PERRY AND LAKE ERIE Amid the prolonged vicissitudes of these western campaigns, two subordinate officers, the boyish Major Croghan at Fort Stephenson and the dashing Colonel Johnson with his Kentucky mounted infantry, displayed qualities which accord with the best traditions of American arms.

Of kindred spirit and far more illustrious was Captain Oliver Hazard Perry of the United States Navy.

Perry dealt with and overcame, on a much larger scale, similar obstacles and discouragements--untrained men, lack of material, faulty support--but was ready and eager to meet the enemy in the hour of need.

If it is a sound axiom never to despise the enemy, it is nevertheless true that excessive prudence has lost many an action.

Farragut's motto has been the keynote of the success of all the great sea-captains, "_L'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace._" It was not until the lesson of Hull's surrender had aroused the civil authorities that Captain Chauncey of the navy yard at New York received orders in September, 1812, "to assume command of the naval force on Lakes Erie and Ontario and to use every exertion to obtain control of them this fall." Chauncey was an experienced officer, forty years old, who had not rusted from inactivity like the elderly generals who had been given command of armies.