Excerpt from The Navy of the United States
To My Countrymen: I trust that I shall not be thought insincere, when I say that the publication of the following pages gives me no pleasure. As an American, proud of my native land, with whose prosperity, for seven generations, my family has been identified, I can not contemplate this picture with any other feeling than pain; and although I have the consciousness of having done my duty, and have received the most flattering marks of the approval of my countrymen from all parts of the United States, both by letters and by verbal communications, yet these sources of gratification afford me little compensation for the destruction of an entire navy and the general disgrace to the country of this exposure.
My connection with the trial which has thus resulted, was apparently purely accidental. I received one day a telegram from Washington, signed by Mr. Mattingly, a gentleman with whom I had had a slight previous acquaintance, in these words: "Isherwood has sworn that there is no advantage in a cut-off. Important Come on at once." How or in what proceeding he had so sworn I was not advised, nor did I suspect; but I knew that if I could once get him on the stand, where the law would hold him till I had done with him, it would be mere child"s work to expose his ignorance and his corruption; for both are of so conspicuous a kind as to be obvious to the dullest vision. I at once went to Washington, and the following pages show the consequences: The jury rendered their verdict for a saving of thirty-four per cent, produced by the Sickels"s cut-off as claimed.
The story of the decay of our navy is a short one, and ought to be understood. Before Mr. Welles undertook to change the system, our naval engines were built on the plans which the experience of the world has proved to be good; and all worked steam expansively with an independent cut-off. The plans for each ship were furnished by the builders, and a rivalry was established between the different shops in the performance of their contracts. The Department made conditional contracts, by which the contractors were stimulated by contingent compensation, in proportion to the success they achieved in speed and economy; and the general result was, that our navy was equal to any in the world in the excellence of its machinery.
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