“I pray thee, fear not all things alike, nor count up every risk. For if in each matter that comes before us thou wilt look to all possible chances, never wilt thou achieve anything. Far better is it to have a stout heart always, and suffer one's share of evils, than to be ever fearing what may happen, and never incur a mischance …” - Herodotus, Book vii.
Excepting the natural course of life from birth to death, there is no such thing as unchangeable fate or fortune. Or, if it does exist, it is on too insignificant a scale to alter the truth that most so-called inevitable fate is merely man's alibi for man's error. In man himself, in his own mind, lie both success and failure. Until he can fathom and control his mind - perhaps the least known factor in all his environment - he will always be at the mercy of himself.
Prominent among our mental reactions is the tendency to look upon misfortune and failure as inevitable. In the quiet, routine moments of our lives we say, sensibly enough, "It is impossible to foretell the future exactly, the only thing certain in life being death"; and we qualify even our least affairs by such statements as "I shall see you tomorrow ... Providence willing." But if we recognize so clearly the uncertainty hovering over what we hope to be our good fortune, should we not be as sane in adversity, realizing that there is the same chance of alteration in misfortunes? If good can go astray, cannot bad go right? If we cannot be certain of success because of evil accidents waiting to dart at us, how can we be sure of a definitely forecast failure when those same accidents are likely to happen to the forces opposing us?
We cannot. Despite the human failing to be positive of misfortune and uncertain about success, it is contrary to reason that we should be more sure of the one than the other. It is only our tendency to follow the easiest path that causes us so to think, a fatal tendency that is nowhere more disastrous than in war, for nowhere else but in war does man find himself pitted so singly against man. With us, then, who have elected defense of the nation as our share of the economy that makes possible a civilized state, there can be no better study in preparation' for our service than man. Nor perhaps could we single out for such study a characteristic that will yield more profitable results than this fatal one of yielding to inevitable failure.
Of course, the story of civilization is full of man's defeat and victory-for these are the elements of which it is woven. But seldom does it trace the two side by side in such a dramatic, tragic manner as has happened at least once in our history. One man, uncle and foster father of the other, meets disaster where few have even dreamed aught but victory could result. The nation is stunned. Everywhere men are in gloom. Bitter imprecations are hurled by opposing political parties. One section of the country is even contemplating secession.
Then, as if fate for once had planned the stage, selecting for the poignancy of it two actors of close kin, into this atmosphere of despair there bursts the news of glorious victory-this time where only defeat had been anticipated. Could anything have been more electric in its effect upon a discouraged country; could anything more dramatic have been imagined than that the hero of this undreamed of victory should have been the nephew and foster son of the man who but almost the instant before plunged the nation into hopelessness? The men, of course, are the two Hulls, General Hull of the Army, Captain Hull of the Navy. Men of the same breed, of close blood relationship, of apparently the same general abilities, how does it come about that one should be the agent of his country's despair, the other of its salvation? The answer lies in our thesis stated in the beginning that man invariably has the tendency to consider failure more inevitable than success. How the first of these two actors in the endless drama of history succumbed to this tendency, how the second conquered it, are of such vital interest to us who will almost surely someday play one of these roles that we may well consider the two side by side.
After long years of submission to insult, we took it in our heads in 1812 to go to war with one of our abusers. If we had sat down deliberately to select a more inauspicious time, we could not have chosen more disastrously. Napoleon was on the swift downhill road to Moscow and Waterloo. England, after two decades of travail, was on the eve of removing forever the great shadow that loomed over her destiny. And we, unsuspecting in our blindness and unpreparedness, were stepping forward to receive the full strength of her military forces. Although we had suffered constant material loss and indignity throughout the Napoleonic period, we had rather decreased than increased in our preparations for war. Guided by Jefferson, we had let the Navy of the Tripolitan Wars grow old without providing replacements, much less additional strength. The Army, though we had added the vast empire of Louisiana, at the beginning of 1812 amounted to the majestic total of 6,000 men.
Of course, to do us justice, we expected to do nothing at sea. Our only error there - though inexcusable in a people who hope to remain free-was in supposing purely defensive gunboats would be more effective in protecting our coast than ships that could sail out on the greater seas. Not on water but in Canada was where we were positive of injuring Britain. Canada was far removed from the aid of Britain who, presumably busy with Napoleon, had no aid for her anyhow. Canada had not a tenth of our man power and was even weaker in self-supply of munitions and provisions. All we had to do, so it was widely said and believed, was to march across the border and this remaining half of North America would be lost to England.
