Concluding Words. 405 Why need we add more words of friends or of our own? Our grateful task is finished. We have striven to give a plain and straightforward story, without exaggeration, without covering up flaws, and without keeping back hearty praise of noble qualities and great actions. Farragut, Foote, Dupont, Goldsborough, Dahlgren, the two Porters, Winslow, Wordenare not these worthy to take their place with the sea-captains of the earlier days of the republic-yes, with those ancient English worthies who, in their nimble little vessels, grappled with invincible tenacity the many-towered ships of the Spanish Armada, and saved England to freedom and the Protestant faith? In them all burned "The unconquerable mind, and Freedom's holy flame." In one of them, we know, burned a still purer and holier flame. No man, says Coleridge, can be in the highest sense a hero who is not a man of faith. It is the overpowering sense of God, of the greatness of the thought of him, of loyalty to his service, that dissipates littleness and selfish fear, raises the mind above material elements, and makes it truly heroic. The faith of a sailor is often one of peculiar power and depth. Where life itself is the price of constant watchfulness, of scrupulous order, of patient endurance, of unflinching obedience to one governing will, the grand law of duty is apt to be well learned in the school of old ocean. Where, too, the ship is alone on the sea, suspended over a mysterious abyss that stretches like a dim eternity before the eye, the thought of God, and dependence upon him, and final accountability to him, fills the religious mind; so that the man who spends much of his life at sea is often a man of strong faith. And this same ocean, whose storms shake the world, also binds the world closely together. Through its waters pass those lines of national intercommunication which, though they vanish after the track of the ship's keel, are nevertheless the viewless lines which knit the race of man into one brotherhood; and thus the ocean becomes the means of educating and increasing the love of man. Duty to God-love to man-these were the words written on the colors which he sailed under, the simple and unadorned narrative of whose life has been given in these pages-and he never pulled down his flag. Arkansas, fight with the gun-boat, 348, Canton merchants, letter of, 127. Benton, the gun-boat, 165, 267, 268, 312, Colonization Society, lecture before the, Boynton's "Civil History of the Navy," Constitution, the, 40. Dahlgren, Rear-Admiral J. A., 64, 380; Foote, John A., 17, 18, 56, 105, 152. letters from, 76, 106, 183. Dana, Professor, 141. Dana, Richard, quoted, 27. Davis, Rear-Admiral C. H., 31, 102, Defective guns, 183. Delaware, voyage of the, 35. Detached from command of flotilla, 329. Foote, Nathaniel, 13. Foote, Samuel Augustus, 15, 17, 20, 21. Fort Henry, description of, 195; attack on, 200; military qualities displayed Fox, Assistant-Secretary G. A., 167; Fremont, Major-General J. C., 157, 160, 185. G. Donelson, Fort, description of, 220; Funeral obsequies, 381. E. Eads, James B., 163, 164. F. Grampus, the, 25. Grant, General U. S., 162, 171, 184, 185, Gregory, Commodore, 25, 66, 87, 372, Grimes, speech of Senator, 261, 271. Gwin, Captain, 214, 215, 296, 342. H. Halleck, General, 185; letters and dis- Henriques, Surgeon S., 327, 398. False position in regard to the Army, Hollins, engagement with his fleet, 295. 251. Family, 13, 14. Holy Land, visit to the, 35. Farragut, Rear-Admiral, 280, 306, 315, Honolulu, 43. Hong-Kong, 111, 127. Flotilla, preparation of the Western, 158; Hull, Commodore, 28. names of the gun-boats, 158. Flying Fish, difficulty with captain of the, 93. I. Improved propeller, 65. Foote, Augustus, 17, 375; letter to son Incessant activity, 367. Augustus, 135. Foote, Caroline, 34. Foote, Caroline Augusta, 57; letters to, Foote, Eudocia, 15. Influences to a sea-life, 19. Iron-plated ships, introduction of, 156. Index. 409 J. N. Nashville, Foote expected at, 236. Naval Asylum in Philadelphia, 54. Naval reform in Congress, 63. Navy of the Revolution, 38; of the war "New York Port Society," tribute of, 399. Loss of children, 364. ed, 157, 195, 199, 223, 225, 237, 257, Louisa Beaton, the, 79. Louisville, the gun-boat, 158, 222, 223, Lucas's Bend, the fight at, 171. M. Macomb, Captain, letter from, 141. Marriage, 34, 57. Martha, capture of the slave-ship, 82. Memphis, fall of, 323, 325. Mental qualities, 384, 386. Missionaries to be recognized as Ameri- can citizens, 47; steady friend of, 99. 0. Official reports, 113, 172, 196, 204, 216, Orders, 197, 198, 282, 312. P. Patterson, Commodore, 35. Paulding, Commodore, letters from, 351, Peacock, the, 27. Pennock, Captain, 159, 304. Personal relations to other officers, 342. 160, 171, 174, 177, 191, 192, 211, Pillow, Fort, operations at, 297, 300; Monument in Brooklyn Navy Yard, 140. Pittsburg, Tenn., gun-boat engagement Morris, Commodore, 65. Mortar-boats, 160, 181, 193, 275. Mound City, the gun-boat, 158, 317. at, 253. Pittsburg, the gun-boat, 158, 222, 288, 291. |