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 appropriated by Congress for experiments in ordnance, and a possible one million dollars for the “shot-and-shell proof” iron-clad “Stevens Battery” then building at Hoboken, N. Y.

Perry was frequently called upon to pronounce upon the various methods of harnessing, improving, and economizing the new motor. We find him in April, 1842, testing three new appliances for cutting off steam, and, on May 17, 1842, praying that the Fulton may be kept in commission for the numerous experiments which he was ordered to make. The Secretary of the Navy gladly referred the numerous petitioners for governmental approval to Captain Perry. In November the question is upon a ventilator; again, it is on the comparative merits of Liverpool, Pennsylvania, or Cumberland coal; anon, a score or so of minor inventions claimed to be improvements. Perry sometimes tried the temper of inventors who lived in the clouds and fed on azure, yet he strove to give to all, however visionary, a fair chance, for he believed in progress. He foresaw the necessity of rifled ordnance and armor, and of steamers of the maximum power for swiftness and battery: perfection in these, he knew could be obtained only by prolonged study and slow steps of attainment.

The collaborator of Washington Irving in Salmagundi, James K. Paulding, was at this time Secretary of the Navy. The position offered to Irving and declined, was given, at Irving’s suggestion to his partner. He was known more as a literary expert than as a statesman or man for the naval portfolio, although as far back as 1814, he had been appointed by President Madison one of a Board of Naval Commissioners. He was not a warm friend to the new fashions which threatened to overthrow naval traditions, denude the sea of its romance, and the sailing ships of their glory. The ferment of ideas and the explosion of innovations around him were little to his taste. To his mind, the engineers who were beginning to invade the sacred precincts of the Department seemed little better than iconoclasts. In the Literary Life of J. K. Paulding are some amusing references to his horror of the new fire-breathing monsters; and the entries in his journal show how intensely bored he was by the new ideas, and the persistency with which the advanced naval officers held them. He wrote that he “never would consent to see our grand old ships supplanted by these new and ugly sea-monsters.” He cries out in his diary, “I am steamed to death.”

For this metaphorical parboiling of “the literary Dutchman in Van Buren’s cabinet,” Perry was largely responsible. Steam had come to stay, and with it the engineer, despite the Rip Van Winkles in and out of the service. Officers call Perry “the father of the steam navy.” An old engineer says, “He certainly was, if any man may be entitled to be so called.” Another writes “It was largely through his influence and representations, that the Mississippi and Missouri, then the most splendid vessels of their class, were built.”

A beginning of two steam war vessels had been practically determined on, soon after Perry’s return from Europe. He was summoned to Washington in May 1839 to preside at the Board of Navy Commissioners to consult concerning machinery for them. The sessions from 9 a. m. to 3.30 p. m. were held from May 23d to 28th.

The practical wisdom of Captain Perry’s decision in regard to the engines most suitable for our first steamers—the superb Missouri and the grand old Mississippi—is seen in the fact that when ready for service, the Mississippi had no superior on the sea for beauty, speed and durability. Probably out of no vessel in the navy of the United States, was so much genuinely good work obtained as out of the Mississippi, during her twenty years of constant service in all the waters. Had she not been burned off Port Hudson in the river whose name she bore, in 1862, she might have lived a ship’s generation longer. Her praises are generously sung in the writings of all who lived on board her. Captain Parker speaks of “The good old steamship Mississippi, a ship that did more hard work in her time than any steamer in the navy has done since and she was built as far back as 1841.” What the Constitution was among the old heavy sailing frigates, the Mississippi was to our steam Navy. On the outside of Commodore Foxhall Parker’s book on Naval Tactics Under Steam is fitly stamped in gold a representation of the Mississippi.^[11]

To speak precisely, she was begun in 1839, and launched in 1841, at Philadelphia. She was of 1692 tons burthen, and 225 feet long. She carried two ten-inch, and eight eight-inch guns, and a crew of 525 men. Her cost was $567,408. The cost of the iron-clad “Steven’s Battery,” as limited by Congress, was not to exceed that of the twin wooden steamers. Hence, its construction languished, while the Mississippi and Missouri were soon built. Perry, from the first, strenuously urged that the greatest care should be used, the best materials selected, and the most trustworthy contractors be chosen. “In the first ocean steamers to be put forth by the government, no cost should be spared to make them perfect in all respects.” As there was then no lack of harmony and union among the bureaus, there was no danger of constructing different parts of the ship on incompatible plans, with the consequent peril of failure of the whole. The various constructive departments wrought in unison. These two steam war vessels were built before naval architecture and the sea alike were robbed of their poetry. The Missouri beside her machinery, carried 19,000 square feet of canvass, and the Mississippi about as much, so that they looked beautiful to the eye as well as excelled in power.

On her trip of March 5, starting at eight pounds pressure and rising to sixteen, the Missouri made twelve and a half statute miles per hour. Her motion was quiet and graceful, the tremor slight, while at her bow, above the cutwater, rose a boa of water five feet high. A trial at sea with her heavy spars was made on the 24th of March. In pointing out her merits and the defects, Perry emphasized the necessity of having in the persons, in charge of the equipment of war steamers, a combined knowledge of engineering and seamanship. In the men who presided over the machinery, this was noticeably lacking. Most engine-builders and engineers in 1841 had never been at sea; hence a knowledge of all the details necessary for safety and efficiency was not common.

During the month of October, the twin vessels were made ready, and on the 9th of November, proceeded to Washington. On her return, the Mississippi made the time from the Potomac Navy Yard to the Wallabout in fifty-one hours.