Governor Hull of the Northwest Territory, who in the months before the actual outbreak of war was called into conference to take command of invasion via Detroit, strategic center of the northwest, was at first reluctant to have anything to do with it. Although he had gained some recognition as an officer in the Revolution, and considerable distinction in civil life since, he was getting old and not inclined to military ways. Moreover, recognizing difficulties that were scouted by amateur strategists in Washington easy chairs, he not only considered naval control of the lakes essential, but also wanted more men than the government proposed.
It is here we begin to see the weaknesses that led to the downfall of this man. Although he knew he was not qualified to take command, he finally accepted; although he understood clearly, being of considerable intelligence, the need of a Navy and secure communications, he allowed himself to be so engulfed in the Washington tide of rash enthusiasm that soon he, too, felt these things to be unimportant, that all he had to do was to march and western Canada and fame would fall at his feet.
We might call it the beginning of a web of fatal events spun by himself until he became at last snared in his own errors. We should be mistaken, however, should we hold that the web had its true beginning here. Hull had spun its first threads long before. Lack of constancy in sticking to his own convictions, lack of resolution to hold fast in face of any persuasion to what he firmly believed to be true-this fatal tendency common to all of us had not in him been set under some sort of control by cultivation of will. Influences ruled him: in prosperity, the sinister one of over-enthusiasm; in adversity, the gnawing, overwhelming one of despair. Despite his strongest judgment, the atmosphere in which he moved determined his actions. There in Washington heedless enthusiasm made success seem inevitable. The current of his thought would set in no other direction.
Thus swept onward by the resistless current of success, before the declaration of war Hull took command of his force and set out for Detroit. Great obstacles faced him in marching with men and equipment through the forest, but he took them in his stride. Urged on by the flush of enthusiasm, his progress was rather creditable. Victory was just ahead!
In time the Army arrived close to Detroit, now only seventy-odd miles away. Progress would be considerably accelerated if certain supplies could be sent the rest of the way by ship. To be sure, the vessel would have to pass under the guns of the British at Fort Malden. Certainly war was already declared, or would be shortly, and the enemy was not less likely to act than the Americans. But the influence of the success-tide was still too strong for Hull's judgment. Everything would be right because it ought to be right. The ship was loaded, and, as if so planned, promptly sailed into the hands of the British, war having been declared on June 18.
That misfortune was undoubtedly the beginning of the ebb. Washington was a long distance away. Separated from its false enthusiasm, the General must have begun to think that maybe the amateur strategists there were wrong after all; maybe, as he had first thought, Indians, British riflemen, untold dangers in overwhelming force were or soon would be lurking in these woods; maybe success was not inevitable ... Can't we see the current turn? And it runs swiftly when it does change. A man driven by emotion instead of resolute conviction cannot long sustain misfortune.
Nevertheless, the residue of Hull's momentum carried him forward, toward Malden. This British fort, some twenty miles below Detroit on the Canadian side, was the British base and key to Upper Canada. At the time it was defended by less than 200 regulars, 400 or 500 militia, and varying numbers of Indians. Neither of the last two groups was to be much depended upon. The militia were not anxious for war, slowly faded away-many of them deserting to Hull's camp so that at one time he had more than 300 of them. The Indians were of even less value. Themselves a mere handful, they were of a mind with the militia, only awaiting an American victory to swing off the fence to the winning side. There were cannon at Malden but it was not strongly fortified, nor could it under the most favorable circumstances be expected to hold out long in face of determined attack by a force twice as large.
On July 12, Hull arrived in Canada back of Malden with 1,600-1,800 of his 2,000 men. He now faced a situation that demanded one thing and that alone-energetic action. Reasonably one should expect him to attack at once. Delay could mean only aid to the enemy, the strengthening of Malden, arrival of re-enforcements, and the reversal of the favorable attitude of Indians and militia.
And Hull delays. The current of his emotions engulfs him. Whereas before, far from the battlefield, persuasion had drummed caution out of his brain; now fear-phantoms began to disperse reason. Although he knew Malden's weakness, fear now shaped it into a Gibraltar. Although he knew the fort to be crude and indefensible; although his men were eager to attack; although every sign pointed to victory; he still delayed. The human tendency to shrink from shadows overwhelmed him.
