The Cruise of the Lively Bee

There was a large crowd on the Battery in New York City one hot day in June in the year eighteen-hundred-and-twelve. Every one was talking and every one was looking out across the waters of the harbor. There were pale, anxious faces in that crowd, and side by side with them were the flushed cheeks of men and boys whose hearts were fired with patriotic zeal. Women were looking at their husbands, and young girls' hearts were throbbing with painful excitement as they saw the enthusiasm of their sweethearts. War, did you say? Ay, ay, the President has aroused at last, and old England shall be taught another and a final lesson. It was true. President James Madison had signed the Declaration of War against Great Britain. War! There were many in that crowd who remembered 1783; there stood the man who, in his boyhood's days, had climbed the flagpole and torn down the Union Jack of England, and in its place had hoisted the Star Spangled Banner.