Commander A. S. Mackenzie having applied December 16th for the second in command, the Naval Commissioners asked Perry in regard to the number and arrangements of the crew of the Missouri. He recommended that there should be on each of the large steamers a captain, and a commander; so that, after some experience, the latter could take command of the medium or smaller steamers to be hereafter built. From the first Perry urged that all our naval officers should learn engineering as well as seamanship, so as not to be at the mercy of their engineers. In the beginning, from the habits, education, and manners of engineers taken from land or the merchant service, one must not look for those official proprieties derivable only from a long course of education and discipline in the navy. Hence there would be a natural disposition to exercise more authority than belonged to them, and to be chary of communicating the little knowledge they possessed. A purely naval officer in such condition would be like a lieutenant at the mercy of the boatswain. The captain must not carry sail without reference to the engines, and so the steam power must not be exerted when mast, spars or sails would be strained. Harmony between quarter-deck and engine-room was absolutely necessary.

The British Government encouraged officers to take charge of private steamers so as to acquire experience, and no man unused to the nature of machinery could command a British war steamer. In our navy no one should be appointed to command in sea steamers unless he had a decided inclination to acquire the experience.

Even while the Missouri was building, Perry wrote a letter concerning her complement, and after speaking a good word for the coal heavers and firemen, and praying that their number might be increased, he again proposed a scheme for the supply of naval apprentices for steamers. He suggested also that a class of Third Assistant Engineer should be formed. This would create emulation and an esprit du corps highly favorable for high professional character and abilities among the engineers. The grade would be good as a probationary position, besides reducing to a minimum, jeopardy to the ship and crew.

In a word, Perry foresaw that, if the splendid new steam frigate Missouri were left to incompetent hands, she would fall a prey by fire or wreck, to carelessness and ignorance.

“He was proud of these two vessels, and no one had a better right to be proud of them than he. He imagined them and created them, while others did the details and claimed most of the credit of their superiority over men-of-war of that day of other nations;” for down to 1850, our policy was to build better vessels than were built in any part of the world. Thus our navy was small but very effective.

“Perry’s two vessels were without question not only successes, but far beyond the most sanguine hopes and expectations of friendly critics of the time. It is a remarkable fact that the Susquehanna (and some others of smaller size) built after the Mississippi and the Missouri had proved themselves successes, were not successes. With these latter, Commodore Perry had nothing to do, as to plans, designs or construction.”

No sketch of the early history of the steam navy of the United States could be justly made without honorable mention of Captain Robert F. Stockton. Nor was the paddle-wheel of the Mississippi to remain the emblem upon the engineer’s shoulder-strap. The propeller screw was soon to supersede the paddle-wheel as motor of the ship and emblem of the engineer’s profession. The screw is one of the many discoveries located, by uncritical readers, in China. The French claim its invention, and have erected at Boulogne a monument to Frederick Sauvage its reputed inventor. Ericsson demonstrated its value in 1836, by towing the Admiralty up the Thames at the rate of ten miles an hour; yet the British naval officers reported against its possibility of use on ships of war. Eight years afterward, the man-of-war, Rattler, was built as a propeller, and a successful one it was. Ericsson, after constructing the engines of the propeller steamer, Robert F. Stockton, was invited to Philadelphia, where he built the first screw steamer of the United States Navy, and of the world, planned as such. After the name of his native town, it was called by the Commodore, the Princeton.

At the end of ten years of shore service, devoted to the mastery of the science and art of war as illustrated in the applications of steam, chambered and rifled ordnance, hollow shot and explosive shells, iron armor and rams, the building and handling of new types of ships, Perry was beginning to see clearly, in outline at least, the typical American wooden man-of-war of the future. Such a ship, we may perhaps declare the Kearsarge to have been. In her build, motor and battery, she epitomized all the points of American naval architecture and ordnance, to which Perry’s faith and works led. Yet these very features were severely criticized by the English press, in the days before the British-built Alabama was sunk. These were, in construction, stoutness of frame, narrowness of beam, heaviness of scantling, all possible protection of machinery, lightness of draught, and a model calculated for a maximum of speed; in battery, the heaviest shell-guns mounted as pivots and firing the largest shells, accuracy of aim combined with rapidity of fire; in movement, the utmost skill with sail, steam and rudder, and celerity in obtaining the raking position. In such a ship and with such guns, were the right executive officer, and commander, when the first great naval duel fought with steam and shells took place on Sunday June 19, 1864, at sea, outside of Cherbourg. Historic and poetic justice to the memory of Matthew Perry was then done with glorious results, that will ever live in history. When the Alabama sank from the sight of the sun with her wandering stars and the bars of slavery after her into the ocean’s grave, the guns that sent her down were directed by James S. Thornton,^[12] the efficient executive officer of the Kearsarge, and by his own boast and testimony, the favorite pupil of Commodore Matthew C. Perry.

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 1884, on account of the transfer of so much of our financial talent across the Canadian border, heard nearly as much as our fathers before us in 1842. In addition to the rectification of the long-disputed boundary question, the eighth and ninth articles contained provisions for extirpating the African slave-trade. By the tenth article, the two governments agreed to the mutual extradition of suspected criminals. Out of the interpretation of this last, grew the famous “Underground Railway” of slavery days, besides the residence in Canada of men fleeing from conscription during the civil war, and of defaulting bank officers in later years. To the crimes making offenders liable to extradition, in the supplementary treaty made under President Cleveland’s administration, four others are added, including larceny to the amount of fifty dollars, and malicious destruction of property endangering life.

