"'That any line officer of the Navy or Marine Corps may be advanced one grade if upon recommendation of the President by name he receives the thanks of Congress for highly distinguished conduct in conflict with the enemy or for extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession.'
"Abraham Lincoln."
In this fight the "Monitor" had been struck twenty-two times without appreciable effect, the deepest indentation having been made by a shot that penetrated the iron on her side to the depth of four inches. On the "Merrimac" ninety-seven indentations of shot were found, twenty of which were from the 11-inch guns of the "Monitor," which had shattered six of the top layers of her iron plates.
On the 29th of December following, the "Monitor" herself was lost, having been foundered and sunk with sixteen of her crew, in a heavy gale, a few miles south of Cape Hatteras. But the test to which the "Monitor" had been subjected in her battle with the "Merrimac" proved beyond doubt that iron was destined to take the place of wood in the construction of our men-of-war thereafter, and the confidence of John Ericsson in the ultimate success of his experiment, after many discouragements and rebuffs on the part of the naval authorities, was fully justified in its final results, and the honors which the nation showered upon him in the evening of his life, and the tribute which it paid to his genius after his death, were merited by him quite as much as the perpetuation of his memory through this stirring canvas of the great artist, as is also the memory, in the second painting of this series, of that other Erickson, his ancestor, who, almost a thousand years before, was the first white man known to have set foot on American soil.
[RETURN OF THE CONQUERORS]
Typifying Our Victory in the Late Spanish-American War
(September 29, 1899)
Copyright, 1898, by Edward Moran.