BOYHOOD’S ENVIRONMENT.
IN the year 1797, war between France and the United States seemed
inevitable, and “Hail Columbia” was sung all over the land. The Navy
Department of the United States was created May 21, 1798. Captain Perry,
having offered his services to the government, was appointed by
President Adams, a post-captain in the navy June 9, 1798, and ordered to
build and command the frigate _General Greene_ at Warren, R. I. The
keels of six sloops and six seventy-four gun ships were also laid. In
May, 1799, the _General Greene_ was ready for sea.
With his son Oliver as midshipman, Captain Perry sailed for the West
Indies to convoy American merchantmen. He left his wife and family at
Tower Hill, a courtly village with a history and fine society. Matthew
was five years old. He had been taught to read by his mother, and now
attended the school-house, an edifice, which, now a century old, has
degenerated to a corn-crib.
Mrs. Perry lived in “the court end” of the town, and, after school,
would tell her little sons of their father and brothers at sea. This
element was ever in sight with its ships, its mystery, and its beckoning
distances. From Tower Hill may be seen Newport, Conanticut Island, Block
Island, Point Judith, and a stretch of inland country diversified by
lakes, and what the Coreans call “Ten thousand flashings of blue waves.”
After two brilliant cruises in the Spanish Main, and a visit to
Louisiana, where the American flag was first displayed by a national
ship, Captain Perry returned to Newport in May, 1800. Negotiations with
France terminated peacefully, and the first act of President Jefferson
was to cut down the navy to a merely nominal existence. Out of forty-two
captains only nine were retained in service, and Captain Perry again
found himself in private life.
The first and logical result of reducing the nation’s police force on
the seas, was the outbreak of piracy. Our expanding commerce found
itself unprotected, and the Algerian corsairs captured our vessels and
threw their crews into slavery. In the war with the Barbary powers, our
navy gained its first reputation abroad in the classic waters of the
Mediterranean.
Meanwhile at Newport the boy, Matthew Calbraith, continued his education
under school-teachers, and his still more valuable training in character
under his mother. The family lived near “the Point,” and during the long
voyages of the father, the training of the sons and daughters fell
almost wholly on the mother.
It was a good gift of Providence to our nation, this orphan Irish bride
so amply fitted to be the mother of heroes. Of a long line of officers
in the navy of the United States, most of those bearing the name of
Perry, and several of the name of Rodgers, call Sarah Alexander their
ancestress. One of the forefathers of the bride, who was of the
Craigie-Wallace family, was Sir Richard Wallace of Riccarton, Scotland.
He was the elder brother of Malcom Wallace of Ellerslie, the father of
Sir William Wallace. Her grandfather was James Wallace, an officer in
the Scottish army, who signed the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643,
but resigned his commission some years later. With other gentlemen from
Ayrshire, he took refuge from religious persecution in North Ireland.
Though earnest Protestants, they became involved in the Irish rebellion
in Cromwell’s time and were driven to resistance of the English
invaders.
As a young girl Sarah Alexander had not only listened to oft-repeated
accounts of the battles and valor of her ancestors but was familiar with
the historic sites in the neighborhood of her childhood’s home. She
believed her own people the bravest in the world. Well educated, and
surrounded with the atmosphere of liberal culture, of high ideas, of the
sacredness of duty and the beauty of religion, she had been morally well
equipped for the responsibilities of motherhood and mature life. Add to
this, the self-reliance naturally inbred by dwelling as an orphan girl
among five young men, her cousins; and last and most important, the
priceless advantage of a superb physique, and one sees beforehand to
what inheritance her sons were to come. One old lady, who remembers her
well, enthusiastically declared that “she was wonderfully calculated to
form the manners of children.” Another who knew her in later life writes
of her as “a Spartan mother,” “a grand old lady.” Another says
“Intelligent, lady-like, well educated;” another that “she was all that
is said of her in Mackenzie’s Life of O. H. Perry.” Those nearest to her
remember her handsome brown eyes, dark hair, rich complexion, fine white
teeth, and stately figure.
The deeds of the Perry men are matters of history. The province of the
women was at home, but it was the mothers, of the Hazard and the
Alexander blood who prepared the men for their careers by moulding in
them the principles from which noble actions spring.
Discipline, sweetened with love, was the system of the mother of the
Perry boys, and the foundation of their education. First of all, they
must obey. The principles of Christianity, of honor, and of chivalry
were instilled in their minds from birth. _Noblesse oblige_ was their
motto. It was at home, under their mother’s eye that Oliver learned how
to win victory at Lake Erie, and Matthew a treaty with Japan. She fired
the minds of her boys with the ineradicable passion of patriotism, the
love of duty, and the conquest of self. At the same time, she trained
them to the severest virtue, purest motives, faithfulness in details, a
love for literature, and a reverence for sacred things. The habit which
Matthew C. Perry had of reading his Bible through once during every
cruise, his scrupulous regard for the Lord’s day, the American Sunday,
his taste for literature, and his love for the English classics were
formed at his mother’s knee.
