Matthew C. Perry

American naval officer

• Born: April 10, 1794
• Birthplace: Newport, Rhode Island
• Died: March 4, 1858
• Place of death: New York, New York

One of the towering figures in nineteenth century American naval history, Perry had a U.S. Navy career that spanned almost half a century. He commanded ships and fleets with distinction in peace and in war; he also proposed and accomplished reforms in naval architecture, ordnance, and organization, and through skillful negotiation introduced Japan into the modern community of nations.

Early Life

Matthew Calbraith Perry was the son of Christopher Raymond Perry, a descendant of original Quaker settlers of Rhode Island who served in privateers and Continental warships during the American Revolution. The senior Perry met his Irish wife, Sarah Wallace Alexander, when he was a paroled prisoner in Ireland in 1781. Matthew’s eldest brother, Oliver Hazard Perry, was the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813 and Matthew Perry’s greatest hero.

In 1809, Matthew Perry was assigned as a midshipman to the schooner Revenge. A year later he transferred to the frigate President, in which he served in 1811 in the engagement with HMS Little Belt and in the War of 1812, when he was wounded slightly in the inconclusive fight with HMS Belvidera.

On December 24, 1814, he married Jane Slidell (1797-1879), daughter of a New York merchant, who bore him ten children. Their three sons and one of their sons-in-law were all navy or marine officers.

In 1815, Perry was assigned to the brig Chippewa, which was part of the Mediterranean Squadron, and at the end of this cruise he applied for furlough and commanded one, and perhaps more, of his father-in-law’s merchant ships.

Life’s Work

In 1819, Perry returned to naval service as first lieutenant in the corvette Cyane, which escorted the first settlers sent to Liberia by the American Colonization Society and patrolled the coast of West Africa to suppress the slave trade. Two years later, he was commanding the schooner Shark in African waters and the West Indies, where the navy was attempting to suppress piracy. Perry was of great assistance to the Liberian settlers in their efforts to establish their republic and was primarily responsible for the selection of the site of Monrovia.

From 1824 to 1827, Perry served as first lieutenant and later as acting commander in the battleship North Carolina in the Mediterranean Squadron. At this time the two responsibilities of the squadron, commanded by Commodore John Rodgers, were the protection of American shipping during the Greek war of independence and the implementation of a naval treaty with Turkey. Rodgers achieved both goals.

After service in the Charlestown naval yard, Perry was given command of the sloop-of-war Concord and in 1830 was responsible for conveying Minister John Randolph to St. Petersburg. This voyage was followed by two more years in the Mediterranean.

By this time Perry had developed all the skills that distinguished the rest of his naval career: total mastery of seamanship, a commanding presence, a great sense of duty and personal rectitude, negotiating skills of a high order, and a capacity for sympathy with people of diverse cultures. Much of this no doubt derived from his devout Episcopalianism, but it also was a product of high intelligence, which was reflected in a broad range of scholarly interests, particularly in history, ethnology, languages, and science.

When Perry was serving in the Mediterranean in this cruise, President Andrew Jackson was seeking agreements by which the European powers would agree to pay for spoliation of American commerce during the Napoleonic wars. In 1832, Perry commanded a squadron sent to Naples to support the efforts of American negotiators to collect payments from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This show of strength apparently tipped the scales to produce the agreement of October, 1832.

The three greatest achievements of Perry’s career were his efforts to modernize the navy, his service in the Mexican War, and his command of the expedition that first established formal relations with Japan.

From 1833, when he accepted command of the New York recruiting station, until 1843, when he ended his tenure as commander of the Brooklyn naval yard, Perry campaigned for naval reform. In an 1837 article, he outlined in detail the inadequacies of the United States Navy, which was eighth in the world, trailing even Turkey and Egypt and far behind Great Britain and France in naval architecture and ordnance. Perry is correctly considered the founder of the steam navy.

