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GENERAL WESLEY MERRITT, COMMANDER OF THE INFANTRY
FORCES SENT TO MANILA.
rooms of the capital. He is quiet in manner, sparing and incisive in speech, courteous in bearing, and decisive in action. In all these qualities he does not differ greatly from other naval officers who have been trained in the same school. He was just beginning his naval career at the outbreak of the Civil War, and he then saw service which was the best of training for that which he has now rendered his country. At the time of the capture of New Orleans he was a lieutenant on the old "Mississippi," which had served on stations all over the globe, bore Perry's pennant at the opening of Japan to the world, and was enshrined in the affection of many an officer who had sailed her. The "Mississippi" was under the command of Captain Melancthon Smith. In the battle at New Orleans she sent to the bottom the Confederate ram "Manassas," only to meet her own fate a little later. While trying to run the batteries of Port Hudson, March 21, 1863, she ran aground. The enemy had her in range, and poured shell after shell into her hull, until her commander, seeing that she could not be saved, ordered her fired. Captain Smith and his chief subordinate, Lieutenant Dewey, conducted themselves with fine courage throughout, and they were the last to leave the ship. "It is in such trying moments," said Admiral Porter, in commenting on this incident in his official report, "that men show of what metal they are made, and in this instance the metal was of the best."
Had Dewey been in the army, he would probably have been an engineer, for his is of the order of mind adapted to the engineering corps. The same is true of acting Rear-Admiral William T. Sampson, in command of the North Atlantic Squadron. Both Dewey and Sampson are officers who know every detail of the ships under their command and who are masters of the mechanical problems which play so large a part in modern naval warfare. The confidence reposed in Sampson by his fellows in the service was shown in the approval which greeted his detail as flag officer of the North Atlantic Squadron, although by that detail he was preferred to men who were his superiors in actual rank.
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COMMODORE W. S. SCHLEY, COMMANDER OF THE FLYING SQUADRON.
