Wealth is necessary to the conduct of all modern wars, and I naturally turned my eyes, as indicated in the above letter, to the enemy's chief source of wealth. The ingenuity, enterprise, and natural adaptation of the Northern people to the sea, and seafaring pursuits, had enabled them, aided by the vast resources, which they had filched, under pretence of legislation, from the South, to build up, in the course of a very few years, a commercial marine that was second only to that of Great Britain, in magnitude and importance.
The first decked vessel that had been built in the United States, was built by one Adrian Block, a Dutch skipper, on the banks of the Hudson, in 1614, and in 1860, or in less than two centuries and a half, the great Republic was competing with England, the history of whose maritime enterprise extended back a thousand years, for the carrying trade of the world! This trade, if permitted to continue, would be a powerful means of sustaining the credit of the enemy, and enabling him to carry on the war. Hence it became an object of the first necessity with the Confederate States, to strike at his commerce. I enlarged upon this necessity, in the interview I was now holding with Mr. Mallory, and I was gratified to find that that able officer agreed with me fully in opinion.
A Board of naval officers was already in session at New Orleans, charged with the duty of procuring, as speedily as possible, some light and fast steamers to be let loose against the enemy's commercial marine, but their reports up to this time, had been but little satisfactory. They had examined a number of vessels, and found some defects in all of them. The Secretary, speaking of the discouragement presented by these reports, handed me one of them, which he had received that morning, from the Board. I read it, and found that it described a small propeller steamer, of five hundred tons burden, sea-going, with a low-pressure engine, sound, and capable of being so strengthened as to be enabled to carry an ordinary battery of four, or five guns. Her speed was reported to be between nine, and ten knots, but unfortunately, said the Board, she carries but five days' fuel, and has no accommodations for the crew of a ship of war. She was, accordingly, condemned. When I had finished reading the report, I turned to the Secretary, and said, "Give me that ship; I think I can make her answer the purpose." My request was at once acceded to, the Secretary telegraphed to the Board, to receive the ship, and the clerks of the Department were set at work, to hunt up the necessary officers, to accompany me, and make out the proper orders. And this is the way in which the Confederate States' steamer _Sumter_, which was to have the honor of being the first ship of war to throw the new Confederate flag to the breeze, was commissioned. I had accepted a stone which had been rejected of the builders, and which, though, it did not afterward become the "chief corner-stone of the temple," I endeavored to work into the building which the Confederates were then rearing, to remind their posterity that they had struggled, as Patrick Henry and his contemporaries had struggled before them, "in defence of their liberties."