It is very probable that war was averted by the sound diplomacy of the Webster-Ashburton treaty. The two nations instead of crossing swords were enabled through creative statesmanship, to join hands for wholesome moral work, and especially to improve off the face of the ocean, “the sum of all villainies.” The discovery of America had given a vast impulse to this ancient and horrible traffic, and about forty millions of negroes had been seized for the markets of the western continent. About seventy thousand of these victims were brought to our country prior to the year 1808, and many thousands have been surreptitiously introduced since that epoch.

The United States was to send an eighty-gun squadron to Africa to suppress piracy and the slave-trade. The preparation for this real service to humanity and the world’s commerce was curiously interpreted in South America, as a menace to the states of that continent. In their first thrills of independence, these republics were naturally suspicious of their nearest strong neighbor.

The work of the American men-of-war in overhauling slavers, involved the question of the right of search. Notwithstanding that the war of 1812 had been fought to settle the question, it was not yet decided. It required secession and the so-called Southern Confederacy to arise, with the aid of Captain Wilkes and Mr. Seward, to force the British government to disown her ancient claim.

Orders to command the African squadron, and to protect the settlements of the blacks established by the American Colonization Society, were received February 20, 1843. The spring was consumed in preparations, and on the 5th of June, the Commodore hoisted his broad pennant on the Saratoga.^[13] In the flag-ship of a squadron, Matthew Perry sped to southern oceans, a helper in the progress of Africa. Arriving at Monrovia, in due time, his first duty was to mete out justice to the natives of Sinoe and Berribee for the murders of American seamen. He found awaiting him one of the head men of Berribee with authority to arrange a palaver of all the chiefs with the American commander. To understand the problem before the Commodore, let us glance at the situation.

The question of war or peace among the natives on or near the coast is a financial one of monopoly and privilege. The tribes occupying the coast or sea “beach” have the advantage of all the tribes behind them in the interior, inasmuch as they hold the monopoly of foreign trade and barter with passing ships. The coast men sell the coveted foreign goods, rum, tobacco, powder and notions to the next tribe inland at a handsome profit. These, in turn, sell to the next tribe within, and these to the next, and so the filtering process goes on. The prices, to the last purchaser and consumer, one or two hundred miles from the sea, after passing through all these middle-men, are enormous. The position then next the ships was a coveted one, and those in sight of blue water had to keep it by arms as champions. Only the most warlike tribes get and hold this place.

To gain this supreme advantage of trade at first hand, the Crack-Os, a tribe two days distant inland, had fought their way seaward and captured from the Bassa Cove and Berribee people, about ten miles of coast on which they had built five towns. Giving free rein to their predatory propensities, they seized all canoes passing their front, and plundered or murdered their crews. Growing bolder, they overwhelmed by their numbers even foreign vessels after enticing these to visit them, and their crews to land. The captain and crew of the American schooner, Mary Carver, were first tortured and then murdered. For three hours, Captain Carver suffered unspeakable horrors. He was bound and delivered to the tender mercies of the savage women and children who amused themselves by sticking thorns in his flesh. In another instance, Captain Burke, mate and cook, of the Edward Barley, were cruelly murdered. In consequence of these atrocities, traders avoided this villainous coast, and commerce came to a stand-still.

The mere destruction of any of the beach towns would be of no avail, if the black rascals were allowed to rebuild. With their rice and cassava or yam plantations a few miles back, to which they removed the women, children, and other valuables, they would laugh at the white man’s pains. The only lasting check on their villainy would be permanent exclusion from the beach.

There was enough of another side to the story to remove indiscriminate vengeance far from the Commodore’s purposes. Our government heard many complaints against the blacks, while their voice was unheard. The native towns and fishing boats were frequently fired into, their towns cannonaded and burnt, and the blacks cruelly maltreated, or sold to warlike tribes, in pure wantonness by white foreigners. As all white men were the same to the negroes, they were apt to take the first opportunity for vengeance that offered itself. In this way, innocent men suffered.

An imposing force, more than sufficient for mere punishment, was determined upon. The Commodore had to move with caution, and both justice and victory must be sure, as a failure to awe would make matters worse. His first care was to obtain hostages from the Berribees. In doing this he was able to prove their guilt. He sent Lieutenant Stellwagen in the brig Porpoise, disguised as a merchantman, to their coast. Only five or six men, and these in red shirts, showed themselves on deck. The Berribee boats at once rushed out in a shoal to capture the harmless looking vessel. As only a sample of the thieving humanity was needed, the Lieutenant, satisfied with a good joke, refrained from opening his guns on the canoes. After witnessing the seizure of those first climbing over the ship’s sides, and the sudden resurrection from the hatches of his armed crew, the other blacks scattered for the shore.

The squadron, consisting of the Saratoga, Macedonian, Decatur and Porpoise sailing from Mesurado on the 22d of November, cast anchor on the 29th at Sinoe. This settlement, nominally under the care of the Mississippi Colonization Society had been greatly neglected. The negroes from the United States were there, but were little looked after. “Colonization,” in their case meant simply good riddance.

Landing with seventy-five sailors and marines, the procession moved to the Methodist Church edifice in which the palaver was to be held. Before the President of Liberia, Mr. Roberts, and the Commodore, with their respective staffs on the one side, and twenty “kings” or head men on the other, the murder of Captain Burke’s mate and cook was discussed. It appeared that the white man was the first aggressor, and the Fishmen and not the Sinoe people were the culprits. After listening patiently to the black orators, the Commodore ordered the Fishmen’s town to be burned, keeping three of them as hostages to be sent to Monrovia. He advised the settlers to build a stockade and block-house, assess the expense in town meeting, and endeavor to enforce the methods of self-government and protection so well established in the United States. Only in this way could civilization hold its own against the savages of the bush.

