hatever was said about that work beyond the few
pages in which the battle of Lake Erie is described. They were,
moreover, so personal in their nature and contained imputations so gross
on his character, that Cooper began a libel suit against the journal in
which they were published. This finally resulted in one of the most
extraordinary trials that has ever been recorded in merely literary
annals. The attack in the "Commercial Advertiser" was followed by a
similar one in the "North American Review." This was written, however,
with more decency, though it again devoted itself mainly to the battle
of Lake Erie. It was the work of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a naval
author, who by three books of travel had gained at the time some
literary notoriety. But the notoriety never rose to reputation; and the
history which preserves his name at all, preserves it in connection with
an event it were well for his memory to have eternally forgotten. It is
to be added that he was the brother-in-law of Captain Matthew Perry, and
that Duer was his uncle. Hardly had his broadside been delivered, when
another attack appeared. The victor of Lake Erie had come from Rhode
Island, and Rhode Island rushed to the fray, not to defend her son--for
he had not been attacked--but to build up his reputation by (p. 213)
ruining that of his enemy. Tristam Burges, when the biography of
Elliott, already referred to, had appeared, had delivered a lecture on
the battle of Lake Erie before the Rhode Island Historical Society. It
was not printed at the time; but no sooner was Cooper's work published
than, at the request of Perry's friends and relatives, it was brought
out with documents appended. The lecture reads very much like a stump
speech of the extreme florid type. It is needless to say that in it
Elliott got his full deserts for betraying his commander. It made no
direct reference to Cooper, but the whole object was to discredit the
account of the battle which he had given.

Even this was not all. Mackenzie prepared a life of Perry, which was
published early in 1841. In it he attacked Elliott with great
bitterness, and was careful to give in an appendix all the sworn
testimony on one side, and leave out all the sworn testimony on the
other. The biography met with general favor. It was styled a noble work,
and the courage manifested by the author in assailing an unpopular man
and celebrating a popular hero was, for some reason hard now to be
unde