The Commodore’s widow, Jane Slidell Perry survived her husband twenty-one years; and died in Newport, R. I., at the home of her youngest daughter, Mrs. Tiffany, on Saturday, June 14, 1879, at the age of 82. ----- [39] See letter of James Purdon Esq., _New York Times_, January 6th, 1859. [40] English Note Books, Vol. I., Dec. 25, 1854. [41] See page 221. [42] Putnam’s Magazine, August 1856, pp. 217, 218. [43] See “A Dinner at the Mayor’s,” Harper’s Magazine, October 1860. CHAPTER XXXV. MATTHEW PERRY AS A MAN. THE active life of Matthew Perry spanned the greater part of our national history “before the war.” He lived to see the United States grow from four to thirty-two millions of people, and the stars in her flag from fifteen to thirty-one. He sailed in many seas, visited all the nations of Christendom, saw most of the races of the earth, and all flags except that of the stars and bars. He saw the rise and fall of many types of naval architecture. He was familiar with the problems of armor and ordnance, resistance and penetration, and had studied those questions in the science of war, which are not yet settled. He had made himself conversant with the arts auxiliary to his profession, and was one of the foremost naval men of his generation. His personal importance was far beyond his rank. He died fully abreast of his age, and looked far beyond it. Had he lived until the opening of “the war,” he would have been fully prepared, by alertness of mind, for the needs of the hour, and would doubtless have held high rank. He was called to rest from his labors before feeling the benumbing effects of old age. As it was, his influence was clearly traceable in the navy, and younger officers carried out his ideas into practice, when opportunity came. Had the United States, at the opening of the rebellion possessed a respectable modern navy, such as Perry labored for, the great southern ports could have been at once sealed; and that foreign aid, without which the Confederacy could not have lived six months, would have been made null. Indeed, with a first-class navy, the slave-holder’s conspiracy could never have been hatched. As it was, the navy kept off foreign intervention. Despite the long and brilliant succession of services rendered his country, Matthew Perry never received either rank or reward beyond those of an ordinary captain.