of his life. His hospitality was princely. In his large house in the suburbs of Saint Louis he received not only the young friends of his five daughters and his own friends, but also officers of the river fleet and of the army, officers sent west on inspection duty, and foreign officers following the course of the war and of the improvements in gunboat building.
His mind was as active as his heart was generous, and the course of his life mirrored that activity. Now he was at home, now in Washington, now at Cairo visiting the gunboats to see how they worked under fire. In Washington he was busy with plans and projects. An intimate associate said of him in his later life that he was always inventing some new gun or gun-carriage; and we may be sure that if he ever was doing so, he was in those war times. Besides inventing his own, he was also busy examining Ericsson's inventions, in making improvements on them, in applying steam in novel ways to the working of artillery and to the rotating and raising of turrets; in sending models of his inventions here and there, at home and abroad, to Germany, where the Prussian minister, a friend with whom he often dined, "wished they could get some of his boats on the Rhine;" having his turrets explained at a Russian dinner in New York or Washington; and receiving from the Navy Department an appointment as special agent to visit the navy yards in Europe. At home he was just as busy. With his house so full of company, he nevertheless found time somewhere for solid reading apart from his work—the Attorney-General sent him Cicero's letters, and he lent the Attorney-General King Alfred's works. There is a curious interest in knowing what two men so engrossed, and upon such necessary duties, were reading at such a time. While he was building the second batch of gunboats, he wrote to Bates in a personal letter that he believed he had the most complete and convenient works in the country for iron boat-building; that there and in other places he had as many as seventy blacksmith fires at work for him, and that his men were all sheltered from sun and rain. After those boats were finished, he went on planning others, and we have a letter from Farragut in which the admiral asks if some of them are not for his use at Mobile.
Eads, by this period in his strenuous life, knew a great many men, all of whom he treated with a uniform dignity and courtesy, even when they were unfriendly, and a few of whom he was on the most intimate terms with. Among all of them he was admired; perhaps already he was as prominent a citizen as there was in Saint Louis, and as it was still in the good old times when the mayoralty there was a high honor to the best men, it was suggested to him that he hold the office. Nor was this the first honor offered to be thrust upon him; early in the war Bates had wanted him appointed commissary of subsistence at Saint Louis, and though it was unusual to appoint a civilian to that position, Lincoln had been willing to do it to oblige Bates,—but Eads had not wished it. More than a year later he was given a commission of lieutenant-colonel by the governor, but he was never sworn in. Like all men in those troublous times, he took a peculiar interest in politics; and on being asked privately in a joint letter from the editors of three Saint Louis papers (two of them German) exactly what his politics were, he replied that he was as strongly in favor of emancipation as he was opposed to slavery, and that he believed in no "kid-glove policy;" but he remarked incidentally that if he were to be offered the mayoralty he should refuse it.
His work was for the whole country. While he was still too much engrossed with his turrets and his plans for new boats, he fell very ill. Indeed there can be no question that he sacrificed his health to build the gunboats. Never very robust, he was now so ill that eight doctors gave him up. His indomitable spirit pulled him through, but he was ordered away from his workshop to Europe, he and his family. His overburden of labor had crushed him,—before this his eyes had been tired out. Bates charged him to take care of himself; "the country can't spare you," he said "and I can't spare you."
Unless Bates was a prophet, we may well think the first of these statements unduly strong. To be sure, when in a crucial moment the gunboats were needed, and needed quickly, Eads's unparalleled haste in building them certainly did an inestimable service to the country. But so far in his career,—and he was over forty,—while he had shown a marked inventive talent, he had not as yet made clear his signal genius for engineering. And although he had exhibited wonderful executive ability and such true patriotism as made him a valued citizen, he had still to render himself indispensable to the development of the nation.