Perry campaigned for construction of steam warships, and he initiated the action that led to the creation of the navy’s Engineering Corps. He argued for the adoption of shell guns, invented the collapsible smokestack, advocated iron hulls for river gunboats, and recommended the creation of an independent Lighthouse Board. In addition, he was deeply involved in efforts to cure the old navy’s problem of manpower procurement. During the early nineteenth century, crews were usually made up by robbing the merchant service and by recruiting foreigners and social misfits. Perry agitated for the creation of an apprentice system and for a school ship for their training. The attempted mutiny on the Somers in 1842 discredited this system, but that failure led to implementation of another of Perry’s proposals: the creation of the Naval Academy.

In 1843, Perry was assigned to the command of the African Squadron, and in this capacity he negotiated a treaty with the local chiefs on the Ivory Coast, in which the chiefs agreed not to molest missionaries or plunder trading ships. He also was influential in settling differences between the immigrants and the native population of Liberia.

In the Mexican War, Perry first served as vice commodore of naval forces on the Mexican coast, subordinate to Commodore David Conner . He captured Frontera in October, 1846, and sailed fifty miles up the Rio Grijalva to attack Villahermosa and to capture nine enemy warships there. In November, he participated in the capture of Tampico, and the following month occupied Ciudad de Carmen. In March, 1847, he succeeded Conner as commodore and landed naval guns and gun-crews to support the troops Conner had landed to besiege Veracruz.

By the time Veracruz surrendered on March 29, 1847, Perry was commanding the largest American fleet up to that time—twenty-three vessels. In April, he attacked Tuxpan, destroying the forts and carrying off the guns captured by the Mexicans when an American brig ran aground. His second attack on Villahermosa in June, 1847, was his greatest achievement in the war. He again advanced up the Grijalva to the underwater obstacles laid down by the enemy, then landed eleven hundred men and led them personally on their three-mile march through Mexican defenses to capture Villahermosa.

The Japan expedition originated in Perry’s memorandum to the secretary of the navy in the winter of 1851, in which he suggested that friendly relations could be achieved with Japan by a show of naval strength. He did not want command of the expedition, but he accepted it in January, 1852. His selection of ships and officers was careful, and his logistical planning was so effective that the colliers for refueling his steamers were in their assigned positions throughout the voyage. Before he could depart, however, he was ordered to investigate charges of British interference with American fishermen on the Canadian coast. His report on his findings led to the reciprocity treaty of 1854.

Perry’s squadron arrived at Okinawa, then an independent kingdom, in May, 1853, and he established relations that enabled him to negotiate a treaty in the following year. After a side trip to the Bonin Islands, where, on Chichi Jima, he bought fifty acres as a possible coaling station, the squadron reached Tokyo Bay on July 8, 1853.

Perry’s behavior with the Japanese was remarkable for its combination of austere reserve, firmness, and cordiality. The Japanese sent minor officials to order the American ships away, but Perry dealt with them only through his subordinates, insisting on dealing with officials who could speak for the emperor. When Japanese guard boats attempted to ring his ships, he ordered them off under threat of opening fire. Finally, when it did not appear that the Japanese would accept President Fillmore’s letter under any conditions, Perry informed them that if they would not accept it within a sufficient time he would land at Edo (Tokyo) in force and deliver it himself.

On July 14, Perry was invited to land with an armed retinue at Kurihama, near the mouth of Tokyo Bay, and, amid great formality on both sides, two Japanese officials accepted Fillmore’s letter.

After wintering in Hong Kong, Perry returned to Japan in February, 1854, for further negotiations and landed in March. By the treaty of March 31, the Japanese granted two fueling ports, at Hakodate on Tsugaru Strait on southern Hokkaido and at Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula on Honshū. Although the treaty did not make arrangements for trade, it did give Americans free access to the areas around the ports and arranged for shipwrecked American sailors to be sent to those ports for repatriation. Perry examined the port of Shimoda and, after sailing to Hakodate to ensure that it was acceptable, he returned to Shimoda in June and reached further agreements with the Japanese on currency exchange, pilotage, and port dues. After sailing to Okinawa to negotiate the Treaty of Naha in July, 1854, he led his forces back to Hong Kong and with the treaty returned to the United States by commercial steamers.