Of course, even the surest signs of victory may be false; of course, in even the most confident scheme we can find flaws - and the more we look for them, the more we find. The possibility of our own force making mistakes is magnified beyond control; whereas the enemy becomes godlike in accuracy. He will take advantage of our every mistake, making none himself; he will go forward where we hesitate; infallibly good fortune will attend his every move, just as bad infallibly attends ours. There is no use to scoff at the absurdity of this; it is human, it is what happened to Hull there before Malden where he could not have helped but to win, it is what tends to happen to all of us under the strain of responsibility.
It is hardly necessary to go further into that wait on the Canadian side. Even if we were not familiar with it, we could judge what would follow. Once the success tide had turned in his mind, Hull never again seriously considered attack. He has promised his men to do so when his siege artillery was ready-as if, had he gone forward, there could ever have been a siege--but as the passing weeks brought necessity of fulfillment, he found other excuses. On August 4, report came of the surrender of the small American outpost at Mackinac; wouldn't the British force there now come to Malden? Of course they would, all the more reason to attack immediately while he could still conquer the enemy in detail, still keep Indians and militia on his side. He had originally crossed into Canada for this latter purpose and the results had been gratifying, considering his inaction, until "The fall of Michilimackinac also changed the disposition of the inhabitants of Canada – and ... no more militia came over to us." At the same time, "The Wyandot Indians settled at Brownstown, who had previously shewn the most friendly dispositions, and given the strongest assurance of their neutrality, joined the British." Why not! Why should either group stay with him and suffer for his weakness? Both would have joined him, or at least remained neutral, had he won a victory. Both had long since ceased to believe that probable, had become disgusted at his dallying.
Hull's mind thus became his own conqueror. By holding him back it brought to pass the very things he dreaded. More than that, it piled possibility on possibility until not a shred of reason was left him. We best see his mind, fearful, distraught, not a mind at all, in his own statement:
“But I thought myself bound to delay, till I had possessed myself of every possible means of ensuring success from a consideration of what would be the consequences of defeat .... [which] would have been the signal for all the hordes of savages in the surrounding wilderness to fall upon the unsuccessful troops. Every path would have been filled with these remorseless warriors …”
"Bound to delay!" when the only rule of war or life is, Go forward! "Every possible means of ensuring success …" wisdom to be sure, but when his means were already more than twice those of the enemy, when the prevention of the very terrors he dreaded demanded immediate action, how else could delay be but the most disastrous course he could have chosen?
When we believe failure inevitable, it becomes so. Now indeed Hull's fears come true. A body of his troops is defeated. Small British re-enforcements arrive. Brock himself, British commander in chief, an energetic, farseeing man, has embarked with some 300 troops and is headed west on Lake Erie for Malden.
Yet, despite all that has happened, Hull has still a chance to act and save himself. Although the tide has turned in favor of the British, the Indians and Canadian militia are still not too anxious to fight, Brock has not yet arrived, the American force that can be sent against Malden is still nearly two to one. His army is so eager for action, the "urgency of my officers" so strong, that August 8 is set as the day of attack. All is ready on the seventh. "But on that evening I crossed with the whole army to Detroit,'' except for a small force soon to follow.
Can such a thing be possible! Can a man deliberately blind himself to every right road and take only the fatal one of failure! It seems almost unbelievable, until we realize that Hull's mind had conquered him with its whirling muddle of fears and imaginings. He could not know, because he had not made it the rule of his life to learn, that it is the disastrous tendency of the mind in an emergency to disperse into a thousand frantic streams, seeing all sorts of eventualities, losing all idea of proportion so that virtually impossible accidents become magnified into imminent dangers, being held in a resolute, conquering course only by the strongest will; that the phantoms filling a brain faced with responsibility are most often only shadows out of all relation to the tiny obstacles that cast them -shadows that show their true selves when faced and dispersed by resolute activity.
If Hull could only have gone forward, attacked, done anything, he might have been saved. But he sits there in Detroit agitated, unnerved, tobacco spittle staining his beard and clothes, splotching his face. When he does act it is only to disperse his force on the eve of battle by sending 350 men to open communications. The growing horror of Indians blanks the last vestige of reason out of his mind: the forest swarms with savages; every bird and animal call is their gathering cry; if he resists and hurts them, massacre will follow.
Actually, as Brock with resolution and swiftness - the two being inseparably allied - moved to attack immediately after arriving, he had 600 valiant Indians with him, and he thought so little of them that they were not in his column of assault but scattered in the woods protecting his flank. Of course, Hull might not know that, but how could he know what he did believe? Verily "the timidity of man acts as a multiplier of lies and untruths." The inevitability of failure in his own mind conquers him. Surely, though looking for the worst, we must select only the most likely worst, at the same time allowing also for the best. Above all, we must put our decision to test in resolute action. It is what all who have ever succeeded have had to do, for all men are similar, all must search amid fears and doubts for the true road to follow-and most who have found glory have learned that this road is any road that leads bravely forward.
