Page:A Life of Matthew Fontaine Maury.pdf/219

Rh of which $100,000 is for equipment and repairs. Now a navy without vessels is like lamps without oiL The Richmond Bill gives $50,000 to buy and build steamers and gunboats for coast defence, and $160,000 for two ironclad gunboats for the defence of the Mississippi River and the City of Memphis. . . . We may safely infer that $50,000 will neither purchase nor build a great many steamers or gunboats, nor enable us to provide very efficiently for the defence of all the rivers except the Mississippi, and of all the harbours, bays, creeks, and sounds of our coast all the way from Washington on the Potomac to Brownsville on the Rio Grande.

"Thus we perceive that since Virginia and North Carolina, with their defenceless, open, and inviting sea-front, seceded, the sum of only $50,000 has been voted towards the 'purchase or construction of a navy,' for the defence of the entire sea-coast of the Confederacy!

"From this analysis, and from all that we can see doing on the water, it appears that the Government has not yet decided to have a navy.

"Does the country want a navy? If yea, can we afford to have one? That is the question; and we hope the thinkers and writers and men of the country will bring to bear upon it fair minds and the right spirit.

"The first thing to be done is to get rid of all navy notions, borrowed from the old navy at Washington, as to what constitutes a navy, to cast about us and see what resources we have, and then, considering the means and appliances which, owing to our peculiar situation, we can bring into play, to decide whether the best interests of the country call for a navy or not. In this age, when commerce is king, no nation, though it have cotton and the staples of the South for its nobles, can hope to command the respect of its peers abroad without a navy. Nor can our citizens, with such a neighbour