battle, the time of our contact was said to be "a few minutes." Great heavens! was there any use in belittling this heroic attempt to save the nation's honor? There was time enough for the other ships, only three minutes away, to close in on the ram and sink her, or sink beside her, and it was thirteen minutes, as timed by an officer who held his watch in hand, and told me with his own lips; but the other ships were silent, and with stopped engines looked on as the clouds closed over us in the grim and final struggle. Captain French of the "Miami," who had bravely fought his ship at close quarters, and often at the ship's length, vainly tried to get bows on, to come to our assistance and use his torpedo; but his ship steered badly, and he was unable to reach us before we dropped away. In the mean time the "Wyalusing" signalled that she was sinking; a mistake, but one that affected materially the outcome of the battle.

The naval report further says: "After remaining in contact some few minutes she disengaged herself [meaning our ship], and soon afterward was seen to be enveloped in steam." Soon afterward! It is late justice now, after twenty-three years, to give the true history of this battle, but it is full time that the heroism of Lieutenant-Commander F. A. Roe received recognition. During those thirteen minutes he held the unequal fight with a coolness and bravery to which your esteemed treasurer George De Forest Barton can testify, for he stood by his side, acting as signal officer, and was honorably mentioned in Commander Roe's report. We had struck exactly at the spot for which we had aimed; and, contrary the diagram given in the naval report for that year, the headway of both ships (our engines running on a vacuum) twisted our bows and brought us broadside to broadside-our bows at his stern, and our starboard paddle-wheels on the forward starboard angle of his casemate. To this, as against the report mentioned, I not only attest from my own observations, but I have in my possession the written statement of the navigator Boutelle, now member of Congress from Maine. We drifted off the ram, and our pivot gun, which had been

fired incessantly by Ensign Mayer, almost muzzle to muzzle with the enemy's guns, was kept at work till we were out of range.

Official report says that the other ships were then got in line and fired at the enemy, also attempting to lay the seine to foul his propeller, a task that proved, alas! as impracticable as that of injuring him by the fire of the guns; for while we were alongside and had drifted broadside to broadside, our nine-inch Dahlgren guns had been depressed till the shot would strike at right angles, and the solid iron would bound from the roof into the air like marbles, and with as little impression. Fragments even of our hundred-pound rifle-shots at close range came back on our own decks. The fight was practically over when our boilers burst, and at dusk the ram steamed into the Roanoke River.

I have said in the beginning that the historical importance of this event has been overshadowed by the long-looked for movements of the great armies of the Republic, and dwelt upon the effect of this purely fortuitous coincidence.

The one circumstance which would have blazoned the heroism of Commander Roe, in spite of this, was the failure of the other ships to come to his assistance during the long thirteen minutes that the "Sassacus " lay over the ports of the "Albemarle."

Yet no one can believe that there was lack of courage on the part of the other ships. The loss of the "Southfield," the signal from the "Wyalusing" that she was sinking, the apparent loss of our ship, and the loss of the Sounds of North Carolina if more were disabled, dictated the prudent course they adopted.

But of the official reports which belittled the achievements of Commodore Roe and have placed an erroneous record on the page of history, I cannot speak so leniently. He was asked to correct his report as to the speed of our ship. He said we were going at a speed of ten knots, and the official report says he was not disposed to "make the correction." I should think not! when the speed could only have been

estimated by his own officers, and the navigator says clearly in his report eleven knots.

We had

We had perhaps the swiftest ship in the navy. tacked slowly to increase the distance; with furious fires and a gagged engine working at the full stroke of the pistons, a run of over four hundred yards, with eager and excited men counting the revolutions of our paddles, who should give the more correct statement?

The senior ship "Metatesset," first in the line, claimed the capture of the "Bombshell." The captain of said vessel, afterward a prisoner on our ship, said he surrendered to the second ship in the line, viz., the "Sassacus;" that the flag was not hauled down till he was ordered to do so by Commander Roe; and that no surrender had been intended till the order came from the second vessel in the line.

Another part of the official report to which exception is taken is, that the bows of the double-enders were all frail, and had they been armed would have been sufficient to sink the ram. If this had been so, then the heroism of the trial would have been the greater; but our bow was shod with a bronze beak weighing fully three tons, well secured to prow and keel, and this was twisted and almost entirely torn away by the collision.

