Yet little could be told, for in American literature and popular imagination, the name of the hero of Lake Erie seemed to overshadow the fame of the younger, and, as I think, greater brother. The dramatic incidents of war impress the popular mind far more profoundly than do the victories of peace. Even American writers confound the two brothers, treating them as the same person, making one the son of the other, or otherwise doing fantastic violence to history. Numerous biographies have been written, and memorials in art, of marble, bronze and canvas, on coin and currency, of Oliver Hazard Perry, have been multiplied. No biography of Matthew Calbraith Perry has, until this writing, appeared. In Japan, popular curiosity fed itself on flamboyant broadside chromo-pictures, “blood-pit” novels, and travesties of history, in which Perry was represented either as a murderous swash-buckler or a consumptive-looking and over-decorated European general. It was to satisfy an earnest desire of the Japanese to know more of the man, who so profoundly influenced their national history, that this biography was at first undertaken. I began the work by a study of the scenes of Perry’s triumphs in Japan, and of his early life in Rhode Island; by interviews in navy yard, hospital and receiving-ship, with the old sailors who had served under him in various crusades; by correspondence and conversation with his children, personal friends, fellow-officers, critics, enemies, and eye-witnesses of his labors and works. I followed up this out-door peripatetic study by long and patient research in the archives of the United States Navy Department in Washington, with collateral reading of American, European, Mexican and Japanese books, manuscripts and translations bearing on the subject; and, most valued of all, documents from the Mikado’s Department of State in Tōkiō. As the career and character of my subject unfolded, I discovered that Matthew Perry was no creature of routine, but a typical American naval officer whose final triumph crowned a long and brilliant career. He had won success in Japanese waters not by a series of happy accidents, but because all his previous life had been a preparation to win it. In this narrative, much condensed from the original draft, no attempt has been made to do either justice or injustice to Perry’s fellow-officers, or to write a history of his times, or of the United States Navy. Many worthy names have been necessarily omitted. For the important facts recorded, reliance has been placed on the written word of documentary evidence. Fortunately, Perry was a master of the pen and of his native language. As he wrote almost all of his own letters and official reports, his papers, both public and private, are not only voluminous and valuable but bear witness to his scrupulous regard for personal mastery of details, as well as for style and grammar, fact and truth.