Despite the dispersion of his troops and mind, Hull is still stronger materially than Brock. He has nearly 1,100 of his own soldiers plus several hundred Michigan militia to Brock's 730 whites and 600 undependable Indians. He still has his field artillery advantageously located and much more numerous than that of Brock, without counting the strong cannon in the fort itself. He still has the body of troops on convoy duty so that with vigilance the British might be attacked from front and rear at the same time. Or, if he wants to wait a little longer-being addicted to such things-he still has all the accidents that can happen with the passing of time in life or war, accidents that can only help a man who is already beaten. For failure is not inevitable. Life and war are games in which not even the next moment can be accurately forecast. Being played by man, they are full of mistakes and error. There are constant "breaks of the game ..." whether of our own plans or the enemy's. He wins who is alert enough to take advantage of those of his opponent or to ride on by sheer will and activity over his own.
But Hull, to come back for an envoi, was more inextricably than ever enmeshed in his fears. When the British column was within a mile, without firing a gun he retreated from his outer position into the fort, and there, overwhelmed by his mind, surrendered. The body of men on convoy duty was also included in the terms so that according to Brock the total number captured, sick and well, was "not less than 2,500."
This was on August 16. Rumors travel swiftly. Not long afterward fearful whispers were going down the streets of the eastern cities. Not long and they were verified. Everyone was aghast. Air castles had crumbled. Sentiment for secession grew stronger in New England. Psycho logically the nation was divided and ruined because one man had given in to the human failing to consider failure inevitable.
But Hull himself, haggard, tobacco spattered, shaking not from fright but the inability to decide, is not one on whom we should turn our epithets. He is to be pitied; he is merely like too many of us. He had not learned by discipline and training to shape his will in time of ease so that it could ride through phantoms in time of danger. His failure was a human tragedy, a tragedy that is said forever in his own well-nigh incredible words, poignant in their record of eternal human infirmity:
“I shall now state what force he brought or might bring against me. I say, Gentlemen, might bring-because it was that consideration which induced the surrender, and not the force which was actually landed on the American shore on the morning of the 16th …”
It is a glorious, golden day early in July of the year 1812. With the hopes of the nation focused on him, General Hull is at this moment crossing into Canada. Very few people, however, see or think of the tall-masted, beautiful ship outward bound through the Virginia capes. It is another Hull, unacclaimed and little known, Captain Isaac Hull, breasting out into the indigo blue of the Gulf Stream toward unknown hazards, perhaps an unknown end, in the stout frigate Constitution.
An entirely different background had been set for the nephew than for the uncle. No one expected anything of him. Not only was the government still enchained in Jefferson's disastrous gunboat policy, but it had serious thoughts of keeping what seagoing ships it had in port. Should the frigates be sent out, however, and unavoidably fall in With any of the hundreds of British men-o-war, most men did not believe they could win, only hoped they would not disgrace their nation before surrendering. The complements of the ships themselves, confronted by England's long and great traditions, lacked assurance even when they considered ships of approximately equal rating.
In this twentieth century, perhaps following British historians, perhaps being modest, we have tended to exaggerate the seeming superiority of the American frigate of those days. Whatever this superiority may have been, certainly few suspected it in 1812; and even from our hindsight perspective we can question the accuracy of many historians in giving it the prominence they do. There is not space to take up all the arguments here. It is sufficient to state that the British, from much association, knew our frigates perfectly, had built many since ours had been launched, and firmly believed in their somewhat lighter, better-sailing, lighter-gunned but more rapid-shooting vessels, feeling that the heavier broadside of our insignificant number of frigates was more than made up for by the increased rapidity of fire of their own lighter guns. Reports of some of the engagements seem to bear out the British in this assumption. But if this is so, why did we win so consistently?
We believe the answer lies somewhat in British overconfidence and underestimate of the power of our frigates, but mainly in our superior training and leadership. Such being the elements of most success and by no means dependent upon material strength, we can hardly consider them a part of American frigate superiority. And if we could, certainly no one, least of all Isaac Hull's crew as they crowded sail past the Virginia capes, had any idea they existed-the British and most Americans, in fact, feeling that the superiority lay the other way.
