the battle ceased by mutual consent.

Nothing more could be done. The ram was badly damaged, and there
was no help for her save to put back to the port whence she had
come. Twice afterward she came out, but neither time did she come
near enough to the Monitor to attack her, and the latter could
not move off where she would cease to protect the wooden vessels.
The ram was ultimately blown up by the Confederates on the
advance of the Union army.

Tactically, the fight was a drawn battle--neither ship being able
to damage the other, and both ships, being fought to a
standstill; but the moral and material effects were wholly in
favor of the Monitor. Her victory was hailed with exultant joy
throughout the whole Union, and exercised a correspondingly
depressing effect in the Confederacy; while every naval man
throughout the world, who possessed eyes to see, saw that the
fight in Hampton Roads had inaugurated a new era in ocean
warfare, and that the Monitor and Merrimac, which had waged so
gallant and so terrible a battle, were the first ships of the new
era, and that as such their names would be forever famous.



THE FLAG-BEARER

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are
stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;