The next point of landing was Settra Kroo, in King Freeman’s dominions. At this place, the force from the boats stepped on shore at 9 a. m. Before the palaver began, the Commodore heard a piece of news that caused him to hasten in person to the scene of the incident. Humanity was the first duty. The pace of the burly Commodore was quickened to a run as he heard of the imminent danger of an innocent victim. A wealthy man of one of the Settra villages had been accused of having caused the death of a neighbor by foul arts of necromancy. To prove innocence in such a case, the accused was compelled to drink largely of sassy-wood which made a red liquid. In this case the elect victim was a hard-featured fellow of about fifty years of age. His wealth had excited envy, and avarice was doubtless his only crime. His two wives with their satin-skinned babies, were in agony and tears for the fate of the husband and father.

The natives, seeing the Americans approach, and suspecting their design of rescue, seized their victim and paddled him in a canoe across the lake. Perry, being told of this circumstance, on coming to a group of men grasped the chief, ordering the officers to seize others and hold them as hostages for the ordeal man. The territory belonged to the Maryland Colonization Society, and the rites of savagery were not to be done in view of an American squadron. This novel order of habeas corpus was obeyed. After some delay and palaver, the negroes restored the victim, and, under the emetics and remedies of Dr. McGill, the man was delivered from the power of sassy and of believers in its virtue. The squadron had arrived just in time.

Returning from this lively episode with sharp appetites, the Commodore and party of officers were just about to sit down to dinner, when an alarm gun, fired from Mount Tulman, startled them. Almost immediately afterwards a messenger, running in hot haste, announced that the wild natives from the bush beyond were about to force their way to the settlement and attack the colonists. They had mistaken the salute to the Commodore, and thought that hostilities had already begun with King Freeman. They had come to support the native party and be in at the division of the spoils.

At once the Commodore accompanied by the Governor and his force marched through the blazing sun four miles to the scene of hostilities. On the Mount Tulman, named after a philanthropic Baltimorean, they found a picketed level space to which the civilized colonists, men, women and children, had fled for refuge. They were defended by fifteen or sixteen men then on the watch. The savage natives had been repulsed and some of them killed.

As there was nothing to do, the party enjoyed, for a few minutes, the superb scenery. The village beneath, and the white buildings of the Mount Vaughan Episcopal mission glittered in the sun, and the beach and ocean view was grand. The descent of the hill with their belated dinner in view, was an easy and grateful task.

At Cape Palmas, or “Maryland in Africa,” the naval force landed Dec. 9th, for a palaver with twenty-three “kings” and head men. The Commodore and Governor, at the usual table, were face to face with the sable orators, whose talking powers were prodigious. His Majesty, King Freeman, was a prepossessing negro, who, in features, recalled to the narrator Horatio Bridge,^[14] Henry Clay. The interpreter was Yellow Will, a voluble and amazing creature in scarlet and Mazarin-yellow lace.

The substance of the palaver was the request that King Freeman should, for the good of the American colonists, remove his capital. The meeting was adjourned to re-assemble in the royal kraal or city two days later. On December 11, twelve armed boats were sent ashore from three ships. The feat of landing in the surf was accomplished after several ridiculous tumbles and considerable wetting from the spray.

On shore there were about fifty natives in waiting, as an escort to the palaver house. These braves were armed with various weapons, muskets guiltless of polish, iron war spears, huge wooden fish-harpoons, and broad knives.

The royal capital was a palisaded village in the centre of which was the palaver house. Most of the male warriors were out of sight, evidently in ambush while the women and piccaninnies were in “the bush.” Some delay occurred in the silent town, while arrangements were perfected by his Majesty. By orders of the wary Commodore, marines were posted at the gates as sentinels, while the military forces of either side were marched to opposite ends of the town. The parties to the controversy being seated, Governor Roberts spoke concerning the murder of Captain Carver. The towns along the beach governed by King Crack-O were implicated. They shared in the plunder, the cargo of the ship being worth twelve thousand dollars. The evil results were great, inasmuch as all tribes on the coast wanted to “catch” foreign vessels.

His Majesty, King Crack-O, was a monstrous fellow of sinister expression. He wore a gorgeous robe and a short curved sword resembling the cleaver used by Chicago pork-packers. The blade of this weapon was six inches wide. He made a rather defiant reply to President Robert’s charges, denying all participation in the matter. Touching his ears and tongue symbolically to his sword, he signified his willingness to attend the great Palaver at Berribee.

At the Commodore’s suggestion, he was invited on board the flag-ship with the object of impressing him with the force at command of the whites.

During the embarkation, several funny scenes occurred. All the villagers, men, women and children, came to see the canoes set off, many of which were repeatedly upset, and the passengers tossed into the water and soused. There was little dignity, but no end of fun, in getting from shore to ship.

The next meeting was appointed at Little Berribee, because the great palaver for the division of the spoil of the Mary Carver, had been held at this place. It was hoped some exact information would be gained. The line of boats leaving the flag-ship December 13, moved to the shore, and the march was begun to the village. The palaver house was about fifty yards from the town gate inside the palisades, and King Ben Crack-O’s long iron spear, with a blade like a trowel, was, with other weapons, laid aside before the palaver began; but arrayed in his gorgeous robes, the strapping warrior, evidently spoiling for a fight, took his seat, having well “coached” his interpreter.

