Despite his clear record on this subject, made thus early, he came very near being made the victim of a political quarrel, and a reformer’s zeal. Readers of the works of John Quincy Adams may get an impression unjust to Captain Matthew Perry, because of the Resolution of Inquiry, December 3d, 1838, “into the conduct of Andrew Stevenson (United States Minister to Great Britain, and J. Q. Adams’s political enemy) in his controversy with Daniel O. Connell, as well as the participation of Captain Perry in that affair.”[70] To make a long story short, Mr. Adams, in his political zeal to injure an enemy and moral purpose to abolish “the detestable custom of private war,” struck the wrong man. All the information on which Mr. Adams based his inquiry was contained, as he confessed, in “those published letters of James Hamilton of South Carolina;” whereas, Mr. Hamilton regretted and publicly apologized for writing the principal letter which gave rise to the other two.[71] The whole controversy is not without interest, and humor of both the Irish and American sort. It is possible that Perry never knew till he found his name dragged into Congress, what use of his name had been made by Hamilton. So far as manifested in his official record,[72] Matthew Perry’s example, influence and energetic action were totally opposed to duelling. In his African cruises, and at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, we find him earnestly laboring to root out of existence a practice at war with Christian civilization. How well he and like-minded men succeeded, is now known to all—except an occasional hot head in which passion outruns information. It is perfectly safe for a person seeking either notoriety or satisfaction to challenge a naval officer of the United States to fight a duel. One familiar with the “Laws for the better government of the Navy” need have no fears of the result. Neither government nor individuals now consider “a single person entitled to a whole war.” ----- [70] J. Q. Adams’ _Works_, Vol. X, p. 48; and _Journal_ of same year. [71] _Niles Register_, Vol. LV, (from September, 1838 to March, 1839, pp. 61, 62, 104, 105, 132, 133, 258.) [72] Letters. U. S. Navy Archives, August, 10th, 1841; February, 1845. VIII. MEMORIALS IN ART OF M. C. PERRY. Portraits. By William Sidney Mount in 1835, when M. C. Perry was forty years old, now in possession of one of the Commodore’s children. One at the time of his marriage. One painted from a photograph by Brady, about 1864. One at the Brooklyn Naval Lyceum. One at the Annapolis Naval Academy, by J. R. Irving. A painting from a daguerreotype was made in Japan by a Japanese artist. Photographs.