afterward to follow its triumphant course up the river, in hopes of snatching another chance from the jaws of defeat. Another example, equally daring and more successful, of the power of the ram, was given that same night by Kennon, also an ex-officer of the United States Navy; but the other ram commanders did not draw from their antecedent training and habits of thought the constancy and pride, which could carry their frail vessels into the midst of ships that had thus victoriously broken their way through the bulwarks of the Mississippi. The River-Defense Fleet, as it was called, was a separate organization, which owned no allegiance and would receive no orders from the navy; and its absurd privileges were jealously guarded by a government whose essential principle was the independence of local rights from all central authority. Captains of Mississippi River steamboats, their commanders held to the full the common American opinion that the profession of arms differs from all others in the fact that it requires no previous training, involves no special habits of thought, is characterized by no moral tone which only early education or years of custom can impart. Rejecting all suggestion and neglecting all preparation, they cherished the most inordinate confidence in the raw native valor which they were persuaded would inspire them at the critical moment; and, incredible as it would seem, some of the men who in the battle could find no other use for their boats but to run them ashore and burn them, ventured to tell Warley the night before that their mission was to show naval officers how to fight. They did not lack courage, but that military habit upon whose influence Farragut had so acutely remarked when a youth, returning in 1820 from the European station.[Q] "Had regular naval officers," said Kennon bitterly, "instead of being kept in the mud forts on the creeks in Virginia, and in the woods of Carolina cutting timbers to build ironclads, been sent to command these vessels, even at the eleventh hour, they would have proved very formidable." [Footnote Q: See page 62.]