After the Governor spoke, the native interpreter began. He quickly impressed the American officers and the Liberian Governor as a voluminous but unskillful liar, and himself as one of the most guilty of the thieves. His tergiversations soon became impudent and manifest, and his lies seemed to fall with a thump. The Governor, had repeatedly warned him in vain. At last, the Commodore, losing patience, rose up and hastily stepping toward the villain sternly warned him to lie no more.

Instantly the interpreter, losing courage, bolted out of the house and started on a run for the woods. Perry quickly noticing that King Crack-O was meditating treachery, moved towards him. The black king’s courage was equal to his power of lying and treachery. He seized the burly form of the Commodore, and attempted to drag him off where stood, on its butt, his iron spear. It was already notched with twelve indentations—in token of the number of men killed with it.

His black majesty had caught a Tartar! The burly Commodore was not easy to handle. Perry hurled him away from the direction of the stacked arms, and before he had more than got out of the house, a sergeant of the marines shot the king, while the sergeant’s comrades bayonetted him.

In the struggle, the king had caught his foot in the skirts of his own robe and he was speedily left naked. Spite of the ball and two bayonet wounds he fought like a tiger, and the two or three men who attempted to hold his writhing form needed all their strength to make him a prisoner. His muscular power was prodigious, but their gigantic prize was finally secured, bound, and carried to the beach. The interpreter was shot dead while running, the ball entering his neck.

The palaver, thus broken up, suddenly changed into a melee in which the marines and blue-jackets began irregular firing on the natives, in spite of the Commodore’s orders to refrain. The two-hundred or more blacks scattered to the woods, along the beach and even into the sea, some escaping by canoes.

As the real culprits had mostly escaped, the Commodore ordered the town to be fired. Our sailors forced the palisades or crept between the gates. Meeting in the centre of the town, they gave three cheers and then applied the torch. In fifteen minutes the whole capital, built of wattles and mud was on fire, and in little over a half hour a level waste.

The blacks, from the edge of the woods, opened fire on the Americans. With incredibly bad aim, they shot at the blue-jackets with rusty muskets loaded with copper slugs made out of the bolts of the Mary Carver. From one pile of camwood, the fire of the rascals was so near, that Captain Mayo’s face was burned with their powder, so that he carried the marks to his grave. Little harm was done by the copper shower. Our men charged into the bush, and presently the ships opened fire on the woods, and the little war with the heathen ended for the day.

Among the trophies recovered in the town, was a United States flag, articles from the Mary Carver, and several war canoes. The king’s spear, made of a central shaft of wood with iron butt and top and the blade heart-shaped, was kept by the Commodore, and now adorns the collection of his son-in-law.

Embarkation was then made to the ships, where King Crack-O died next morning at eight o’clock.

On the 15th, as the boats moved off at 7 p. m., to a point twelve or fifteen miles below Berribee, they were fired on by the natives when near the shore. The boat’s crew and three marines dashed ashore, and charged the enemy. The landing was then made in good order, the line formed and the march begun to the town. The palisades were at once cut through, and the houses set on fire. While this was being done, the blacks in the woods were sounding war-horns, bells and gongs, which the buzzards, at least, understood, for they soon appeared flying in expectation of a feast.

A further march up the beach of a mile and a half brought the force to a line of palisades behind which were thirty or forty natives. The boat-keepers rowing along the line of march, were enabled to see that these were armed and ready to fire. Halting at forty yards distance, the marines and blue-jackets charged on a run, giving the blacks only time to fire a few shots and then break for cover. This they could easily do, as the woods reached nearly to the water’s edge. After searching for articles from the Mary Carver, this third town was burned, and then the men sat down to dinner. Another town three miles further up the beach was likewise visited and left in ashes. All day long the men were hard at work and in constant danger from the whistling copper, but the only bodily members in danger seemed to be their ears, for the blacks were utterly unable either to aim straight or to fire low. The men enjoyed the excitement hugely, and only two of them were wounded. The eight or ten cattle captured and the relics of the Mary Carver, were taken on board.

On the 16th at daylight, the ships raised anchor and proceeded to Great Berribee. White flags were hoisted in token of amity. The king came on board the flag-ship, and a “treaty” in which protection to American seamen was guaranteed was made. Gifts were exchanged, and the five Berribee prisoners released.

The effect of this powder and ball policy so necessary, and so judiciously administered, was soon apparent along a thousand miles of coast. By fleet runners carrying the news, it was known at Cape Palmas when the squadron arrived there on the 20th. The degree of retribution inflicted by no means exceeded what the original outrage demanded. According to the well-understood African law, the whole of the guilty tribe must suffer when the murderers have not been delivered up. The example, a peremptory necessity at the moment, was, for a long time, salutary; the American vessels not only experienced the good effect, but the event had a powerful influence in the native palavers.

A year or so later, the king and headmen of Berribee, visited Lieutenant Craven in the Porpoise. The people had begun to make farms, and cultivate the soil. They were very anxious to see Commodore Perry, “to talk one big palaver, pay plenty bullock, no more fight white man, and to get permission to build their town again on the beach.” The Lieutenant reported the effect on all tribes as highly salutary, even as far as fifteen or twenty miles in the interior. The Missionaries, the Reverend and Mrs. Payne whose lives had been threatened, and their schools broken up by the wild blacks, were now enjoying friendly intercourse with the natives and suffered no more annoyance. He also received the warm approval of the other missionaries on the coast, both Roman Catholic as well as Protestant, as well as of Governor Russworm, of the Maryland Colony. The Reverend James Kelly, of the Catholic Mission, in a letter, said of Perry, “His services were tendered in a way decidedly American—without ostentation—yet carrying effect in every quarter.”

