as the result of the extraordinary work he performed during that
comparatively brief time, he came to be known as “the educator of
the navy.” In those ten years he founded the Brooklyn Naval Lyceum;
commanded the _Fulton_, the first American war vessel independent of
wind and tide; discovered the value of the ram as a weapon of offense
and thereby changed the tactics of sea-fights from “broadside to
broadside” to “prow on”; revolutionized the naval architecture of the
world; modernized the lighthouse system along our coasts; substituted
the use of shells for solid shot in our navy; and established the
School of Gun Practice at Sandy Hook. Any one of these was an
achievement of which a man would have good reason to be proud. Any one
of them was a service which merited the appreciation of the nation. In
1840 he was rewarded with the rank of commodore, and thenceforward the
vessel that carried him flew the “broad pennant.” Yet all of his later
illustrious services under the red, the white, and the blue pennants
added nothing to his pay, permanent rank, or government reward, for
until the year 1862 there was no office in the American navy carrying
higher pay than that of captain.
As a result of the Webster-Ashburton treaty, whereby England and the
United States bound themselves to suppress the slave-trade, Perry was
given command of an eighty-gun squadron, and in 1842 was ordered to
the west coast of Africa for the purpose of stamping out the traffic
in “black ivory” and, incidentally, to protect the negro colony he
had established in Liberia a quarter of a century before from the
aggressions of the native rulers. Though the framers of the treaty
were unquestionably sincere in their desire to stamp out the traffic
in human beings, and though both the British and American navies made
every effort to enforce it, these efforts were nullified by the fact
that for a number of years the courts of England and the United States
refused to convict a slaver unless captured with the slaves actually
on board. The absurdity--and tragedy--of this ruling was emphasized
by the case of the slaver _Brilliante_. On one of her dashes from the
west coast of Africa to the Gulf coast of the United States her captain
found himself becalmed and surrounded by four war-ships. Aware that he
would certainly be boarded unless the wind quickly rose, he stretched
his entire cable chain on deck, suspended it clear of everything, and
shackled to it his anchor, which hung on the bow ready to drop. To this
chain he lashed the six hundred slaves he had aboard. He waited until
he could hear the oars of the boarding parties close at hand--then he
cut the anchor. As it fell it dragged overboard the cable with its
human freight, and though the men-of-war’s men heard the shrieks of the
victims and found their fetters lying on the deck, the fact remained
that there were no slaves aboard; so, in conformity with the rulings of
the learned judges in Washington and London, there was nothing left for
the boarders but to depart amid the jeers of the slaver’s captain and
crew.
Upon reaching the west coast, known then, as now, as “the white man’s
graveyard,” the first thing to which Perry turned his attention was
the settlement of an outstanding score with the tribesmen of Berribee,
who inhabited that region which now comprises the French Ivory Coast.
A few months prior to his visit the untutored savages of this coast
of death had enticed ashore the captain and crew of the American
schooner _Mary Carver_ and, after unspeakable tortures, had murdered
them. For three hours Captain Carver was subjected to torments almost
incredible in the fiendish ingenuity they displayed, finally, when all
but dead, being bound and turned over to the women and children of the
tribe, who amused themselves by sticking thorns into his flesh until
he was a human pincushion. Then they cooked and ate him. It was with
uneasy consciences, therefore, that the natives saw four great black
ships, flying the same strange flag that they had taken from the _Mary
Carver_, drop anchor off Berribee one red-hot November morning.
