Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 2.djvu/171

 OLIVER HAZARD PERRY 325 OLIVER HAZARD PERRY (1785-1819) O' ^LivER Hazard Perry was bom in Rhode Island, August 23, 1785. The late Com- modore Mackenzie, of the navy, who possessed what we may term a fine biographical faculty, has traced in his interesting narrative of the Life of Perry, with fond minuteness, the early incidents of the boy's career. The chief characteristics, he tells us, " were an uncommon share of beauty, a sweetness and gentleness of disposition which corroborated the expression of his countenance, and a perfect disregard of danger, amounting to apparent unconsciousness." This biographer gives some curious anecdotes of his school days. Suffice it to say, that the family removing to Newport about this time. Perry found good op- portunities of education at that place, and availed himself of them in a manly spirit. He was especially instructed in mathematics, and their application to navigation and nautical astronomy. As proof of the boy's ingenuousness, and the interest he excited in intelligent observers, it is related that Count Rocham- beau, the son of the General of the Revolution, then residing at Newport, was particularly attracted to him, and that Bishop Seabury, on his visitation, marked him as a boy of religious feeling. These are traits which shape the man ; we shall find them reappearing in the maturity of Perry's life, in his worth, humanity, and refinement. The boy was but thirteen when his father, in 1 798, was called into the naval service of his country in the spirited effort made by President Adams to resist the aggressions of France upon the ocean. He took the command of a small frigate, built under his direction in Rhode Island, named the General Greene, and carried with him to sea his son Oliver as a midshipman, at the express solicitation of the youth. The General Greene was actively employed in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, giving all its officers abundant opportunity for practice in the infant ser- vice. The French war flurry after a while blew over, as the Directory, the main- spring of these aggressions, lost power ; peace was patched up, and Jefferson shortly after inaugurated an unwholesome pacific policy by a sweeping reduction of the navy, as if it were not small enough already. In this mutilating op- eration the elder Perry was dropped, the younger one fortunately retained. The navy, however, was soon revived by the demands of the nation to resist the iniquitous and insulting depredations upon life and property inflicted by the