This systematic punishment, after examination, and the certainty that the stripes were laid on the right back was a new thing to the blacks. The Berribee affair is remembered to this day. During the forty years now gone, anything like the Mary Carver affair has never been repeated. The coast was made safe, and commerce increased.

On the 25th, the Commodore arrived at Monrovia, and on the 28th, sailed for Porto Praya, and later for Funchal, where he found the inhabitants bitterly complaining that the American taste for other wines had greatly injured the trade in Madeira.

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 (Montserrado) after a lapse of nearly a quarter of a century. When, as first Lieutenant on the Cyane, he first looked upon the site of Monrovia, the beautiful promontory was covered with dense forests, of which the wild beasts were the only occupants. On this, his third visit, he found a thriving town full of happy people. Churches, school-houses, missionary establishments, a court-house, printing-presses and ware-houses, vessels at anchor in the harbor, made a scene to delight the eyes. Though there were farms and clearings, the people, he noticed, preferred trade to agriculture. While many were poor, many also were rich, and all were comfortable. He considered that upon the whole the experiment of colonization of the free blacks of the United States was a success. More settlements, a line of them on the coast, were however needed to enable the colonist to assist in suppressing the slave-trade, to encourage the civilized natives, and to increase commerce.

Monrovia, so named in honor of President James Monroe, at this time contained five hundred houses with five churches and several schools. The Sunday-schools were conducted like those in New England.

The flag of Liberia contained stripes and a cross, emblems of the United States and Christian philanthropy. The flag of the Liberian Confederation is now a single white star on a square blue field with stripes. Its twelve thousand square miles of territory contain twenty thousand colored people from the United States, five thousand “Congos” or recaptured slaves, and eight hundred thousand aborigines.

At that time, the various settlements under the care of the American Colonization Society were separate petty colonies or governments and not, as now, united into one republic of Liberia. Perry was, at first, puzzled to know his exact relations to the governors of Monrovia and Cape Palmas, who styled themselves “Agents of the United States.” While eager to assist them in every way, he yet knew it his duty to refrain from anything calculated to give them a wrong impression.

There was to be no deviation from the settled policy of the United States not to hold colonies abroad. The political connection between the United States and Liberia, the only colonial enterprise ever undertaken by our country, was but a silken thread. The aim of our government seemed to be to honor the rising negro republic, to protect American trade and missionaries, and to overawe the elements of violence among the savages, so as to give the nascent civilization on the coast a fair chance of life. In this spirit, Perry performed faithfully his delicate duties.

It was noted by the naval officers that the freedmen from America looked down upon the natives as savages, and were horrified at their heathenism and nudity. The unblushing display of epidermis all around them shocked their feelings. Each African lady was a literal Flora McFlimsey “with nothing to wear.” In building their houses, the settlers followed rather the model of domestic architecture below Mason and Dixon’s line than that above it. The excellent feature of having the kitchen separate from the dwelling was transported to “Maryland in Africa,” as in “the old Kentucky home.”

The colored missionaries were having encouraging success. The pastor at Millsburg, a town named after the Rev. Mr. Mills, one of the first missionaries from the United States, was a fine, manly looking person. One of the settlers was an Indian negro, formerly a steward on Commodore McDonough’s ship and present at the battle of Lake Champlain. He afterwards removed to Sierra Leone to afford his daughters, who were dressmakers, better opportunities.

Edina and Bassa Cove were settlements under the patronage of the Colonization Societies of New York and Pennsylvania. The Maryland colony was at Cape Palmas, that of Mississippi at Sinoe, while another settlement was named New Georgia. The freed slaves, remembering the labors in the cotton fields under the American overseer, could not easily rid themselves of their old associations with mother earth. Labor spent in tilling the soil seemed to be personal degradation. To earn their bread by the sweat of their brow and the toil of their back in the new land of freedom was, to them, so nearly the same as slavery that they utterly forsook it, and resorted to small trade with the men of the beach or deck. In the bush, imitating the Yankees, whom they had been taught to abhor, they peddled English slave-goods manufactured at Birmingham for ivory and oil. In dress they followed out the customs of their masters at home, copying or parodying the latest fashion plates from New York, Philadelphia or London. In church, many silk dresses would be both seen and heard among the women.

Serious drawbacks to successful colonization existed. Among the freed slaves the women were in the proportion to men three and a half to one. Even the adult males were like children, having been just released from slavery, with little power of foresight or self reliance. The jealousy felt by the black rulers toward the white missionaries was great, while heathenism was bold, defiant and, aggressive.

American black men could be easily acclimated, while the whites were sure to die if they persisted in a residence. The strain on the constitution of a white man during one year on the African station equalled that of five or six years on any other. Most of the British officers made it a rule of “kill or cure,” and, on first coming out on the station, slept on shore to decide quickly the question. It was almost certain death for a white person unacclimated to sleep a night exposed to the baleful influence of the land miasma. Perry as a lieutenant, when without instruction, did the best he could to save the men from exposure. He avoided the sickly localities and took great precautions. Hence there was no death on the Shark in two years, though, besides visiting Africa, all the sickly ports in the West Indies, the Spanish Main and Mexico were entered. Now a Commodore, while cruising off “the white man’s grave,” Perry made the health of his men his first consideration. When on the Fulton in New York, he had been called upon by the Department to express his views at length upon the best methods of preserving life and health on the Africa station. Possessing the pen of a ready writer, amid the press of his other duties, he wrote out an exhaustive and readable report of twelve pages in clear English and in his best style.

