Well, Sir, in all this I was exactly of the opinion of the honorable gentleman.

Sir, I do not know when my opinion of the importance of a naval force to the United States had its origin.  I can give no date to my present sentiments on this subject, because I never entertained different sentiments.  I remember, Sir, that immediately after coming into my profession, at a period when the navy was most unpopular, when it was called by all sorts of hard names and designated by many coarse epithets, on one of those occasions on which young men address their neighbors, I ventured to put forth a boy’s hand in defence of the navy.  I insisted on its importance, its adaptation to our circumstances and to our national character, and its indispensable necessity, if we intended to maintain and extend our commerce.  These opinions and sentiments I brought into Congress; and the first time in which I presumed to speak on the topics of the day, I attempted to urge on the House a greater attention to the naval service.  There were divers modes of prosecuting the war.  On these modes, or on the degree of attention and expense which should be bestowed on each, different men held different opinions.  I confess I looked with most hope to the results of naval warfare, and therefore I invoked government to invigorate and strengthen that arm of the national defence.  I invoked it to seek its enemy upon the seas, to go where every auspicious indication pointed, and where the whole heart and soul of the country would go with it.

Sir, we were at war with the greatest maritime power on earth.  England had gained an ascendency on the seas over all the combined powers of Europe.  She had been at war twenty years.  She had tried her fortunes on the Continent, but generally with no success.  At one time the whole Continent had been closed against her.  A long line of armed exterior, an unbroken hostile array, frowned upon her from the Gulf of Archangel, round the promontory of Spain and Portugal, to the extreme point of Italy.  There was not a port which an English ship could enter.  Everywhere on the land the genius of her great enemy had triumphed.  He had defeated armies, crushed coalitions, and overturned thrones; but, like the fabled giant, he was unconquerable only while he touched the land.  On the ocean he was powerless.  That field of fame was his adversary’s, and her meteor flag was streaming in triumph over its whole extent.

To her maritime ascendency England owed every thing, and we were now at war with her.  One of the most charming of her poets had said of her,—­

    “Her march is o’er the mountain waves,
    Her home is on the deep.”