March 4, 1862. Appearing before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Lincoln urged Congress to appropriate funds so that work on the Capitol building's new dome could start again, after having been suspended for a year due to lack of funds. "It is a sign we intend the Union to go on," Lincoln said.

- Submitted by Peter A. Gilbert, Executive Director, Vermont Humanities Council

U.S. Capitol building under construction, July 1861, Library of Congress

March 8, 1862. When Union forces abandoned the naval shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia at the beginning of the war, they scuttled and sank the Union frigate Merrimack. In the summer of 1861 the Confederate navy recovered the ship, covered her with iron plates, converted her to steam power, outfitted her with formidable guns, and renamed her the Virginia. The Union's uncontested supremacy on the seas was now at risk.

Despite the Confederacy's best efforts to preserve secrecy, Washington learned about this work. The prospect of wooden ships going up against what might prove to be a virtually indestructible iron steamship was, needless to say, a great concern. And so the Union raced to make the Monitor, a specially designed "ironclad," ready for battle as soon as possible.

The Merrimack resembled an iron-fortified raft. The Monitor was lower in the water; its main deck rose only eighteen inches above the water with a revolving gun turret in the middle.

On March 8, the Merrimack attacked and sank two wooden Union ships in Hampton Roads, the channel through which Virginia's James River flows into Chesapeake Bay. The Confederate commander of the Merrimack was not deterred by the fact that his brother served on one of them. This was the U.S. Navy's worst day in its eighty-six-year history.