But what avails it to you, as a soldier, to dash over the parapet and seize the colors of the enemy, if your regiment halts outside the chevaux de frise? It was this we did, and we have always felt that a similar blow on the other side, or a close environment of the heavy guns of the other ships, could have captured or sunk the ram.

He retired, never again to emerge for battle from the Roanoke River, and the object of his coming on the day of our engagement, viz., to aid the Confederates in an attack on Newbern, was defeated; but his ultimate and complete. destruction was reserved for Lieutenant William B. Cushing of glorious memory.

AN ADDRESS ON GRANT, BY GENERAL

WILLIAM T. SHERMAN.*

THOUGH in war death makes the battle-field his harvest, yet in peace he insidiously invades the most sacred premises, taking here the innocent babe, there the gentle, loving wife, again the youth in lusty manhood, and the king on his throne. During our last vacation he has stricken from our list of members the very head and front-General U. S. Grant, the same who, in the cold winter of 1861-62, gathered together at Cairo, Ill., the fragments of an army and led them up the Tennessee River. The creator and father of the Army of the Tennessee took his final leave of earth at 8. 8 on the morning of July 23, 1885, from Mount McGregor, a spur of the Alleghanies, in plain view of the historic battle-field of Saratoga. He had finished his life's work, and had bequeathed to the world his example. The lightning's flash carried the sad tidings to all parts of the civilized earth, and I doubt whether, since the beginning, there ever arose so spontaneous a wail of grief to bear testimony before high heaven that mankind had lost a kindred spirit and his countrymen a leader. We, his first war comrades, concede to the family their superior rights, but claim the next place in the grand procession of mourners. We were with him in his days of adversity, as well as prosperity, and were as true to him as the needle to the pole.

*To the great regret of the Editors they have been unsuccessful in obtaining any of the many extemporary speeches made at our meetings during the past ten years, as neither the Commandery nor the general's family possessed reports or copies of them. The Editors have therefore introduced as substitutes two interesting addresses, one delivered in 1885 before the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, of which he was for many years the president; the other on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument to General Ransom, in Rosehill Cemetery, Chicago, on Decoration Day, 1886.

We shared with him the trials and tribulations, as well as the labors and battles of Henry, Donelson, Shiloh, Corinth, Iuka, and Vicksburg, when that transcendent and most valuable of all victories turned the universal gaze of our bewildered countrymen to the new star in the West, which plainly foretold the man who had dispelled the cloud which "lowered o'er our house," and was to lead us to the triumphant victories of 1865, and to the stable, enduring prosperity of 1885.

In the year 1839 I was a first-class man in the United States Military Academy at West Point, a position of exaltation never reached since, though reasonably successful in life; and there appeared on the walls of the hall in "Old North Barrack" a list of new cadets, among which was "U. S. Grant." A crowd of lookers-on read "United States Grant," "Uncle Sam Grant," "Sam Grant," and Sam Grant he is to-day in the traditions of the old Fourth U. S. Infantry. It afterwards transpired that his name was actually Ulysses Hiram Grant, and the mistake had been made by General Hamer, the member of Congress who nominated him as the cadet from his district. Cadet Grant tried to correct this mistake at the beginning and end of his cadet life without success, and to history his name must ever be U. S. Grant. I remember his personal appearance at the time, but the gulf of separation between a first-class man and a plebe" at West Point was and still is deeper and wider than between the general-in-chief and a private soldier in the army, so that I hardly noticed him. His reputation in the Fourth Infantry, in which he served through the Mexican War and until he resigned his commission of captain in Oregon, July 31, 1854, was of a good, willing officer, always ready for duty, extremely social and friendly with his fellows, but in no sense conspicuous, brilliant, or manifesting the wonderful qualities afterward developed in him.

I met him again when the civil war had broken out-when chaos seemed let loose, and the gates of hell wide open in every direction. Then came the news of General Grant's attack on the enemy's camp at Belmont on November7, 1861, soon followed by the events of Columbus, Paducah, Henry,