The student of American naval history who with weary toil reads through the proceedings of the Congress for the year 1813, finds two paragraphs marked “approved January 29,” that, because of the matters to which they refer, stir him as not many other paragraphs of all the printed proceedings of that legislative body from its first gathering down to the present day are able to do. They are brief--the first contains sixteen printed lines, and the last only seven. But in the first, gold medals are awarded to Hull, of the _Constitution_, Decatur, of the _United States_, and Jones, of the _Wasp_, for the astounding results they achieved in their combats with the _Guerrière_, the _Macedonian_, and the _Frolic_. And in the second the President of the United States “is requested to present to Lieutenant Elliott, of the Navy of the United States, an elegant sword, with suitable emblems and devices, in testimony of the just sense entertained by Congress of his gallantry and good conduct in boarding and capturing the British brigs _Detroit_ and _Caledonia_, while anchored under the protection of Fort Erie.” [Illustration: _From a lithograph at the Navy Department, Washington._] It was no small honor to have one’s name mentioned in connection with Hull, Decatur, and Jones, but a few months later (July 13, 1813) Elliott’s name once more appears in an act of Congress, this time in connection with that of Lawrence. Lawrence and his men get $25,000 for the destruction of the _Peacock_; Elliott “and his officers and companions” get $12,000 for the destruction of the _Detroit_. The fight in which Lieutenant Jesse D. Elliott won these honors, if compared gun for gun and man for man with the battles of the great naval heroes with whom his name was mentioned, was but small and unimportant. They fought with well-manned, fully equipped ships on the high seas; he in row-boats on a fresh-water lake in the backwoods, and armed with borrowed weapons. But when considered in its proper light--when considered in its influence upon the Americans and on the enemy, and especially when considered in its influence as the forerunner of the great fresh-water battles where Perry and Macdonough won glory, this was a most important conflict; for it fired the hearts of the Yankee frontiersmen at a time when such disasters as the surrender of Detroit to the British had made some kind of encouragement most needful. But before recounting the stirring events of the night when this Yankee seaman earned his first honors, it is important to recount, as briefly as may be, how it happened that Elliott, a salt-sea sailor, was found on a fresh-water sea in the backwoods.