Commodore Perry sent a message to the King, who bore the pleasing
name of Crack-O, that it would be better for his health as well as
for that of the white men trading along the coast if he moved his
capital a considerable distance inland. The ebony monarch sent back
the suggestion that the matter be thrashed out at a palaver to be
held in the royal kraal two days later. On the morning appointed
Commodore Perry, with twelve boatloads of sailors and marines, landed
with considerable difficulty through the booming surf and, escorted
by fifty natives armed with rusty muskets of an obsolete pattern,
marched through the jungle to the palaver house. As he entered the
town it did not escape the keen eye of the American commander that
there was a noticeable absence of natives to greet him; he guessed,
and rightly, that the warriors were in ambush and that the women
and children had taken to the bush. So, before entering the palaver
house, he took the precaution of posting sentries at the gates of
the stockade and of drawing up his men close by with orders to break
into the kraal if they heard a disturbance. Then he strode into the
presence of King Crack-O, and two strong men stood face to face. The
African ruler was a gigantic negro with a face as ugly as sin and the
frame of a prize-fighter, his tremendous muscles playing like snakes
under a skin made shiny with cocoanut oil. Flung over his massive
shoulders was the royal robe of red and yellow, and tilted rakishly
on his fuzzy skull was a dilapidated top-hat--the emblem of royalty
throughout native Africa. Behind him, leaning against the wall and
within easy reach, was his trowel-bladed spear, a vicious weapon with
a six-foot shaft which, in the hands of a man who knew how to use it,
could be driven through a three-inch plank. Twelve notches on its haft
told their own grim story. Taking him by and large, he was a mighty
formidable figure, was his Majesty King Crack-O of Berribee, though
the American commodore, who stood six feet two in his stockings and
was built in proportion, was not exactly puny himself. As the Berribee
tongue was not included in the remarkable list of languages of which
Perry had made himself master, and as King Crack-O’s knowledge of
English was confined to such odds and ends of profanity as he had
picked up from seamen and traders, a voluble African named Yellow
Will, who proved himself a most impudent and barefaced liar, did the
interpreting. It was the interpreter, in fact, who precipitated the
shindy, for his attitude quickly became so insolent that Perry, who
was a short-tempered man under the best of circumstances, shook his
fist under his nose and thundered that he would either speak the
truth or get a flogging. Terrified by the violence of the explosion,
the interpreter bolted for the gate, and the sentry, who believed in
acting first and inquiring afterward, levelled his rifle and shot him
dead. Instantly the royal enclosure was in an uproar. King Crack-O
snatched at his spear, but, quick as the big black was, the American
commodore was quicker. Perry, who, despite his size, was as quick on
his feet as a professional boxer, hurled himself upon Crack-O before he
could get to his weapon and caught him by the throat, while a sergeant
of marines, who had burst in at sound of the scuffle, shot the King
through the body. Though mortally wounded, the negro ruler fought
with the ferocity of a gorilla, again and again hurling off the half
dozen sailors who attempted to make him prisoner, being subdued only
when a marine brought a rifle barrel down on his head and stretched
him senseless. The forest encircling the royal kraal was by this
time vomiting armed and yelling warriors, who opened fire with their
antiquated muskets, a compliment which the bluejackets and marines
returned with deadly effect. Bound hand and foot, the wounded King was
taken out to the flag-ship, where he died the next morning. Before
departing, the sailors touched a match to his mud-and-wattle capital,
though not before they had recovered the flag taken from the ill-fated
_Mary Carver_, and in twenty minutes the town was a heap of smoking
ashes. Moving slowly down the coast, Perry landed punitive expeditions
at every village of importance, drove back the tribesmen, destroyed
their crops, confiscated their cattle, and burned their towns. News
travels in Africa by the “underground railway” as though by wireless,
and the effect of this powder-and-ball policy was quickly felt along
a thousand miles of coast, the tribal chieftains hastening in, under
flags of truce, “to talk one big palaver, to pay plenty bullock, to no
more fight white man.” Thus was concluded one of those “little wars”
which have done so much to make the red-white-and-blue flag respected
at the uttermost ends of the earth, but of which our people seldom hear.
