The question of armored ships was in the air.  The advantages of armor had been already demonstrated on the French ship “Gloire” and others in connection with the naval part of the Crimean War, and there was a feeling that ironclads of some kind were a necessity of the situation.  These facts were perhaps more clearly realized at the South than at the North; and early in 1861 we find Mr. Stephen R. Mallory, the Confederate Secretary of the Navy, taking active steps to raise the “Merrimac,” which had been sunken at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and convert her into an armor-clad.  Information regarding this project naturally became known to the Federal authorities, and occasioned President Lincoln and the entire Cabinet the most serious anxiety.  At length on August 3, 1861, the appointment of a Board was authorized, the duty of which it should be to examine into the question fully, obtain plans, and recommend the construction of such armor-clads as they should judge best suited to the demands of the situation.

Shortly after this, Ericsson forwarded to President Lincoln a communication in which he offered to construct a vessel “for the destruction of the Rebel fleet at Norfolk and for scouring the Southern rivers and inlets of all craft protected by Rebel batteries.”  For one reason or another this communication does not seem to have produced any immediate result.  Later, however, when the Board made its report dated September 16, they registered the opinion that the present demand called for “vessels invulnerable to shot, of light draft of water, before going into a more perfect system of large iron-clad seagoing vessels of war.”  In pursuance of this idea they recommended the construction of three vessels,—­Ericsson’s floating battery, a broadside vessel later known as the “Ironsides,” and the “Galena.”  Mr. C.S.  Bushnell, who was instrumental in bringing Ericsson’s plans actually before the Board, later associated with himself and Ericsson in the project two gentlemen of means, and large manufacturers of iron plate, Mr. John A. Griswold and Mr. John F. Winslow, who advanced most of the money needed, Mr. Bushnell supplying the remainder.  The keel was laid Oct. 25, 1861, and the “Monitor,” as she was named by Ericsson, was launched Jan. 30, 1862, and was turned over to the Government Feb. 19, 1862.  This brief record of construction leaves untold all history of the ceaseless struggle against time and of the superb organization and distribution of the work which made possible the completion of such a piece of work in the period of one hundred working days.

One important fact which goes far to explain this astonishing speed in design and construction is found in the fact that Ericsson was not dealing with an entirely new and freshly developed proposition.  He has stated that the thought of a floating battery, which should be small in size, but impregnable to the heaviest guns known and yet heavily armed herself, had long occupied his thoughts in connection with the