. Baltimore and Ohio employees magazine . ture that belched forth smoke and it came within closer view it was seen thatalong its corrugated iron sides at regular inter-vals—for it was entirely cased in rails—therefrowned on the outer world the grim muzzles ofponderous cannon. The moving monster had been, until a fewmonths before, the United States steam frigateMerrimac. Salvaged by the Confederatesfrom the wreck of the Gosport navy yard,opposite Norfolk—burned by order of UnitedStates officers within a week after the firing onSumter—it had been taken in hand and, bydint of the labor o
. Baltimore and Ohio employees magazine . ture that belched forth smoke and it came within closer view it was seen thatalong its corrugated iron sides at regular inter-vals—for it was entirely cased in rails—therefrowned on the outer world the grim muzzles ofponderous cannon. The moving monster had been, until a fewmonths before, the United States steam frigateMerrimac. Salvaged by the Confederatesfrom the wreck of the Gosport navy yard,opposite Norfolk—burned by order of UnitedStates officers within a week after the firing onSumter—it had been taken in hand and, bydint of the labor of skilled mechanics, platedwith railroad iron, and thus made into one ofthe most formidable of destroyers the worldhad ever seen. How the Merrimac defeated the UnitedStates frigates Congress and Cumberland, witha loss of 220 men that day, and how the nextday the strange little cheesebox Monitor sentthe armored Merrimac back to Norfolk so badlycrippled that it was not again heard of duringthe Civil War, is history with which every. ^%_ HERUNI\N INJUN MR^IU. ^ an. 110 THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO EMPLOYES MACAZIXE 111 schoolboy and girl is familiar. Not so gen-erally known is the story of how the Merrimaccame to be armored. Had the railroad iron which plated the sidesof the Merrimac been endowed with the powerof speech it could have told of blue-crestedmountains far from the tidal waters, the mostpicturesque section of the Blue Ridge, thesuperb region of the upper Potomac and Shen-andoah, embracing Harpers Ferry and Martins-burg, where it had lain peacefully enough. But Stonewall Jackson came along withhis freshly organized army and massed hisforces along the railroad and in those a period of two months after the firing onSumter he held that part of Virginia, togetherwith a section of about fifty miles of the Balti-more and Ohio Railroad. Before the middle of June, 1861, Jackson sawhe must evacuate. The Union troops from thedirection of Washington were pressing down t
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectbaltimo, bookyear1912
