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3. CHAPTER III.
O'REILLY'S PETITION TO MR. STANTON.

I REGRET to have to inform you that the publication
in your columns of the song written by
Private Miles O'Reilly of the 47th regiment New
York Volunteers, has only led to the still severer
treatment of that imprisoned bard. Had I foreseen,
when sending you the song for your private amusement,

that it could by any possibility have occurred
to you to put it on record in the N. Y. Herald, my
sincere sympathy for the prisoner would have led
me to caution you against the adoption of such a
course. Now that the thing has become matter of
public notoriety, General A. H. Terry, commanding
the Post, has nothing for it but to let O'Reilly suffer
the penalty of his offence; nor could General Gillmore,
with propriety or delicacy, interpose the prerogative
of his clemency in regard to a crime of
which the particulars have been so widely bruited.
The balls, therefore, must remain on poor Miles for
some time, and all the rigors of his confinement have
been, if anything, increased. He is now attended by
Chaplain Hudson, of the New York Volunteer Engineers,
formerly well known in your city as a minister
of the Gospel, and lecturer on the beauties of Shakspeare.
Between Miles and the chaplain a very tender
sentiment of esteem is said to have been developed;
and it was upon Mr. Hudson's intercession that
General Gillmore finally consented to forward O'Reilly's
petition (of which I spoke in my last) to the
Secretary of War. The first song having been unfortunately
published, it can do no further injury to let
the petitioner's defence of himself, see the light.

What disposition will be made of it by Mr. Stanton,
all down here are at a loss to imagine. Some
think that, if the President's attention could be
called to the case, his own proclivity to a joke might
make him look with leniency on the luckless rhymer
of Morris Island. The petition reads as follows, but
to appreciate its true pathos and humor one should
hear O'Reilly sing it himself. His recitative of the
parts in parenthesis has never been surpassed:—

MEMORIAL OF PRIVATE MILES O'REILLY, NOW AN ONLUCKY PRISONER
IN THE GUARDHOUSE.

To His Excellency the Right Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, Esq., and all others
whom it may concern:—

Air—“The Fine Ould English Gentleman.”

Of course such a document as the foregoing can
hardly hope to receive grave or serious attention at
the War Department, nor is it at all likely that Mr.
Stanton will order O'Reilly's irons to be taken off in
consequence of this rhythmical prayer. The commanding
officer of the Forty-seventh regiment is
now absent on leave, and is believed to be staying at
his home in your city. The greatest anxiety to have
him return, so that he may be present at the trial, is
manifested by the prisoner, who relies largely upon
his evidence as to his (O'Reilly's) general good
conduct as a soldier.

Dr. Marsh, the Chief Inspector of the Sanitary
Commission, visits the guard-house frequently, and
does all that he can for the unhappy culprit, in whom
so much interest is felt. It is due also to Surgeon J.
J. Craven, Medical Purveyor, to say that he has
been unremitting in his attentions; as has also been
Surgeon Dibble, of the Sixth Connecticut Volunteers,
who declares it to be his opinion, after close
examination, that this is what Mr. James T. Brady,
of your city, would call a case of “moral insanity;”
and that the prisoner having a monomania for writing
verses, should not be held responsible before a
military tribunal. This plea, however, is not accepted;

and, as things look now, the balls and chains will
not be taken off O'Reilly until further orders. Lieut.Colonel
J. F. Hall, Provost Marshal General, is now
at the North, and it is believed that he will take Secretary
Stanton's orders in the case before returning.

And now a word to the correspondent of a paper
published in Baltimore, who is well known to write
under the immediate inspiration of the iron-clad
interest, and who has of late been laboring to
prove that my former letters in reference to the Monitor
question, have been a tissue of blunders and
errors of statement written by one having no practical
knowledge of his subject-matter—the strong
inference from his own letter being (though modesty
does not allow him to state the matter in open
words), that he alone is the repository of all iron-clad
information,—thus ignoring not only the present
writer, a very small matter; but also Mr. Osbun,
the chief iron-clad reporter of the Herald, who has
sailed and served in the Monitors for many months,
and who is painfully familiar with the sensations
caused to men inside the pilot-house and turret by
the concussions of shot striking and shell exploding
against the exterior walls and on the deck.

