Category: Biographies
WHEN in the year 1854, all Christendom was thrilled by the news of the opening of Japan to intercourse with the world, the name of Commodore Matthew Perry was on the lips of nations. In Europe it was acknowledged that the triumph had been achieved by no ordinary naval officer....
THE momentum of Perry’s long and active life left a force which, a generation after his death, is yet unspent. He rests from his labors, but his works do follow him. His thought...
29. CHAPTER XXIX.THE charts used in the Japan expedition came mostly from Holland, and cost our government thirty thousand dollars. Perry does not seem to have been aware that Captain Mercator C...
21. CHAPTER XXI.THE long agitation, in behalf of the establishment of a Naval Academy, by leading American naval officers, prominent among whom was Captain Perry, bore fruit in the year 1845. M...
34. CHAPTER XXXIV.FOR over two years, since leaving his native country, Perry had been under a constant burden of responsibility incurred in anxiety to achieve the grand object of his mission. Hi...
19. CHAPTER XIX.THE work to which Matthew Perry was assigned during the next three years grew out of the famous treaty made by Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton. Of this treaty we, in 1883 and...
32. CHAPTER XXXII.THE _Mississippi_ touching at Napa, found there the _Supply_, and met the _Vandalia_ on the way to Hong Kong, where the Commodore arrived on the 7th of August. The _Powhatan_ re...
30. CHAPTER XXX.AMONG the many names of their beautiful country, the Japanese loved none more than that of “Land of Great Peace,”—a breath of grateful repose after centuries of war. The genius...
23. CHAPTER XXIII.PERRY’S first order being that the navy should give the army the most efficient coöperation, by transferring part of its heavy battery from deck to land, the six guns of the siz...
35. CHAPTER XXXV.THE active life of Matthew Perry spanned the greater part of our national history “before the war.” He lived to see the United States grow from four to thirty-two millions of pe...
33. CHAPTER XXXIII.THE morning of March 8th, 1854, dawned clear and beautiful. The bay was alive with gorgeous state barges, swift punts, and junks with tasseled prows. On land, in the foreground...
31. CHAPTER XXXI.OPENING upon the beautiful bay (_yé_), like a door (_do_), the great city in the Kuantō, or Broad East of Japan, was well-named Bay-door, or Yedo. Founded as a military strongho...
20. CHAPTER XX.PERRY, in his report written Jan. 21, 1844, on the settlements established by the Colonization Society expresses the feelings that came over him as he gazed on Cape Mesurado (Mo...
28. CHAPTER XXVIII.THOUGH as a student and a man of culture, Perry was familiar with the drift of events in China, and was interested in Japan, yet it was not until the year 1850, that his thought...
5. CHAPTER V.IN these days of submarine cables, the European armies in South Africa or Cochin China receive orders from London or Paris on the day of their issue. To us, the tardiness of tra...
13. CHAPTER XIII.MATTHEW PERRY was now to be called to a new and untried duty. This was no less than to be pioneer of the steam navy of the United States. When a boy under Commodore Rodgers, he...
4. CHAPTER IV.COMMODORE JOHN RODGERS was a man of the time, a typical naval officer of the period. He was minutely careful about the food and habits of his men, and made the _President_ as ho...
24. CHAPTER XXIV.COMMODORE MATTHEW C. PERRY was one of the first American naval officers to overcome the prejudice of seamen against infantry drill, and to form a corps of sailor-soldiers. Under...
18. CHAPTER XVIII.THE activity of American inventors kept equal pace at this period in the two directions of artillery and steam appliances. In 1841 the sum of fifty thousand dollars was appropri...
25. CHAPTER XXV.AFTER his exploits at Tuspan, Tabasco and Yucatan, Perry, having captured every port and landing place along the whole eastern coast of Mexico, and established a strict blockade...
27. CHAPTER XXVII.WE propose here to summarize the various attempts by Americans to re-open Japan to intercourse with other nations. For two centuries, after Iyéyasŭ and his successors passed the...
12. CHAPTER XII.“The officers of the United States navy have one great advantage which is wanting to our own; when on shore they are not necessarily parted from the service, but are employed in...
22. CHAPTER XXII.THE precise methods and almost immutable laws of military science required that the American invasion of Mexico in 1847 should be at the exact spot on which Cortez landed two ce...
17. CHAPTER XVII.THE French Navy was at this time leading the British in improved ordnance. A French man-of-war of twenty-six guns was armed entirely with cannon able to fire “detonating shot.”...
10. CHAPTER X.THE stormy administration of Andrew Jackson, which began in 1829, and the vigorous foreign policy which he inaugurated, or which devolved upon him to follow up, promised activit...
15. CHAPTER XV.THE water-ways leading to New York are such as to make Manhattan Island unique in its advantages for commerce. Already the metropolis of the continent, it is yet to be the comme...
2. CHAPTER II.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 create...
3. CHAPTER III.THE schooner _Revenge_, commanded by his brother Oliver, to which Matthew Perry was ordered for his first cruise, had been purchased in 1807. She mounted twelve guns, had a crew...
14. CHAPTER XIV.AN accident which happened to the _Fulton_ belongs to the history of modern warfare. It revealed to Perry’s alert mind a valuable principle destined to work a revolution in the...
26. CHAPTER XXVI.FROM his home at the “Moorings” by the Hudson, Perry gave his attention to the curiosities and trophies brought home from Mexico. Ever jealous for the honor of the navy, he note...
9. CHAPTER IX.THE line-of-battle ship, which figured so largely in the navies of a half century or more ago, was a man-of-war carrying seventy-four or more guns. It was the class of ships in...
1. CHAPTER I.WHEN in the year 1854, all Christendom was thrilled by the news of the opening of Japan to intercourse with the world, the name of Commodore Matthew Perry was on the lips of nat...
6. CHAPTER VI.AN act of Congress passed March 3, 1819, favored the schemes of the American Colonization Society. A man-of-war was ordered to convoy the first company of black colonists to Afr...
16. CHAPTER XVI.ON his return from Europe, in 1839, Captain Perry purchased a plot of land near Tarrytown, New York. He built a stone cottage, to which he gave the appropriate name of “The Moor...
11. CHAPTER XIIN his next cruise which we are now to describe, Perry was to take a hand directly in diplomacy, and rehearse for the more brilliant drama of Japan twenty years later.
7. CHAPTER VII.ON the 5th of July 1821, Perry was doubly happy, in his first sole command of a man-of-war, and in her being bound upon a worthy mission. The _Shark_ was to convey Dr. Eli Ayres...
8. CHAPTER VIII.JAMES, the Spaniard’s patron saint, has been compelled to lend his name as “Iago” to innumerable towns, cities and villages. From Mexico to Patagonia in Spanish America, “Santia...