This anniversary of the great action of Oliver Hazard Perry is set
apart for inaugurating a monument to his fame. Who has not heard how
gallantly, forty-seven years ago, the young hero, still weak from a
wasting fever, led his squadron to battle? As if shielded by a higher
power, he encountered death on his right hand, and death on his left,
ever in advance, almost alone for two hours fighting his ship, till it
became a wreck, so that but one of its guns could be used any longer,
and more than four-fifths of his crew lay around him wounded or
killed; then unharmed, standing as beseemed his spirit, he passed in
a boat to the uninjured Niagara, unfurled his flag, bore down within
pistol-shot of his enemy, poured into them broadsides starboard and
broadsides port, and while the sun was still high above the horizon,
left no office to be done but that of mercy to the vanquished. If the
comparison does not seem fanciful, I will call his conduct during
those eventful hours a complete lyric poem, perfect in all its parts.
Though he was carried away and raised above himself by the power with
which he was possessed, the passion of his inspiration was tempered by
the serene self-possession of his faultless courage; his will had the
winged rapidity of fiery thought, and yet observed with deliberateness
the combinations of harmony and the proportions of measured order.
Nor may you omit due honors to the virtues of the unrecorded dead;
not as mourners who require consolation, but with a clear perception
of the glory of their end. The debt of nature all must pay. To die,
if need be, in defense of the country is a common obligation; it is
granted to few to exchange life for a victory so full of benefits to
their fellow-men. These are the disinterested, unnamed martyrs, who,
without hope, or fame, or gain, gave up their lives in testimony to
the all pleading love of country, and left to our statesmen the lesson
to demand of others nothing but what is right, and to submit to no
wrong.
"We have met the enemy," were Perry's words as he reported the result
of the battle. And who was that enemy? A nation speaking another
tongue? A state abandoned to the caprices of despotism? A people
inimical to human freedom? No! they were the nation from whom most of
us sprung, using the same copious language, cherishing after their
fashion the love of liberty, enjoying internally the freest government
that the world had known before our own. But the external policy of
their government has been less controlled by regard for right than
their domestic administration; and a series of wanton aggression, upon
us, useless to England, condemned by her own statesmen and judges as
violations of the law of nature and the law of nations, forced into a
conflict two peoples whose common sympathies should never have been
disturbed. And is this aggressive system forever to be adventured by
her rulers? How long is the overshadowing aristocratic element in her
government to stand between the natural affections of kindred nations.