Читать книгу Gentlemen Rovers - E. Alexander Powell - Страница 3

Table of Contents

This book is written as a tribute to some men who have been overlooked by History and forgotten by Fame. Though they won for us more than half the territory comprised within our present-day borders, not only have no monuments been erected to perpetuate their exploits in bronze and marble, but they lie for the most part in forgotten and neglected graves, some of them under alien skies. Boyd, Truxtun, Eaton, Reed, Lafitte, Smith, Ide, Ward, Walker—even their names hold no significance for their countrymen of the present generation, yet they played great parts in our national drama. After two decades of history-making in Hindustan, Boyd came back to his own country and ably seconded William Henry Harrison in breaking the power of the great Indian confederation which threatened to check the white man's westward march. When both France and England were our enemies, and the gloom of despondency hung like a cloud over the land, it was Truxtun and his bluejackets who put new heart into the nation by their victories. Eaton and his motley army marched across six hundred miles of African desert, and by bringing the Barbary despots to their knees accomplished that which had been unsuccessfully attempted by every naval power in Europe. Captain Reed, of the General Armstrong, after holding off a British force twenty times the strength of his own, sunk his vessel rather than surrender. To a pirate and smuggler named Jean Lafitte, more than any other person save Andrew Jackson, we owe our thanks for saving New Orleans from capture and Louisiana from invasion. Jedediah Smith blazed the route of the Overland Trail and showed us the way to California, and a quarter of a century later Frémont, Ide, Sloat, and Stockton made the land beyond the Sierras ours. William Walker came within an ace of changing the map of Middle America, and made the name of American a synonym for courage from the Rio Grande to Panama, while on the other side of the world another American, Frederick Townsend Ward, raised and led that ever victorious army whose exploits were General Gordon's chief claim to fame. There was not one of these men of whom we have not reason to be proud. But because they did their work unofficially, in what might aptly be described as "shirt-sleeve warfare," and because they went ahead without waiting for the tardy sanction of those who guided our ship of state, the deeds they performed have never received befitting recognition from those who follow by the trails they made, who grow rich from the mines that they discovered, who dwell upon the lands they won. And that is why I am going to ask you, my friends, as in the following pages I lead these forgotten heroes before you in imaginary review, to raise your hats in respect and admiration to this company of brave soldiers and gallant gentlemen who so stoutly upheld American prestige and American traditions in many far corners of the world.