On March 8th, from the direction of Norfolk, the _Virginia_, a mass low-lying upon the water, suddenly appeared before the astonished eyes of the Federal onlookers in Hampton Roads.[213] Five stately wooden frigates lay at anchor off Hampton, and they gallantly discharged their broadsides at this strange assailant, but the balls glanced harmless from her impenetrable back. She turned and pierced the _Cumberland_ with her ram, sending the frigate to the bottom; then she assailed the _Congress_, which presently went up in flames; the brave crews as helpless as if their means of defence were bows and arrows. Mistress of the situation, with three more frigates--_Minnesota_, _Roanoke_, and _St. Lawrence_--aground on the shoals or offering a futile defiance, the _Virginia_ then withdrew for the day; she was certain of her prey and could afford to wait for a few hours, meanwhile making some changes which would render her more effective. Vivid terror overspread the North as the news was despatched in the evening; and it was nowhere greater than in the cabinet-room at the White House, where Lincoln anxiously studied upon means to meet the exigency; and Stanton, pacing the room “like a caged lion,” predicted she would come up the Potomac and shell Washington.[214] On the forenoon of March 9th, doing all things deliberately, as one that has no reason to hasten, the _Virginia_ again appeared and moved toward the _Minnesota_, aground and apparently certain to become a helpless victim. Suddenly in the path appeared a little craft scarcely one-fourth the size of the _Virginia_, “a cheese-box on a raft,” as it will go down in history, the _Monitor_, an iron-clad of another pattern. This vessel, undertaken as an experiment, and completed in one hundred days, was due to the genius and indomitable zeal of John Ericsson, its designer. That it should have arrived from New York at this moment is one of the fateful accidents of history. A multitude beheld the encounter, from the ships close at hand, from the shores near and far. The superior size and armament of the _Virginia_ were neutralized by her unwieldiness and depth of draught. The _Monitor_, more active, and passing everywhere over shoal or through channel, could elude or strike as she chose. Neither had much power to harm the other; each crew behind its shield manœuvred and fired for the most part uninjured. Worden, commander of the _Monitor_, in his pilot-house at the bow, built of iron bars log-cabin fashion, received in the face, as he peered through the interstice, the blinding fire and smoke from a shell that struck within a few inches, but he escaped death. The casualties on the _Virginia_ were few. On the morning of that day both North and South believed that the Confederacy was about to control the sea. The anticipation, whether hope or fear, vanished in the smoke of that day’s battle. With it, too, passed away the traditional beauty and