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Don't Give Up The Ship!" commanded 31-year-old Captain James Lawrence, as he lay wounded on the deck of the U.S.S. Chesapeake.
Captain Lawrence fought Muslim Barbary pirates in 1804, and when the War of 1812 began, he commanded the U.S.S. Hornet which captured the privateer Dolphin and the H.M.S. Peacock.
President Madison wrote May 25, 1813:
"The brilliant achievements of our infant Navy, a signal triumph has been gained by Captain Lawrence...in the Hornet sloop of war...
The contest in which the United States are engaged appeals...to the sacred obligation of transmitting...to future generations
that...which is held...by the present from the goodness of Divine
Providence."
On JUNE 1, 1813, Captain Lawrence sailed from Boston and was attacked by the British ship Shannon.
Within an hour, nearly every officer was killed.
Later, Captain Oliver Hazard Perry was inspired to name his flagship on Lake Erie "Lawrence."
Theodore Roosevelt wrote in Hero Tales from American History, 1895:
"Lawrence, dying with the words on his lips, 'Don't give up the ship' and Perry...with the same words blazoned on his banner...won glory in desperate conflicts and left a reputation hardly dimmed."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
The three-masted frigate USS Constitution is the oldest commissioned ship in the world still afloat.
It fought the Muslim Barbary Pirates of North Africa in 1803, sailed against the British in the War of 1812, and caught slave traders off the coast of Africa in the 1850's.
The U.S.S. Constitution was saved from being broken into scrape by a poem titled "Old Ironsides," written by Oliver Wendell Holmes.
"Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below..."
A graduate of Harvard, he fought in the Civil War, edited the American Law Review and was a Harvard Law professor before becoming Chief Justice of Massachusetts' Supreme Court.
In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt appointed Holmes to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Known as "The Great Dissenter" for of his unconventional opinions, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., served over 30 years, to a more advanced age than any other Justice.
He replied to a reporter, on his 90th birthday, MARCH 8, 1931:
"Young man, the secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered I was not God."
American Minute
with
Bill Federer
His wife and mother died on Valentine's Day, 1884.
Depressed, he left to ranch in the Dakotas.
Returning to New York, he entered politics and rose to Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
He resigned during the Spanish-American War, organized the first Volunteer Cavalry -the "Rough Riders"- and captured Cuba's San Juan Hill.
Elected Vice-President under William McKinley, he became America's youngest President in 1901.
This was Theodore Roosevelt, born OCTOBER 27, 1858.
In 1909, Roosevelt warned:
"The thought of modern industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream worth dreaming.
The thought of industry in the hands of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining.
The choice between the two is upon us."
In his book Fear God and Take Your Part, 1916, Theodore Roosevelt wrote:
"The 7th century Christians of Asia and Africa...had trained themselves not to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to fight.
Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought the Mohammedans who invaded."
Teddy Roosevelt continued:
"The civilization of Europe, America and Australia exists today only because the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization...that is, to beat back the Moslem invader."
On this day in 1919, just three days before his death, Theodore Roosevelt wrote in a letter to the American Defense Society:
"We should insist that if the immigrant who comes here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or birthplace or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American.
If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all.
We have room for but one flag, the American flag. We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, and American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we have room for but one sole loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people."
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