'...During the War of the Rebellion a new and influential club was established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland. It is well known with what energy the taste for military matters became developed among that nation of ship-owners shopkeepers and mechanics. Simple tradesmen jumped their counters to become extemporized captains colonels and generals without having ever passed the School of Instruction at West Point; nevertheless; they quickly rivaled their compeers of the old continent and like them carried off victories by dint of lavish expenditure in ammunition money and men. But the point in which the Americans singularly distanced the Europeans was in the science of gunnery. Not indeed that their weapons retained a higher degree of perfection than theirs but that they exhibited unheard-of dimensions and consequently attained hitherto unheard-of ranges. In point of grazing plunging oblique or enfilading or point-blank firing the English French and Prussians have nothing to learn; but their cannon howitzers and mortars are mere pocket-pistols compared with the formidable engines of the American artillery...