For my inexperience in matters naval and mili

tary, I tender apologies to this correspondent. In
newspaper controversies he will find me a mere neophyte;
and, never having been in any position of
command, my style unavoidably lacks that authoritative,
not to say dogmatic and dictatorial tone so
pleasantly conspicuous in all he writes.

His intimacy with all the iron-clad inventors and
eontractors, gives him an advantage over me in estimating
the value of that class of ships; and if, as he
seems to think, the object of such vessels be to
secure the safety from hostile missiles of the three
occupants of each pilot house, and the sixteen men
forming the practical gun-crew in each turret, it may
at once be admitted, that, as nearly as any human
machinery can, they approximate perfection; and
this more especially when at an average distance
of two thousand yards from the enemy's ordnance.

But when Rhind took the Keokuk[1] within four
hundred yards of Sumter, his ship was riddled and
sunk; and when George W. Rodgers ran within one
hundred and fifty yards of Wagner,[2] the penalty of
his rash gallantry was paid with his life. The only
unfortunate point in regard to the two thousand

yards safety theory is this:—that the distance named
converts the contest on both sides into very much
of a sham battle, a sort of child's bargain—“You
don't hurt me, and I won't hurt you.”

When Worden first steamed up to Fort McAllister,
on the Ogeechee, the men and officers thronged
out on the ramparts of that small earthwork to see
what an iron-clad was like. Worden himself directed
one of his guns and burst a shell immediately
over their heads, thereby killing Major Barstow,
second in command under Colonel Anderson, and
wounding several of the men. After this he opened
a steady bombardment of the work, in which he was
joined by three other Monitors, and the bombardment
lasted several days and nights—with what result?
Not another man of the garrison was killed.
Not a gun was dismounted, and when the iron-clads,
discomfited, steamed away, the fort was just as
strong and substantially as uninjured as when the
attack commenced!

Citing the case of the Atlanta—an ordinary commercial
steamer, awkwardly and rapidly converted,
with old railroad iron, into some semblance of a
mail-clad war vessel—can furnish no parallel to the
vast and fast iron-clad frigates and line-of-battle

ships now being built by the governments of France
and England, and upon which all the ingenuity and
resources of those two great countries are being lavished.—The
Atlanta was caught in a corner, where
her superior speed could give her no advantage,
except for retreat. Her commander was a rash fool,
who hazarded everything, and lost his vessel, rather
than endure the mortification of turning tail in presence
of certain distinguished ladies on board a river
steamer—ladies, by the way, who had come down in
no expectation of seeing one or more of our Monitors,
but to see the Atlanta capture or destroy one small
wooden gunboat which lay in Wassaw Sound.
How the Weehawken and her consort happened to
arrive so opportunely, is a point not yet explained in
any navy dispatches that have been published.[3]

Accustomed to look for, and, when found, highly to
appreciate, every grain of comfort in the bushels of
official chaff almost daily poured out upon us in these
disastrous times, I thank the correspondent in question
for his assurance that “the Navy Department is
not insensible to the fact, that iron-plated frigates are
needed to meet and fight the same class of vessels
on the high seas.” With this point conceded, the
controversy may well close,—its main object having

been to impress upon the country, that our Monitors
are not all that we need, nor even any great part
of what we need in the way of a National Navy.
The second object has also been accomplished—not
by these letters, indeed, but by the sure developments
of time. The reputation of Admiral Du Pont,
and of his gallant subordinate commanders, has
been thoroughly rescued from the obloquy or suspicion,
with which, in certain quarters, there appeared
a disposition to cloud it. As for the reputation
of General Hunter, also assailed, that too
will take care of itself in the proper time and manner.
Suffice it for the present that in all the military
operations General Hunter undertook, or is blamed
for having failed to undertake, he was governed
by clear and peremptory orders; and that, many
months before the first attack upon Fort Sumter, he
in conjunction with Admiral Du Pont, submitted to
those in higher authority precisely and identically
the same plan of action, which has since to a qualified
extent—all the extent he prophesied—proved
successful under the magnificent engineering skill of
General Gillmore, and the coöperation of the iron-clads
under their present Admiral.