various parts of the work. The saw-mills in Kentucky, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, and Missouri were set to getting out the timber, which was hurried to St. Louis by railroad and steamboat as fast as it was ready. There were twenty-one steam engines and thirty-five boilers to be made, and the machine-shops in St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh were put to work upon them. The huge rolling-mills of Cincinnati and Portsmouth, Ohio, Newport, Kentucky, and St. Louis were engaged in making the iron plates, and employed for this purpose no less than four thousand men. Night and day, Sundays included, the work went on with an almost superhuman swiftness. Mr. Eads paid the workmen on the hulls large sums from his own pocket, in addition to their wages, to induce them to continue steadily at their work.
On the 12th of October, 1861, just forty-five days from the time of laying her keel, the first iron-clad, belonging to the United States, was launched, with her engines and boilers on board. Rear Admiral Foote (then a flag officer), appointed to command the Mississippi squadron, named her the "St. Louis," but upon being transferred to the Navy Department her name was changed to the "Baron de Kalb." She was followed by the other vessels in rapid succession, all being completed within the stipulated time.
In September, 1861, General Fremont ordered the purchase of the snag boat "Benton," which had been proposed by Mr. Eads and rejected by Captain Rodgers, and sent her to Mr. Eads to be armored and equipped as a gunboat. Work was at once begun on her, and pushed forward with the same energy that had been displayed in the construction of the other iron-clads. Her performances during the war fully sustained the high esteem in which she was held by the officers of the navy. Admirals Foote and Davis pronounced her the "best iron-clad in the world."
By dint of such skill and energy as we have described, Mr. Eads, in the brief period of one hundred days, built and had ready for service a