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The War of 1812 for many was more properly called the Second War for Independence.  The new United States was struggling to make it in the tough world of foreign affairs, and its troubles with England had bubbled up into a war for which the new nation was not ready.

Much of North America was still unsettled, at the time, and the "frontier" was the Ohio valley and the dense forest regions around the Great Lakes.  Control of these inland waterways was critical to control of the frontier territory, and both the United States and England were eager to dominate there. 

Onto this scene sailed a twenty-seven year old American named Oliver Hazad Perry.  In a small, fresh water sailing fleet, Perry engaged the bulk of England’s Great Lakes squadron in what became the Battle of Lake Erie.  Perry commanded the Lawrence, a ship named for a recently killed captain of the American navy who had foolishly lost one of the United States’ six powerful frigates in direct disobedience to orders.  Lawrence’s reckless conduct had pitched his awesome ship against one of the ablest captains and best trained crews in the British navy.  Lawrence’s ship the Chesapeake, was destroyed in less than fifteen minutes!  Stragely, Lawrence’s dying words, "Don’t give up the ship," caught on as a sort of battle cry among the American sailors ever after.  Even though Lawrence had foolishly put himself and his crew into a position where giving up their ship was inevitable, the phrase became almost as powerful as "Remember the Alamo" would decades later.  Because of this, as Oliver Hazard Perry sailed to confront the British Great Lakes fleet that day, his ship, the Lawrence, flew a flag that proudly stated, "Don’t Give Up the Ship!"

Although all the ships in the engagement were tiny by ocean-going standards, the Battle of Lake Erie would be the biggest, most violent naval engagement the Great Lakes would ever see. Perry sailed directly into the British ships and fought furiously.  The Lawrence was one of the two biggest, most powerful American ships on the Great Lakes.  The other one was called the Niagara.  For some reason, though, the Niagara didn’t engage in the battle.  It stood a ways off, out of harm’s way, and watched Perry get torn to shreds in the Lawrence.  Although Perry was fighting a losing battle, he had inflicted heavy casualties on five British ships at once, firing furiously and refusing to quit.

Finally, the Lawrence was almost a complete wreck.  Four-fifths of Perry’s men had been killed or wounded.  The gun deck was littered with bodies and refuse, the dead and dying sprawled everywhere. With so much death and destruction, hardly a gun was left firing aboard the Lawrence.  Still, from the mast of the ship flew the flag that said, "Don’t Give Up the Ship!" 

At this point in the battle, Perry did the unthinkable.  He lowered one of his only remaining ship’s boats into the water, and with a small contingent of men, he rowed away from the battle and toward the untouched Niagara, which was still watching the battle from a safe distance.  Perry and his men in the little boat were fired upon by the same cannon that had torn his ship to pieces.  However, many of the British ships were damaged badly enough that they neither destroyed his boat nor made much of an attempt to pursue.  Perhaps they thought the battle was over and Perry was fleeing the scene.  But as Perry reached the Niagara, he needed only moments to convince the crew to follow his orders instead of those of their timid captain.  The Niagara made sail and headed directly for the fleet of damaged British ships. 

It is interesting to imagine what the men aboard the British ships must have thought, seeing the heroics of this young captain and his bravery while rowing a boat through heavy enemy fire.  How their attitudes must have changed as they realized he was bringing a new ship to engage them!  And engage them he did.  With the fresh fire power of the Niagara brought to bear on the damaged British fleet, the outcome was not even a question.  The bravery of Oliver Hazard Perry had won the day and secured the Great Lakes and the western frontier to the United States.  Throughout the remainder of the War of 1812, the British would never regain what they had lost that day.

Perry’s actions are impressive, given the bad advice he had flying from a flag staff aboard his ship.  Perry didn’t fall in love with the idea of winning the battle aboard his ship, committing to the chivalrous but silly notion that he should either win or sink on his ship.  Instead, he had victory in mind, a clear goal on the horizon for which he would change his plans and disregard the popular naval passions of his time.

It is interesting to think about Perry’s exploits that day in leadership terms.  What he did was nearly unprecedented in naval history, but is even more powerful as a metaphor for how a leader should attack a goal.  Many times, leaders set goals to accomplish something, and then profer plans to achieve that goal.  Somehow or somewhere along the way, however, the leader falls in love with the PLANS and gets overly committed to them at the expense of the goal.  As the saying goes, and as Perry so deftly demonstrated that day, Goals should be set in Stone, and Plans should be set in Sand.  If the plans arent’ working, scrap them and come up with more plans.  But never give up the goal!  If one ship isn’t working, get another ship, but be sure and get to the victory!

Oh, and by the way.  Don’t even ask me for the name of the original captain of the Niagara, who watched safely from a distance while his countrymen fought the battle; he doesn’t deserve to have history remember it.

  On many stages recently, I have spoken about the need for a leader to respect the individual.  It is not enough to talk about "people," like many politicians do so dangerously at this time in the electoral process, but rather it is of supreme importance for leaders to focus upon and respect the rights and "evidence of the Creator" apparent at the level of the individual.  What this means is that each individual is special and has equal rights under law.

Whenever we get off track and sacrifice individual rights on the altar of "people" as a broader category, we begin treading down a path where eventually no one will have individual rights or liberty.    For proof of this, witness the murderous and bloody results of the French Revolution, which was founded on principles at first similar, but upon closer inspection, radically different than those of the American Revolution.  The difference between the two is the American focus upon the rights of the individual, versus the French focus upon "Fraternity" or "the group."

Interestingly, the foundation for this belief system in the United States of America originated in a document that was intended to be revolutionary.  The Declaration of Independence was drafted as a document to justify to a watching world why thirteen disparate colonies were choosing to do the impossible and unthinkable and overthrow their soveriegn monarch.  Only as a bi-product was the Declaration of Independence supposed to enumerate the fundamental creed that America would base its system of law and Bill of Rights upon.

Thomas Jefferson is given credit for the authorship of the Declaration, even though he was part of a five man committee responsible for its creation, and even though the document went through revision by the entire Second Continental Congress.  Still, history shows that the opening salvo of words that establish the foundation of the American Creed of which we are speaking, were indeed Jefferson’s creation.  Interestingly, these opening fifty-five words were hardly debated or modified at all by the committe or the Congress.  They read as follows:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Apparently the truth of these opening words really were "self-evident" to the founders.  According to my favorite historian, Joseph Ellis, these opening words would "grow in meaning to bec ome the seminal statement of the American creed.  With these words, Jefferson had . . . casually and almost inadvertantly planted the seeds that would grow into the expanding mandate for individual rights that eventually ended slavery, made women’s suffrage inevitable, and sanctioned the civil rights of all minorities." 

Abraham Lincoln, too, understood the significance of these words on the direction of America, writing, "All honor to Jefferson – to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of the re-appearing tyranny and oppression."

Whenever our candidates or representatives or elected officials veer off track, whenever our leaders begin steps towards tyranny (read Communism, Socialism, etc.), whenever the rights of an individual is sacrificed for the "common good," the words in the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence is there as a timeless protection.  May we never forget it.