It was surely no tea party to which Hull was driving his ship. He knew it. He knew he was facing heavy odds, taking tremendous chances, very possibly questing out into the Great Unknown. Why, then, did he dare? With every evidence pointing to inevitable failure; with the natural tendency of the human mind to fear adding obstacles to the already overwhelming ones; with every thought pointing to defeat; how did he overcome himself and dare to victory?
By will and habit.
Just as we have said we should be mistaken to infer that General Hull's fatal chain of errors began in 1812, so we should be incorrect to think Isaac Hull first learned to control the dispersive anxiety of the human mind in this summer of 1812. All his life, both within himself and in his environment, he had been under training. From childhood he had gone to sea; at 19 he had a command and thus responsibility, a vital factor in the early formation of character; at 25, when he entered the Navy, he had sailed on six voyages to Europe and ten to the West Indies.
We can fully believe in Pitkin's statement that
“There is no substitute for hard mental work, especially during the first twenty years of life … You must face real problems and solve them.”
And nowhere else is there an environment with real problems that go down into the soul of a man, particularly in the plastic years of youth, to shape him toward greatness, like the sea. Its great obstacles demand great efforts; its dangers, constant watchfulness and resourcefulness. When a man voyages out on the landless deeps, he must learn to risk death, to struggle for his safety daily, to face alone on the vast waters such illimitable powers that his own material ones are dwarfed into the insignificance they deserve and at last he comprehends the bounds his soul alone may reach. He learns to depend upon himself, to know odds for what they are really worth, to cleave unhesitantly through the fear-phantoms crowding the human mind. Man may and does acquire this strength anywhere, with will, but especially if met early in life does it come to his soul from the sea.
Yet many who go down to the sea are not developed far enough along the road to great character. Why are some? Was Hull? Responsibility, of course, which Hull was privileged to assume in his teens, is of high value. Yet dwarfing this, as all other factors, is the one force in man that makes him 'great or small-will. It is will that shapes us (that shaped Hull) day by day, and thereby more inevitably leads to success or failure than the supreme manifestation of it in conflict. Day by day with the will we build habit, habit, as Clausewitz says in his unerring way, that "gives strength to the body in great exertions, to the mind in great danger, to the judgment against first impressions."
The will builds such habits to strengthen itself, but all its building and striving can have but one end, action. This is evidenced in Hull, as in all great commanders, by burning, restless activity. However much will and habit may have helped his mind to conquer the weaknesses common to us all, they would have failed completely without this activity. For when a man comes face to face with danger he must act; and he must act not with thoughts of the strength of that danger but of how to overcome such strength. All the difference in the world lies between these two states of mind that look so deludingly the same. The one is disruptive, dispersive, can end only in disaster; the other is action and therefore salvation.
It is as a man driven on by such activity, a man trained by the sea, habit, and his will, that we see Hull questing out into the blue unknown of the Atlantic. Since a man of action is necessarily developed in time of peace, we expect to find him well prepared; and he was. Not only did he have a smart, snappy crew, but with ceaseless energy he had trained them to high efficiency in gunnery. Not only had he perfected himself in seamanship but he had likewise perfected his ship. He had not accepted the accumulated evidence of recent years that the Constitution was a sluggish sailor. Some commentators pro fess surprise at the speed the staunch old frigate showed a few days after the one to which we have arrived. But Isaac Hull was not surprised. In the past two years he had made it his business to learn much about his ship. With her lines she should sail better than she did. Having restlessly tried other devices, he decided to alter the trim. This had been done in the hastened overhaul prior to the outbreak of war. He would see whether it was inevitable that his ship be conquered for lack of speed.
Now on this blue July day at the edge of the Atlantic there was no slackening of that activity that had built so ably for Hull during the years of preparation. A large percentage of the Constitution's crew were newly shipped, hence there was constant drill at battle stations. Everyone was getting ready as best he could to meet the enemy. Slowly in the crew of that ship there must have begun to grow a thrilling, invincible spirit. Their commander was not going out to avoid the enemy but to seek him!
What inspiration that was! Did he believe so firmly, then it must be so!
In no other way can men be prepared for victory. There was no chance on this ship for that dissipation of mental strength that was destroying Hull's uncle. Yet which of the men had greater cause to fear for his venture? All was hopeful for the uncle, all dark for the nephew; only activity, certainly, was needed in the first instance, how could even the greatest activity prevail against overwhelming odds at sea? Hull's crew knew what these odds were. Had he shown the least hesitation they would have completely succumbed to the feeling of failure. But here he was looking for the enemy, knowing all the odds yet deliberately and willfully seeking battle. We can only appreciate what this meant when we remember that Hull was the first in the war to face the British at sea. That he was thus first is, in a way, of more significance than his actual daring in battle. It is not easy to lead when many believe in the success of a venture; it is almost impossible, when none but yourself believes. It is then that every shred of will, every strength of habit, every jot of activity possible must be called upon to keep the upper hand of terrifying, dispersive doubts.
