as we are bound to have, be secure from daily outrage unless we have a navy to protect them in peace as well as in war.
"That the country is in great need of a navy now, is patent to the world; and that it will want one in the future is obvious to every statesman. . . .
"In the first Revolution we had a navy; it did good service, and experience approves it. This, our second, is more holy than that, and our enemy is close at hand. He is marauding in habit, and far less chivalrous in disposition than the enemy we then had. Moreover, our sea-board country now, while on the one hand it is far more tempting to the robber, on the other it is far less secure from his inroads. We cannot now, as we did then, depend on distance and our faithful old allies, the wind and waves, to protect our citizens from insult and pillage. Moreover, the epoch for 'big guns and little ships' is at hand.[1] Our enemy is not prepared for it. We are. Let us be up and doing, and with craft no larger than steam-tugs and pilot-boats, we may send to the bottom, or chase away from our bays and offings, his tall frigates. In the old war, none but stout ships could be sent against us, for we were separated from the enemy by the most stormy ocean in the world.
". . . . The fact that the mouths of our rivers should be blockaded with an old steam-tug, our shores ravaged, plantations pillaged, and homes burned by a fleet of mere passenger-boats, is neither gratifying to our pride at home, nor will it be held abroad as indicative of any very high degree of national spirit on our part.
"There seems then to be every reason of patriotism and policy why we should set to work 'right off the reel,' and with might and main build up a navy at least sufficient to
- ↑ See "Scraps from the Lucky-Bag," by "Harry Bluff," Southern Literary Messenger of Oct. 1839.