In 1846 came the war with Mexico and with it still another opportunity
for Perry to add to his reputation. Opportunity seemed, indeed,
to be forever hammering at his door--and he never let the elusive
jade escape him. When Scott found that his artillery was unable to
effect a breach in the walls of Vera Cruz, he asked Perry, who was
in charge of the naval operations in the Gulf, for the loan of some
heavy ordnance from the fleet, saying that his soldiers would do the
handling. “Where the guns go the men go, too,” responded Perry--and
they did. Landing the great guns from his war-ships, he manned them
with his own crews, pushed them up to within eight hundred yards of the
Mexican fortifications, and hammered them to pieces with an efficiency
and despatch which amazed the army officers, who had never taken the
sailor into consideration as a fighting factor on land. It was Perry’s
guns, served by the bluejackets he had trained and aimed by officers
who had learned their business at the School of Gun Practice he had
founded, which opened a gate through the walls of Vera Cruz for Scott’s
triumphant advance on the Mexican capital.
Perry had long advocated the value of sailors trained as infantry,
and this campaign gave him an opportunity to show his critics that
he knew what he was talking about. Forming the first American naval
brigade ever organized, he moved slowly down the Gulf coast, landing
and capturing every town he came to, until the whole littoral from
the Rio Grande to Yucatan was in his possession. At the taking of
Tabasco--now known as San Juan Bautista--the novel sight was presented
of the commander-in-chief of the American naval forces leading the
landing parties in person. The capital of the state of Tabasco lies
in the heart of the rubber country, some seventy miles up the Tabasco
River, and only eighteen degrees above the equator. The expedition
against it consisted of forty boats, conveying eleven hundred men.
This was new work for American sailors, for up to that time our naval
traditions consisted of squadron fights in line, ship-to-ship duels
and boarding parties. In this case, however, a flotilla was to ascend
a narrow and tortuous river for seventy miles through a densely wooded
region, which afforded continuous cover for riflemen, and then to
disembark and attack heavy shore batteries defended by a force many
times the strength of their own. As the long line of boats reached
the hairpin turn in the river known as the Devil’s Bend, the dense
jungle which lined both sides of the stream suddenly blazed with
musketry and the boats were swept with a rain of lead. Perry, who
was standing in an exposed position under the awnings of the leading
boat, his field-glasses glued to his eyes, escaped death by the breadth
of a hair. As the spurts of flame and smoke leaped from the wall of
shrubbery he roared the order, “Fire at will!” and the fusillade of
small arms that ensued riddled the jungle and effectually put to flight
the Mexicans.
When within a few miles of the town it was found that the Mexicans had
placed obstructions in the channel in such a manner that they would
have to be blown up before the boats could pass. And for this Perry
would not wait. Directing the gunners to sweep the beach with grape,
he gave the order: “Prepare to land!” He himself took the tiller of
the leading boat. Reaching the line of obstructions in the river,
he suddenly steered straight for the shore and, rising in his boat,
called in a voice which echoed over river and jungle: “Three cheers, my
lads, and give way all!” Responding with three thunderous hurrahs, the
sailors bent to their oars and raced toward the shore as the college
eights race down the river at Poughkeepsie. Perry was the first to
land. Followed by his flag-captain and his aides, he dashed up the
almost perpendicular bank in the face of a scattering rifle fire
and unfurled his broad pennant in sight of the whole line of boats.
Quickly the marines and sailors landed and cleared the underbrush of
snipers. Then, with a cloud of skirmishers thrown out on either flank,
a company of pioneers in advance to clear the road, and squads of
bluejackets marching fan-fashion, dragging their field-pieces behind
them, the column moved on Tabasco with the burly commodore tramping at
its head. The thermometer--for it was in June--stood at 130 degrees
in the shade--and there was no shade. Man after man fainted from heat
and exhaustion. Miasma rose in clouds from the jungle. The pitiless
sun beat down from a sky of brass. The country was so swampy that the
pioneers had to fell trees and build bridges before the column could
advance. Every few minutes a gun would sink to the hubs in quicksand
and a whole company would have to man the drag-ropes and haul it out.