That Hull was able to conquer these tremendous obstacles and dare out alone on the unknown way was directly due to the sustaining power of the character he had developed within himself during the past years. He was trained by action to action. Though a thousand fearful possibilities assailed him, though overwhelming British force sailed the seas, he could not be turned from his goal of victory. He knew his ship was as ready as he could make her; he knew that even if there were odds, such things were not always what they seemed; he knew that though activity sometimes fails, inactivity always does, and never with that eternal glory that even in defeat clings around the memory of him who dares to be strong of soul; he knew-because he had learned it to be so from seeking-that nothing could stop a man who knew where he was going, and went. Whether or not he realized that by thus setting a single, inflexible goal he was doing the one thing possible to concentrate and hold all his mental strength in an irresistible current, is not important; all that matters is that he so acted, for thereby came victory.
Hull has already prepared. A chance to act is at hand. In the distant northwest four vessels are sighted; and soon from over the horizon to the northeast another white blur lifts, is it a cloud or a sail and perhaps an enemy one? Hull heads for the stranger, hoping to draw her away from the others who may likewise be hostile. It is the Guerrièrre though those aboard the Constitution do not know it. We'll see now whether the British are right in their contemptuous estimate of American vessels as "bundles of pine board and striped bunting," how a Dacres' hat will fit a Hull.
But in the night fate takes a hand, the wind lessens, all the ships, "as though under a strange spell," drift "near each other with flapping sails ... " By dawn Hull is the closest to disaster he will ever come; he has drifted into the midst of the British blockading squadron. Is this, then, to be the end of high venture? It bitterly appears so; here, if anywhere, man has arrived to certain failure.
How is failure certain? Hull will not believe that it is; instead of considering its inevitability he is acting, his boats are out with sweeps to tow. As he draws ahead, however, the British follow his example, and being able to concentrate men and boats slowly close ... Capture is surely inevitable, why not quit now?
Quit! Hull does not know the word. He is thinking not of the certain capture facing him, but how to prevent it; he is therefore thinking in the way of victory. Tensed to the highest pitch, driven on by irresistible purpose, he takes advantage of every opportunity. Nothing is left untried, no inch of gain lost because of hesitation. Kedging is attempted, and works! The Constitution draws out of gunshot. The British, however, following the same plan are able to make better speed, again because of concentration of boats. A puff of wind gives Hull a momentary advantage, but dies out. By considerable effort stern chasers are set up and prevent the enemy boats from hauling their ships into gunshot astern, but they can and do haul ahead on the beam. Soon the Constitution will be surrounded. Will he not quit now?
Not he! Life had taught him-because he had made it his business to learn-that man, war, and the winds are uncertain; that, therefore, no conclusion is foregone, no event, not even defeat, inevitable.
He who stands up to fate almost always forces it to change-which is another way of saying that he wins who dares. Hull's faith was borne out. At last the wind began again to blow. The Constitution strained forward. Boats were picked up on the fly. Streams of water were played on the lower sails, bucketfulls drawn up and dashed against the upper ones. The yards were carefully trimmed. In time the old vessel picked up her heels and fled at the never-before- attained speed, for her, of 12½ knots.
The race is over. Though the chase holds on, how can it have but one ending now? Nothing can conquer a man who won't be conquered. Because he knew how to prepare and did not know how to quit, Isaac Hull is yet to be a name to conjure with.
It was not our purpose to record Hull's movements up to the battle with the Guerrière, but they seem so much an unbreakable chain that it is almost impossible to avoid building up the story in detail. It is as if fate had deliberately set out to show step by step on facing pages how man is conquered or conquers by himself alone. Every indecision of General Hull seems to pave the way for the next, and the next, and so on to certain disaster. Every careful act of preparation, every resolutely made decision of Captain Hull is a vital step on the straight road to victory.
