All honor to the navy of the United States! I never can read of its exploits--peaceful citizen as I am--without my blood bubbling with a joyous sense of exultation at the thought that the flag which has swept the seas, carrying liberty behind it, is the flag which is destined to sweep the seas again and carry liberty, civilization, and all the blessings of free government into benighted islands far, far from hence.
Why, gentlemen, the story of the exploits of our little fleets reads like a romance. At the end of the Revolutionary War eight hundred British ships, fifteen of them battleships, had surrendered to the prowess of the American navy, together with twelve thousand five hundred prisoners captured by less than three thousand men; and in that war our country had produced the boldest admirals that, up to that time, civilization had known, and the greatest fighting naval heroes that the world had seen.
Then came the War of 1812, to establish sailors' rights upon the high seas, when the American navy again proved victor despite overwhelming odds. I have in my possession a list of the British and American vessels at the outbreak of that war; and if I were to represent them by something tangible in order to indicate the proportions of each, I would say, taking this box lid for example (illustrating with the stem of a rose upon the cover of a discarded flower box), that if you were to draw a line across here, near the top, you would have sufficient space in the narrow strip above the dividing line to write the names of all the American ships, while the entire remaining space would not be more than sufficient for the English fleet, which was more than thirty times the size of its antagonist. The ships which under Nelson had fought at the Nile and had won imperishable glory at Trafalgar, coming into our waters, struck their flags time and again. The glorious old "Ironsides" (the _Constitution_) captured the _Guerriere_, the _Java_, the _Cyane_, and _Levant_. The _United States_ took the _Macedonian_; the _Wasp_ destroyed the _Frolic_, while on the lakes we point with pride to the victories of Perry and MacDonough. When battle after battle had been fought it was found that, of eighteen fixed engagements, seventeen were victories for the Stars and Stripes. And this over the greatest maritime war power of the world!