lincoln gets a letter from an unexpected source, a pastor from a baptist church in new hampshire, william sausen, who writes in saying, i have perfected an invention of the most marvelous destructive power that can immediately destroy the most powerful warships at a distance. you, sir, may smile at all this and suppose it is only the dream of an excited brain. but only a few days are needed to convince the world of its reality. the united states will be given the power to resist all the world's navy. and he also says, i am fully willing to do a test and then will sit back and wait for the offers to flood in. well, if shells and other machines couldn't destroy the merrimac, it is suggested, how about using one of nature's basic elements? fire. or fire and patrolling. this idea of turning the monitor into some sort of flame-throwing vesuvius, equipped the monitor with tanks of in flflammable, benzene, coil oil, naphtha, which is very close to gasoline. you spray the merrimac using fire hoses and then either the fire of her own guns will ignite it or you use a rocket to do so. and that, in a sense,