This epitome of naval life is full and minute in directions. The methods followed in the Shark, with improvements suggested by experience, were now vigorously enforced on all the ships of the squadron. The men were brought up on deck and well soused, carefully wiped, dried, warmed and, willy-nilly, swathed in woolens. Stoves were lighted amidships, and the anthracite glowed in the hold, throwing a dry, anti-mouldy heat which was most grateful amid the torrid rains and tropical steam baths. Fans, pumps, and bellows, plied in every corner, drove out the foul air that lurked like demons in dark places. All infection was quickly banished by the smudges, villainous in smell but wholesome in effect, that smoked out all vermin and miasma.

The sailors at first growled fiercely, though some from the outset laughed at what seemed to them blank and blanked nonsense, but their maledictions availed with the Commodore no more than a tinker’s. Gradually they began to like scrub and broom drill, and finally they enjoyed the game, becoming as hilarious as Dutch housemaids on cleaning day. Spite of the nightly rains, the ships in their interiors were never mouldy, but ever fresh, dry, and clean. Health on board was nearly perfect.

In his own way, the vigilant Commodore fought and drove off the scorbutic wolf with broadsides of onions and potatoes, and kept his men in superb physical condition and his staff unbroken, while British officers died by the score, and left their bones in the white man’s grave. After the dinner parties and entertainments on shore, the American officers left promptly at eight o’clock so as to avoid night exposure.

Long immunity from sickness at length began to breed carelessness in some of the ships, when away from the eye of the Commodore. In one instance the results were heart-rending. The wild blacks in 1843 made an attack upon Bissas, a Portuguese settlement on the coast south of the Gambia river, incurring the loss of much American property. The Commodore dispatched Lieutenant Freelon in the Preble to help the garrison and prevent a further attack from the hostile natives.

The Preble went up the river on which the settlement was situated, and anchored there for thirteen days. Out of her crew of one hundred and forty-four men, ninety were attacked by fever. The ship, from being first a floating hospital, became a coffin, from which nineteen bodies were consigned to the deep. The plague-stricken vessel with her depleted crew arrived at Porto Praya, and, to the grief of the Commodore, there was an added cause of regret.

The ship’s commander and the surgeon had quarreled as to the causes of the outbreak of the pestilence. The lieutenant stoutly maintained that the outbreak was owing to “the pestilential character of the African coast, and the Providence of God.” The surgeon, taking a less pseudo-pious, more prosaic but truer view, laid it to nearer and easily visible causes. The acrid correspondence between cabin and sick bay was laid before Perry. He read, with much pain, of the “insults,” “lies,” and other crimes of tongue or pen mutually shed out of the ink bottles of the respective literary belligerents. Kellogg, the surgeon, asked the Commodore for an investigation. As Perry did not think it wise at that time either to withdraw the officers from survey duty, or to endanger the convalescents by keeping the Preble near shore, he ordered the infected vessel out to sea.

One can easily imagine with whose opinions Perry sympathized, as he read the documents in the case. Perry never even suspected that religion and science needed any reconciliation, both being to him forms of the same duty of man. In narrating the actual occurrences at Bissas, the surgeon showed that most of Perry’s hygienic rules had been systematically broken. The Preble, for thirteen days, was anchored within a quarter of a mile of the shore, exposed to the exhalations of a bank of mud left bare by the ebb-tide and exposed to the rays of a vertical sun. At night, the men were allowed to sleep out on deck with the miasma-laden breezes from the swamps blowing over them. While painting the ship, the crew were exposed to the sun’s glare. They were sent day and night to assist the garrison of Bissas, and, in two cases, returned from sporting excursions fatigued and wet. The first case of fever began on the 5th, and the disease was fully developed in fourteen days. The sad results of the visit of the Preble up the miasmatic river were soon manifest in scores of dead. Perry’s grief at the loss of so many valuable lives was as keen as his vexation was great, because it was unnecessary and inexcusable.

In two other instances also the energy and promptness of the Commodore proved the saving of many lives. One of our ships put into Porto Praya, with African fever on board and short of water. The water of Porto Praya, being unfit for sick persons, Perry at once supplied her tanks from the flag-ship. Then quickly sailing to Porto Grande, he returned promptly with fresh relief for the stricken men. Another vessel being short of medicines, the Commodore proceeded with the flag-ship to the French settlement of Goree, immediately returning with quinine. His celerity at once checked the death list and multiplied convalescents.

Within the cruising ground prescribed for the African squadron, it was found that there was not a suitably enclosed burial place for the officers and sailors who might die. Men-of-war and merchant sailors had been thrown overboard or buried in different spots here, there, and everywhere, on beaches just above high water mark, on arid plains and on barren bluffs. So prevalent was the refusal, by Portuguese, of the rites of burial to Protestant sailors, that it was their custom to have a cross tattooed on their arms so that when dead they might get sepulture.

The reason for this sporadic burial of our men must be laid at the doors of bigotry. In some parts of Christendom, even among enlightened nations, where political churches are established, there lingers a heathenish relic of superstitious sectarianism under the garb of the Christian religion, in what is called “consecrated ground.” By this pretext of holiness, the sectaries logically carry into the grave the feuds and hatreds born of the very wickedness from which by their creeds and ritual they expect to be saved. This feeling is in southern Europe and the papal colonies, so intensified that it is next to impossible for a man denying the Roman faith to obtain burial in a cemetery governed by adherents of the Pope. Even the semi-civilized Portuguese refused to give interment to American officers in what they denominate “consecrated ground.”