This overland march, through a roadless and pestilential jungle, was
one of the most remarkable exploits and certainly one of the least
known of the entire war.
The flotilla left in the river had, meanwhile, succeeded in blowing
up the obstructions and, moving up the stream, shelled the Mexican
fortifications from the rear while Perry and his sweating men prepared
to carry them by storm. Waiting until the straggling column closed
up and the men had a few moments in which to rest, Perry formed his
command into “company front,” and signalled to his bugler. As the
brazen strains of the “charge” pealed out the line of sweating,
panting, cheering men, led by the grizzled commodore himself, pistol
in one hand and cutlass in the other, swept at a run up the steep main
street of the city with the ships’ bands playing them into action with
“Yankee Doodle.” In five minutes it was all over but the shouting. The
Mexican garrison had fled, and our flag waved in triumph over the city
which gave the sauce its name. The capture of Tabasco, whose commercial
importance was second only to that of Vera Cruz, was the last important
naval operation of the war. Since the fall of Vera Cruz, Perry and
his jack-tars had captured six fortress-defended cities, had taken
ninety-three pieces of artillery, had forced neutrality on the great,
rich province of Yucatan, had established an American customs service
at each of the captured ports, and had found time in between to build
a naval hospital on the island of Salmadina, which saved hundreds of
lives. And yet but few of our people are aware that Matthew Perry even
took part in the war with Mexico.
Perry’s service in Russia, Egypt, Italy, Africa, the West Indies,
and Mexico was, however, but a preparatory course for the great
adventure on which he was destined to embark, for, as a result of the
extraordinary fund of experience and information he had gained on
foreign seaboards, he was selected to command the expedition which the
American Government had determined to send to Japan in an attempt to
open up that empire to commerce and civilization. Now, you must not
lose sight of the fact that the Japan of sixty years ago was quite a
different country from the Japan of to-day. The Japanese of 1853 were
as ultra-exclusive and as pleased with themselves as are the members of
the Newport set. They wanted no outsiders in their country, and they
did not have the slightest desire to play in any one else’s back yard.
All they asked was to be let alone. But no nation can successfully
oppose the march of civilization. It must either welcome progress or go
under. For three centuries every maritime power in Europe had attempted
to open up Japan, and always they had met with failure. But about the
middle of the nineteenth century the United States decided to take a
hand in the game. With the conquest and settlement of California;
the increase of American commerce with China; the growth of American
whale-fisheries in Eastern seas, in which ten thousand Americans
were employed; the development of steam traffic and the consequent
necessity for coaling stations, it became increasingly evident to the
frock-coated gentlemen in Washington that the opening of the empire of
the Mikado was a necessity which could not much longer be delayed.
Thus it came about that the morning of July 8, 1853, saw a squadron of
black-hulled war-ships--the _Mississippi_, _Susquehanna_, _Plymouth_,
and _Saratoga_--sailing into the Straits of Uraga and into Japanese
history. And on the bridge of the flag-ship, his telescope glued to
his eye, was our old friend, Matthew Calbraith Perry. The Straits of
Uraga, I should explain, form the entrance to the Bay of Tokio, whose
sacred waters had, up to that time, never been desecrated by the
hulls of foreign war-ships. But Perry was never worried about lack
of precedent. At five in the afternoon his ships steamed in within
musket-shot of Uraga, and, at the shrill signal of the boatswains’
pipes, their anchors went rumbling down. A moment later a string of
signal-flags fluttered from the flag-ship in a message which read:
“Have no communication with the shore, have none from the shore.”
