This book is written as a tribute to some men who have been overlooked
by History and forgotten by Fame. Though they won for us more than half
the territory comprised within our present-day borders, not only have no
monuments been erected to perpetuate their exploits in bronze and
marble, but they lie for the most part in forgotten and neglected
graves, some of them under alien skies. Boyd, Truxtun, Eaton, Reed,
Lafitte, Smith, Ide, Ward, Walker--even their names hold no significance
for their countrymen of the present generation, yet they played great
parts in our national drama. After two decades of history-making in
Hindustan, Boyd came back to his own country and ably seconded William
Henry Harrison in breaking the power of the great Indian confederation
which threatened to check the white man's westward march. When both
France and England were our enemies, and the gloom of despondency hung
like a cloud over the land, it was Truxtun and his bluejackets who put
new heart into the nation by their victories. Eaton and his motley army
marched across six hundred miles of African desert, and by bringing the
Barbary despots to their knees accomplished that which had been
unsuccessfully attempted by every naval power in Europe. Captain Reed,
of the _General Armstrong_, after holding off a British force twenty
times the strength of his own, sunk his vessel rather than surrender. To
a pirate and smuggler named Jean Lafitte, more than any other person
save Andrew Jackson, we owe our thanks for saving New Orleans from
capture and Louisiana from invasion. Jedediah Smith blazed the route of
the Overland Trail and showed us the way to California, and a quarter of
a century later Fremont, Ide, Sloat, and Stockton made the land beyond
the Sierras ours. William Walker came within an ace of changing the map
of Middle America, and made the name of American a synonym for courage
from the Rio Grande to Panama, while on the other side of the world
another American, Frederick Townsend Ward, raised and led that ever
victorious army whose exploits were General Gordon's chief claim to
fame. There was not one of these men of whom we have not reason to be
proud. But because they did their work unofficially, in what might
aptly be described as "shirt-sleeve warfare," and because they went
ahead without waiting for the tardy sanction of those who guided our
ship of state, the deeds they performed have never received befitting
recognition from those who follow by the trails they made, who grow rich
from the mines that they discovered, who dwell upon the lands they won.
And that is why I am going to ask you, my friends, as in the following
pages I lead these forgotten heroes before you in imaginary review, to
raise your hats in respect and admiration to this company of brave
soldiers and gallant gentlemen who so stoutly upheld American prestige
and American traditions in many far corners of the world.