The vigor of her mind and force of her character were illustrated in
other ways. While personally attractive with womanly graces, gentle and
persuasive in her manners, she believed that self-preservation is the
first law of nature. Training her sons to kindness and consideration of
others, and warning them to avoid quarrels, she yet demanded of them
that they should neither provoke nor receive an insult, nor ever act the
coward. How well her methods were understood by her neighbors, is shown
by an incident which occurred shortly after news of the victory at Lake
Erie reached Rhode Island. An old farmer stoutly insisted that it was
Mrs. Perry who had “licked the British.”
There was much in the social atmosphere and historical associations of
Newport at the opening of this century to nourish the ambition and fire
the imagination of impressible lads like the Perry boys. Here still
lived the French veteran, Count Rochambeau of revolutionary fame. Out in
the bay, fringed with fortifications of Indian, Dutch, Colonial and
British origin and replete with memories of stirring deeds, lay the hulk
of the famous ship in which Captain Cook had observed the transit of
Venus and circumnavigated the globe. Here, possibly, the Norsemen had
come to dwell centuries before, and fascinating though uncertain
tradition pointed to the then naked masonry of the round tower as
evidence of it. The African slave-trade was very active at this time,
and brought much wealth to Newport and the old manors served by black
slaves fresh from heathenism. Among other noted negroes was Phillis
Wheatly the famous poetess, then in her renown, who had been brought to
Boston in 1781 in a slave-ship. What was afterwards left to Portuguese
cut-throats and Soudan Arabs was, until within the memory of old men now
living, prosecuted by Yankee merchants and New England deacons whose
ship’s cargoes consisted chiefly of rum and manacles. At this iniquity,
Matthew Perry was one day to deal a stunning blow.
Here, too, had tarried Berkeley, not then a bishop, however, whose
prophecy, “Westward the star of empire takes its way” was to be
fulfilled by Matthew Perry across new oceans, even to Japan. Once a year
the gaily decked packet-boat set out from Newport to Providence to carry
the governor from one capital to the other. This was a red-letter day to
little Calbraith, in whose memory it remained bright and clear to the
day of his death. When he was about ten years old, Mr. Matthew Calbraith
now thirty years old and a successful merchant, came from Philadelphia
to visit the Perrys. He was delighted with his little namesake, and
prophesied that he would make the name of Perry more honorable yet.
The affair of the _Leopard_ and _Chesapeake_ in June 1807 thrilled every
member of the family. Matthew begged that he might, at once, enter the
navy. This, however, was not yet possible to the boy of twelve years, so
he remained at school.
What Providence meant to teach, when an American man-of-war with her
decks littered up and otherwise unfit for action was surprised by a
hostile ship, was not lost upon our navy. The humiliating but salutary
lesson was learned for all time. Neatness, vigilance and constant
preparation for the possibilities of action are now the characteristics
of our naval households. So far as we know, no other ship of our country
has since been “leopardized.”
Even out of their bitter experience, the American sailors took
encouragement. The heavy broadsides of a fifty-gun frigate against a
silent ship had done surprisingly little damage. British traditions
suffered worse than the timbers of the _Chesapeake_, or the hearts of
her sailors. The moral effect was against the offenders, and in favor of
the Americans. The mists of rumor and exaggeration were blown away, and
henceforth our captains and crews awaited with stern joy their first
onset with insolent oppressors. If ever the species bully had developed
an abominable variety, it was the average British navy captain of the
first decade of this century.
Providence was severing the strings which bound the infant nation to her
European nurse. If the mere crossing of the Atlantic by the Anglo Saxon
or Germanic race has been equivalent to five hundred years of progress,
we may, at this day, be thankful for the treacherous broadsides of the
_Leopard_.
Having a well-grounded faith in the future of his country, and in the
speedy renown of her navy, Captain Perry wished all his sons to be naval
officers. He had confidence in American ships and cannon, and believed
that, handled by native Americans, they were a match for any in the
world. His sons Oliver and Raymond already wore the uniform. Early in
1808, he wrote to the Department concerning an appointment for Matthew.
His patience was not long tried. Under date of April 23, 1808, he
received word from the secretary, Paul Smith, that nothing stood in the
way. The receipt of the warrant as midshipman was eagerly awaited by the
lad. On the 18th of January 1809, the paper arrived. He was ordered
March 16th to the naval station at New York, where he performed for
several weeks such routine duty as a lad of his age could do. He then
went aboard the schooner _Revenge_, his first home afloat.
In those days, there being no naval academy, the young midshipmen
entered as mere boys, learning the rudiments of seamanship by actual
practice on ships at sea. Thus began our typical American naval
officer’s long and brilliant career of nearly half a century.
Matthew Perry was born when our flag bearing the stars and stripes was
so new on the seas as to be regarded with curiosity. It had then but
fifteen stars in its cluster. Civilized states disregarded its
neutrality, and uncivilized people insulted it with impunity. The
Tripolitan war first compelled barbarians to respect the emblem. France,
one of the most powerful and unscrupulous of belligerents, had not yet
learned to honor its right of neutrality. Great Britain, to the insults
of spoliation, added the robbery of impressment. Matthew Perry entered
the United States navy with a burning desire to make this flag respected
in every sea. He lived to command the largest fleet which, in his
lifetime ever gathered under its folds, and to bear it to the uttermost
parts of the earth in the first steam frigate of the United States which
ever circumnavigated the globe.