Perry, you see, had spent the three preceding years in preparing for
this expedition by learning all that he could of the Japanese character
and customs, and he had not spent them for naught. He had determined
that, when it came to being really snobbish and exclusive, he would
make the Japanese, who had theretofore held the record for that sort
of thing, look like amateurs. And he did. For when the captain of the
port, in his ceremonial dress of hempen cloth and lacquered hat, put
off in a twelve-oared barge to inquire the business of the strangers, a
marine sentry at the top of the flag-ship’s ladder brusquely motioned
him away as though he were of no more importance than a tramp. Then
came the vice-governor, flying the trefoil flag and with an escort
of armored spearmen, but he met with no more consideration than the
port-captain. The American ships were about as hospitable as so
many icebergs. Indeed, it was not until he had explained that the
governor was prohibited by law from boarding a foreign vessel that
the vice-governor was permitted to set foot on the sacred deck-planks
of the flag-ship. Even then he was not permitted to see the mighty
and illustrious excellency who was in command of the squadron; no,
indeed. As befitted his inferior rank, he was received by a very stiff,
very haughty, very condescending young lieutenant who interrupted
the flowery address of the dazed official by telling him that the
Americans considered themselves affronted by the filthy shore boats
which hovered about them, and that if they did not depart instantly
they would be fired on. After the vice-governor had gone to the rail
and motioned the inquisitive boats away, the lieutenant informed him
that the illustrious commander of the mighty squadron bore an autograph
letter from his Excellency the President of the United States to the
Mikado, and that he proposed to steam up to Tokio and deliver it in
person. When the vice-governor heard this he nearly fainted. For a
fleet of barbarian war-ships to anchor off the sacred city, the capital
of the empire, the residence of the son of heaven, was impossible,
unthinkable, sacrilegious. The very thought of it paralyzed him with
fear. When he carried the news of what the Americans proposed doing to
the governor, that official changed his mind about the illegality of
his setting foot on a foreign ship, and the following morning, with
a retinue which looked like the chorus of a comic opera, he went in
state to the flag-ship to expostulate. But the commodore refused to
see the governor, just as he had refused to see his subordinate, and
that crestfallen official, his feelings sadly ruffled, was forced to
content himself with a brief conversation with Commander Buchanan, who
told him that, unless arrangements were made at once for delivering the
President’s letter to a direct representative of the Mikado, Commodore
Perry was unalterably determined on steaming up to Tokio and delivering
the letter to the Emperor himself. From beginning to end of the
interview, the American officer, who, I expect, enjoyed the performance
hugely, resented the slightest lack of ceremony on the governor’s part
and did not hesitate to give evidence of his displeasure when that
bedeviled official omitted anything which the American thought he ought
to do. At length the now deeply impressed Japanese agreed to despatch a
messenger to Tokio for further instructions, and to this the Americans,
with feigned reluctance, agreed, adding, however, that if an answer was
not received within three days they would move up to the capital and
learn the reason why.
The appearance of American war-ships in the Bay of Tokio was a mighty
shock to the Japanese. What right had a foreign nation to impose on
them a commerce which they did not want; a friendship which they did
not seek? The alarm-bells clanged throughout the empire. Messengers
on reeking horses tore through every town spreading the astounding
news. Spears were sharpened, and ancient armor was dragged from dusty
chests. Night and day could be heard the clangor of the smiths forging
weapons of war. Away with the barbarians! To arms! _Jhoi! Jhoi!_
Buddhists wore away their rosaries invoking Kartikiya, the god of
war, and Shinto priests fasted while they called on the sea and the
storm to destroy the impious invaders of the Nipponese motherland. The
hidebound formality of untold centuries was swept away in this hour
of common danger, and for the first time in Japanese history high and
low alike were invited to offer suggestions as to what steps should
be taken for the protection of the nation and the preservation of the
national honor. It didn’t take the wiseheads long, however, to decide
that compliance was better than defiance; so, on the last of the three
days of grace granted by the Americans, the governor in his gorgeous
robes of office once more boarded the _Susquehanna_ and, with many
genuflections, informed the officer designated to meet him that the
letter from the President would be received a few days later, with
all the pomp and ceremony which the Imperial Government knew how to
command, in a pavilion which would be erected on the beach near Uraga
for the purpose, by two peers of the empire who had been designated by
the Mikado as his personal representatives.