This gave Perry an opportunity to establish a burial place for the American dead of every creed. In the words of the bluff sailor, after referring to the fact that “Catholics” do not like “Protestants” in their grounds, he says, “With us the same spirit of intolerance shall not prevail, and in our United States Cemetery the remains of Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant will be laid in peace together.”

Accordingly, the cemetery for the dead of the Preble was prepared at Porto Grande. A plot of land having been purchased, was given in fee by the authorities. It was duly graded, and a stone wall seven feet high erected to enclose it, and thus protect it from the wash of rains and the trespasses of vagrant animals. Timber for headboards was furnished from the ship, and the amount of two hundred dollars for expenses incurred was subscribed by the officers and men.

The governor of the island of Santa Iago was ordered by the general government to give a legal title to a cemetery for “persons not Catholics.” The burial ground plotted out by the Commodore adjoined the other village cemetery at the same place called “The Cocoanuts.” The three new walls enclosing it were respectively one hundred by one hundred by ninety-four feet. The width of the wall masonry was three “palms” or twenty-seven inches, and the foundation was to be three-fourths of a yard deep. In this true God’s acre, more truly consecrated by the christening of Christian charity than the bigot’s benison, Perry was glad to permit also the burial of some British sailors. In a letter of thanks from Commodore W. Jones, of her Britannic Majesty’s squadron, the latter writes of the cemetery at Porto Grande, “In which you kindly permitted the interment of such British seamen as would have had their remains excluded from the (Roman) Catholic cemeteries at those places.”

“It seems hard that Englishmen should thus be indebted to the charity of strangers for a little Portuguese earth to cover them. It is a consolation that, in countries where superstition so far cancels gratitude and Christian feeling, that the noblest grave of a seaman, and in my opinion far the most preferable, is always at hand.”

Relieved by Commodore Skinner, Perry arrived in the Macedonian, off Sandy Hook, April 28, 1845.

During his service on this station, Perry exhibited his usual energy and patriotism in being ever sensitive to the honor of the flag, the navy and his country. In the exercise of his duty, he was frequently drawn into situations which evoked sharp controversies with the magistrates and officials of different nationalities in regard to restrictions in their ports, certain ceremonies, salutes, and minutiæ of etiquette. With practiced pen, this American sailor, a loving reader of Addison, showed himself a master in diplomacy and the art of expression. Uniting to the bluff ingenuousness of a sailor, something of the polish of a courtier, he almost invariably gained the advantage, and came off the best man. His conduct in delicate matters evoked the praise of both the American and English governments.

The American commanders on the African coast were too much handicapped by their instructions to be equally successful with the British cruisers against the slavers. Claiming the right of visitation and search, the Englishmen boarded all suspicious vessels except the American, and broke up the slave depots. The American men-of-war, in the actual work of destroying the slave traffic, formed rather a sentimental squadron, “chasing shadows in a deadly climate.”

The insatiable demand of Cuba for slaves made man-stealing and selling profitable, even if the speculators in human flesh lost four cargoes out of every five. Most of the masters of barracoons were Spaniards, and some were college-bred men, with harems and splendid mansions. The price of a slave on the coast was $30, while in Cuba it was $300. Blanco White, who had a fleet of one hundred vessels, barracoons as large as Chicago stock-yards, and a trade of eight thousand human carcasses a year, lost in one year by capture, eight vessels. As he recovered insurance on all of them, his loss was slight. The business of slave export, like that of the Nassau blockade-runners during our civil war, had in it plenty of gain, some lively excitement, but little or no danger. Decoys were commonly used. While a gun-boat was giving chase to some old tub of a vessel, with fifty diseased or worn-out slaves on board, a clipper-ship with several hundred in her hold, with loaded cannon to sweep the decks in case of mutiny, and with manacles for the refractory, would dash out of her hiding-place among the mangroves and scud across the open sea to Cuba or Brazil.

During Perry’s stay on the African coast, the French had a squadron of eleven vessels, and the British a fleet of thirty, eleven of which were steamers. The other Powers were willing to save their cash, and allowed the British to spend their money and do the work. The French capturing not one prize, turned their attention to seizing territory. Their policy in Africa, as in Asia, was an attempt to make new nations by means of priests and soldiers. It began with brandy, progressed with bombardment, and wound up with military occupation. The beginning of their African possessions was the seizure of Gaboon, where in 1842, five American missionaries had begun labor. By limitation of his orders, Perry was unable to do anything in the case, though notifying the Department of the facts and the danger.

A French critic writing in 1884, of French “expansion,” “prestige,” and “civilization,” in their so-called possessions, mostly in the torrid zone, speaks of this system of “artificial hatching, which was to produce a swarming brood of little Frenchmen.” “We see,” says he, “the broken eggs, but find neither omelette nor chicks.”

At present, in 1887, the west coast of Africa, valuable as affording gateways into the interior, is owned as follows: by England, 1300 miles; by Portugal, 800 miles; by Liberia, 350 miles; by Germany, 750 miles; by natives, 900 miles. Missionary stations now occupy many of the old slave-marts. By faith and knowledge, prayer and quinine, the white man is making the dark continent light. Ethiopia is lifting up her gift-laden hands to God.