CHAPTER I.

THE CHILD CALBRAITH.

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. Consummate mastery of details combined with marked diplomatic talents stamped Matthew Calbraith Perry as a man whose previous history was worth knowing. That history we propose to outline.

The life of our subject is interesting for the following among many excellent reasons:—

1. While yet a lad, he was active as a naval officer in the war of 1812.

2. He chose the location of the first free black settlement in Liberia.

3. He was, to the end of his life, one of the leading educators of the United States Navy.

4. He was the father of our steam navy.

5. He first demonstrated the efficiency of the ram as a weapon of offense in naval warfare.

6. He founded the naval-apprenticeship system.

7. He was an active instrument in assisting to extirpate the foreign slave-trade on the west coast of Africa.

8. His methods helped to remove duelling, the grog ration and flogging out of the American navy.

9. He commanded, in 1847, the largest squadron which, up to that date, had ever assembled under the American flag, in the Gulf of Mexico. The naval battery manned by his pupils in gunnery decided the fate of Vera Cruz, and his fleet’s presence enabled Scott’s army to reach the Capital.

10. His final triumph was the opening of Japan to the world,—one of the three single events in American History,—the Declaration of Independence, and the Arbitration of the Alabama claims being the other two,—which have had the greatest influence upon the world at large.

Sturdy ancestry, parental and especially a mother’s training, good education, long experience, and persistent self-culture enabled Matthew Perry to earn that “brain-victory” over the Japanese of which none are more proud than themselves.

Let us look at his antecedents.[1] Three at least among the early immigrants to Massachusetts bore the name of Perry. Englishmen of England’s heroic age, they were of Puritan and Quaker stock. Their descendants have spread over various parts of the United States.

He, with whom our narrative concerns itself, Edmund or Edward Perry, the ancestor, in the sixth degree both of the “Japan,” and the “Lake Erie” Perry, was born in Devonshire in 1630. He was a Friend of decidedly militant turn of mind. He preached the doctrines of peace, with the spirit of war, to the Protector’s troops. Oliver, not wishing this, made it convenient to Edmund Perry to leave England.

By settling at Sandwich in 1653, then the headquarters of the Friends in America, he took early and vigorous part in “the Quaker invasion of Massachusetts.” On first day of first month, 1676, he wrote a Railing against the Court of Plymouth, for which he was heavily fined. He married Mary the daughter of Edmund Freeman, the vice-governor of the colony. His son Samuel, born in 1654, emigrated to Rhode Island, and bought the Perry farm, near South Kingston, which still remains in possession of the family. The later Perrys married in the Raymond and Hazard families.

Christopher Raymond Perry, the fifth descendant in the male line of Edward Perry, and the son of Freeman Perry, was born December 4th, 1761. His mother was Mercy Hazard, the daughter of Oliver Hazard and Elizabeth Raymond. He became the father of five American naval officers, of whom Oliver Hazard and Matthew Calbraith are best known. The war of the Revolution broke out when he was but in his 15th year. The militant traits of his ancestor were stronger in him than the pacific tenets of his sect. He enlisted in the Kingston Reds. The service not being exciting, he volunteered in Captain Reed’s Yankee privateer. His second cruise was made in the _Mifflin_, Captain G. W. Babcock.

Like the other ships of the colonies in the Revolution, the _Mifflin_ was a one-decked, uncoppered “bunch of pine boards,” in which patriotism and valor could ill compete with British frigates of seasoned oak. Captured by the cruisers of King George, the crew was sent to the prison ship _Jersey_. This hulk lay moored where the afternoon shadows of the great bridge-cables are now cast upon the East River. For three months, the boy endured the horrors of imprisonment in this floating coffin. It was with not much besides bones, however, that he escaped.

As soon as health permitted, he enlisted on board the U. S. man-of-war _Trumbull_, commanded by Captain James Nicholson, armed with thirty guns and manned by two-hundred men. On the 2d of June 1780, she fell in with the British letter-of-marque _Watt_, a ship heavier and larger and with more men and guns than the _Trumbull_. The conflict was the severest naval duel of the war. It was in the old days of unscientific cannonading; before carronades had revealed their power to smash at short range, or shell-guns to tear ships to pieces, or rifles to penetrate armor. With smooth-bores of twelve and six pound calibre, a battle might last hours or even days, before either ship was sunk, fired or surrendered. The prolonged mutilation of human flesh had little to do with the settlement of the question. The _Trumbull_ and the _Watt_ lay broadside with each other and but one hundred yards apart, exchanging continual volleys. The _Trumbull_ was crippled, but her antagonist withdrew, not attempting capture.