In his last years, Perry enjoyed enormous public respect for his achievements in Japan. He devoted his time to service on the Naval Efficiency Board, which was engaged in weeding out overage naval officers, and concentrated much of his attention on the preparation of the official narrative of the Japan expedition and on writing several articles that revealed a great sense of the importance of the Pacific in future American naval and political strategy. He was convinced that Russia would be the future Pacific rival of the United States and that it was crucially important to acquire coaling stations and naval bases in the western Pacific. Meanwhile, as a result of his achievements, the European powers were able to obtain treaties with Japan, and a trade agreement between the United States and Japan was achieved in 1858. Perry died in New York City on March 4, 1858.

Significance

Perry distinguished himself in his long naval career both as a commander and as a diplomat. Possessing not only the great skills in combat leadership that made him the most distinguished American naval officer of the Mexican War but also a remarkable combination of tact, firmness, patience, and empathy that enabled him to achieve great results as a negotiator, he succeeded both in founding the modern United States Navy and in using naval power to establish mutually productive relations with Japan.

Perry’s success in the latter case led him to the conclusion that the Pacific was to become his country’s future arena of power and influence, and he made proposals for establishing naval bases in the Pacific that, if they had not disappeared in the domestic crisis in which the United States found itself during the 1850’s, might well have prevented the rupture of Japanese-American relations during the 1930’s. Perry recognized international political realities in the Pacific at a time when virtually every other American was concerned with the task of conquering and developing the continent and securing domestic harmony. When the United States finally accepted international responsibility, it was obliged to fight a terrible war with the country with which Perry had established amicable relations and to maintain the presence in the Pacific that he had favored in the first place.

Bibliography

Barrows, Edward M. The Great Commodore. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1935. The best biography until it was superseded by that of Morison. Somewhat dated on the subject of the Japan expedition.

Hawks, Francis L. Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan. Edited by Sidney Wallach. New York: Coward-McCann, 1952. A convenient modern abridgement of the journals and reports of the Japan expedition. (The original was published in three volumes in 1856.)

Kuhn, Ferdinand. “Yankee Sailor Who Opened Japan.” National Geographic Magazine 104 (July, 1953): 85-102. A general account of Perry’s achievements in Japan, well illustrated with contemporary prints, many of them by Japanese artists.

Morison, Samuel Eliot.“Old Bruin”: Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, 1794-1858. Boston: Little, Brown, 1967. The definitive biography, by the most distinguished American naval historian. Full account of Perry’s personal and professional life, with thorough treatment of social and political background, including the Somers affair and the achievements of Perry’s father and brother.

Paullin, Charles Oscar. “The First American Treaty with Japan: 1851-1854.” In Diplomatic Negotiations of American Naval Officers, 1778-1883. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1912. Paullin was the outstanding student of this subject, and this chapter is a sound, basic account of Perry’s accomplishments in Japan.

Pineau, Roger, ed. The Japan Expedition, 1852-1854: The Personal Journal of Commodore Matthew C. Perry. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1968. A fine edition of Perry’s journal, hitherto unpublished, with splendid color plates of watercolors and prints made during the voyage.

Schroeder, John H. Matthew Calbraith Perry: Antebellum Sailor and Diplomat. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2001. An assessment of Perry’s long military career, including his efforts to modernize the U.S. Navy.

Walworth, Arthur. Black Ships Off Japan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. A popular account of the Japan expedition, essentially accurate though its interpretation of Perry’s character and behavior should be checked against that of Morison.

Wiley, Peter Booth, and Korogi Ichiro. Yankees in the Land of the Gods: Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan. New York: Viking Press, 1990. Popular and detailed account of Perry’s expedition to Japan, describing his journey’s impact on Japanese government and foreign relations and on U.S. relations with Japan.