The chain of events is not ended. On July 27 Hull reaches Boston. It is a gloomy, unhappy city in a disgusted section of the nation where not only is war not desired but secession spoken of. Some men, of course, are not of this opinion; and many of the others, being seafarers and Americans after all, cannot help watching with a thrill of pride Boston's own-built frigate work her way into the harbor. Information of her miraculous escape runs through the city. Acclaim for Hull and his crew sounds on every tongue. There is every inducement to linger in port: much might be done aboard ship; it is pleasant to be feted and made a hero of. But that is not the way of this Hull. Before the anchor is down he is getting ready to heave it in again. Stores and water are put aboard. A letter is sent to Washington for orders, but on August 2, before an answer can arrive, restlessly driven on by the realization that every delay may bring disaster, with a fair wind he heads again out to sea -and glory.
If Hull had dallied away the days as his uncle was doing with the very same ones outside Malden, there is no telling what might have happened. The Constitution might never have sailed; he certainly would not have gone in this ship he knew so well and handled so ably, for he was a junior captain, others wanted his command, and the very day after he sailed orders came holding him in port; without his great victory as an incentive, a cautious policy might have held all our ships in port, might have prevented the glorious actions of this war that have given the Navy and American character in general such a priceless heritage of courage and achievement; perhaps, even, as we have said, New England might have left the Union.
There is no use, however, in considering possibilities. Events had to be as they were shaped to be because a resolute man willed it so. Nothing is inevitable except what courage, will, and activity make so. On August 19, 1812-only three days after finis had been written to the dark page of General Hull-the positive road of courageous, unhesitant decision reached its logical end: Isaac Hull achieved victory and glory.
It is a warm, blue day 750 miles east of Boston. The Gulf Stream is running in long, easy swells under the Constitution as she glides along, a picture of beauty rather than war.
"Sail ho!"
Is it a prize or a battle! Excitedly, to the roll and beat of the drum, men hurry to their battle quarters. Bodies are stripped bare to the waist, powder and shot got up, the guns unlashed and loaded, cutlasses and pikes laid out around the mainmast.
The stranger looms higher and higher above the horizon. With almost grim steadfastness she draws closer. There is no question now but that she is a war vessel, a large frigate. Hull's men are tense at their guns. Some fidget with nervousness, a few make ribald remarks that draw weak laughs, most have white, intent, determined faces.
Tight balls of bunting slowly mount to the Constitution's mastheads. Now the quartermaster claims he can see the stranger's flag; it is British! Again, fatefully, the Guerrière is being drawn to the Constitution. Hull's supreme moment has come.
The account of that battle, of Hull's masterful seamanship, of the murderous accuracy of his crew's fire that seemed literally to stagger the Guerrière, of the conversion of that proud, haughty ship into a complete wreck within thirty minutes after close action started-the whole is too well known to need repetition here, except to mention that the British did not realize what had struck them. They did not see that they had come up against the beginning of the tremendous advance the past century has brought to naval science, that a new, progressive people had launched out on the sea and would never thereafter be headed. Nor did the American people then. For that matter, at the moment it did not make any difference what they understood except - Victory! That was everything. If any nation ever needed one at that hour, the United States did. By August 30, when the Constitution dressed in flags of victory again dramatically appeared off Boston Light, rumors of General Hull's series of disasters ending in ignominious surrender were already being confirmed. Those in New England who had hoped, were in despair; those who had opposed war now bitterly lent their voices to the growing tide for secession.
But there is the Constitution! Riders dashed into Boston with the thrilling, almost incredible rumor of victory. The next day, as the Constitution herself sailed in, the populace went wild. Again the war's bitterest opponents were swept along. Boston's own ship had done the impossible. An English frigate had been sent to Davy Jones. No more did Britannia rule the waves unchallenged! We cannot better realize the intensity, the completeness, the all-pervading power of that tide of emotion than in an incident related by Charles Francis Adams:
“In John Adams' family the day the Constitution returned from glory was a little granddaughter aged four. Living out the full span of her days, she did not die until "one serene June afternoon in 1903." Ninety-five years old, with a lifetime covering more tremendous changes than the world had ever seen in another century, one thing alone remained with her at death. The poignant, soul-stirring days of the Civil War, the growth of her nation to a world empire-all the dreams, passions, tragedies, joys of a lifetime were swept away by a single great engulfing memory rolling up out of childhood in such a resistless flood that "in those closing hours ... one memory and only one seemed uppermost in her mind ... in a voice clear and distinct yet tremulous with emotion, she kept repeating these words: ‘Thank God for Hull's victory!’”