By the accidents of war and the overwhelming force of the enemy, our little navy was nearly annihilated by the year 1780. Slight as may seem the value of its services, its presence on the seas helped mightily to finally secure victory. The regular cruisers and the privateers captured British vessels laden with supplies and ammunition of war. Washington’s army owed much of its efficiency to this source, for no fewer than eight-hundred British prizes were brought to port. So keenly did Great Britain feel the privateers’ sting that about the year 1780, she struck a blow designed to annihilate them. Her agents were instructed not to exchange prisoners taken on privateers. This order influenced C. R. Perry’s career. He had enlisted for the third time, daring now to beard the lion in his den. Cruising in the Irish sea, he was captured and carried as a prisoner to Newry, County Down, Ireland.

Here, though there was no prospect of release till the war was over, he received very different treatment from that on the _Jersey_. Allowed to go out on parole, he met a lad named Baillie Wallace, and his cousin, Sarah Alexander. Of her we shall hear later.

After eighteen months imprisonment, Perry made his escape. As seaman on a British vessel, he reached St. Thomas in the West Indies. Thence sailing to Charleston, he found the war over and peace declared.

Remembering the pretty face which had lighted up his captivity, Perry, the next year, made a voyage as mate of a merchant vessel to Ireland. Providence favored his wishes, for on the return voyage Mr. Calbraith, an old friend of the Alexanders and Wallaces, embarked as a passenger to Philadelphia. With him, to Perry’s delight, went Miss Sarah Alexander on a visit to her uncle, a friend of Dr. Benjamin Rush. Matthew Calbraith, a little boy and the especial pet of Miss Alexander, came also.

An ocean voyage a century ago was not measured by days—a sail in a hotel between morning worship at Queenstown and a sermon in New York on the following Sunday night—but consumed weeks. The lovers had ample time. Perry had the suitor’s three elements of success,—propinquity, opportunity and importunity. Before they arrived in this country, they were betrothed.

On landing in Philadelphia, the first news received by Miss Alexander at the mouth of Dr. Benjamin Rush was of the death of both uncle and aunt. Her relatives had committed her to the care of Dr. Rush and at his house the young couple were married in October 1784.

The bride, though but sixteen years, was rich in beauty, character and spirit. The groom was twenty-three, “A warm-hearted high-spirited man, very handsome, with dashing manners, and very polite. He treated people with distinction but would be quick to resent an insult.” The young couple for their wedding journey traveled to South Kingston, R. I. There they enjoyed an enthusiastic reception.

The race-traits of the sturdy British yeomanry and of the Scotch-Irish people were now to blend in forming the parentage of Oliver and Matthew Perry, names known to all Americans.

Away from her childhood’s home in a strange land, the message from the 45th Psalm—the Song of Loves—now came home to the young wife with a force that soon conquered homesickness, and with a meaning that deepened with passing years.

“Hearken, O daughter, and consider and incline thine ear, forget also thine own people and thy father’s house.”

“Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth.”

Captain C. R. Perry entered the commercial marine and for thirteen years made voyages as mate, master or supercargo to Europe, South America and the East Indies. Even then, our flag floated in all seas. It had been raised in China, and seen at Nagasaki in Japan. In 1789 and ’90, the U. S. S. _Columbus_ and _Washington_ circumnavigated the globe, the first American war vessels to do so. The cities of Providence and Newport secured a large portion of the trade with Cathay.

The future hero of Lake Erie was ten years old, and two other children, a son and a daughter, played in the sea-captain’s home at Newport, when America’s greatest sailor-diplomat was born on the 10th day of April 1794. After her former young friend, at this time a promising young merchant in Philadelphia, the mother named her third son Matthew Calbraith Perry. The boy was destined to outlive his parents and all his brothers.

Matthew Perry was an eager, active, and robust child full of life and energy. His early youth was spent in Newport, at courtly Tower Hill, and on the farm at South Kingston. From the first, his mother and his kin called him “Calbraith.” This was his name in the family even to adult life. Few anecdotes of his boyhood are remembered, but one is characteristic.

When only three years old, the ruddy-faced child was in Kingston. Like a Japanese, he could not say _l_, as in “lash.” He walked about with a whip in his hand which he called his “rass.” There was a tan yard near by and the bark was ground by a superannuated horse. One of his older brothers called him an “old bark horse.” This displeased the child. He reddened with anger, and his temper exploded in one of those naughty words, which in a baby’s mouth often surprise parents. They wonder where the uncanny things have been picked up; but our baby-boy added, “If I knew more, I would say it.” For this outburst of energy, he suffered maternal arrest. Placed in irons, or apron strings, he was tied up until repentant.

That was Matthew Perry—never doing less than his best. Action was limited only by ability—“If I knew more, I would say it.” The Japanese proverb says “The heart of a child of three years remains until he is sixty.” The western poet writes it, “The child is father of the man.” If he had known more, even in Yedo bay in 1854, he would have done even better than his own best; which, like the boast of the Arctic hero, was that he “beat the record.”

[1] See Appendix.—Origin of the Perry Name and Family.