Thank God for Hull's victory, indeed! A nation was perhaps saved that day. The United States was turned to the realization of her true birthright-the sea. Though she would sometime again allow her Navy to suffer miserably, never again would she be deluded by the Jeffersonian belief that a Navy was useless or the sea a barrier unless she had fighting vessels to make it so. That day, in realization of strength, opportunity, and destiny, the United States as a world power was born. By no means one then, she has grown to be what she dimly and perhaps only half consciously foresaw in 1812. And perhaps all this has had a chance to be because one man had trained himself to prepare, to decide, and then to act resolutely, courageously, with sincere faith that he who goes forward - no matter the shadows barring his course - cannot fail but win.
“Soldiers, my comrades in this present hazard, let no one of you at such a time of necessity seek to prove his keenness of wit by calculating the full extent of the danger that encompasses us; let him rather come to grips with the enemy in a spirit of unreflecting confidence that he will survive even these perils. For whenever it is come, as now with us, to a case of necessity, where there is no room for reflection, what is needed is to accept the hazard with the least possible delay.”
In this terse exhortation that he puts into the mouth of Demosthenes as the Athenians are being attacked by superior numbers, Thucydides touches upon man's greatest fault in time of danger and at the same moment shows how it may be conquered. It is the same fault and the same conquest that we see in the lives of the Hulls. Man has not changed in 2,000 years. We still conquer by bold activity driven on by will and habit. We are still forced into inactivity by anxiety and fear. Nor does such achievement or failure occur in war alone. In all our ventures, great or small, we have felt the thrill of irresistible conquest that comes always with skill and resolution; in them all each of us has at some time or other felt fear, fear that has swiftly and irresistibly dissipated the current of directed thought that alone makes us intelligent beings. However quickly or slowly the thing has passed, it has left us shaking at the memory, wondering how it may be conquered.
The lives of the Hulls have shown us how - not merely how to conquer, but something of how we may develop within ourselves the means of conquering.
Activity we have seen to be the solution activity before the crisis in preparing ourselves as best we can; activity of boundless limit at the moment of greatest danger when fears and worries need only the slightest indecision to begin the destruction of the dike of self-control that alone saves our minds from dispersion; activity that approaches any emergency, any odds with the attitude that this is not a disaster but a test demanding better thought, more skill, higher energy-in short, everything or anything but inaction. Life itself cannot exist without movement; in all events whatever else we do, we must go forward, strive, always, always dare.
It is tremendously hopeful, then, for to realize that such activity before dang is not a gift with which some men a blessed and others cursed for the want of it, but a strength that may in a measure be cultivated in each of us. How?
By resolution and training - will and habit, which are themselves the product of the imperceptible accretions of our daily actions. The will is a strange and inexplicable thing. Undeniably, capacity for it is inherited; yet just as plainly is it evident that men of initially inferior capacity can by training become far superior in will power to those who were in the beginning more favored than they.
Such training may be of two sorts: that of the environment, and that from within - perhaps we might call them external and internal disciplines. That of the former may be acquired in a number of ways. We have seen two very important ones influencing Isaac Hull's life: responsibility, and that most tremendous, boundless force, the sea, that moves in mighty tides through our lives. Another, which we have scarcely noticed but which of course affected him, was military or, rather, naval discipline; yet after we have considered this and all other factors of external discipline, we are left with the realization that these are after all merely aids to the one great force that shapes man-himself, his own will power. Will is the force that forms habit, that develops self-control and therefore courage, that drives a man on in resistless activity. Like all other habits that rule our lives, it is shaped by constant use, is in fact the product only of a lifetime. No matter how we may not like to believe it, as surely as each rising and setting of the sun rolls away a day of our lives, so do we form success or failure of the future in the little actions of today. For in some strange way will and habit are the same. They are not, and yet they are so closely intertwined that they build each other. Indeed each of us in his own life has clearly seen strong habits, even while being produced by will, repaying it by strengthening it each time they are exercised. And it is apparent that if we acquire habits of never fearing, of facing any odds with energy, of always actively going forward, these thereby force us to activity and become a part of our will.
If this is so, and it seems to be so, then we can hopefully realize that wherever we are, whatever we are doing, it is possible for us to be strengthening and preparing not only the other important elements of our character but as well the most vital of all, the will. And at the end of our seeking we can say, with even more conviction than at the beginning, that failure is not inevitable, that both it and success lie within the soul of man himself, that what he will find there in the crisis of his life is what he has built there. No easy road leads to any goal, and yet that there is a road at all is inspiring. That the unalterable will of Jones, the burning ardor of Nelson, the enduring steadfastness of Farragut, unwavering through endless years of routine - that the resistless will driving all great commanders on to meet and defeat the enemy is not possessed by a few alone but is possible to all of us! That such can be is a hope, a star leading us, too, to victory.