vy decided to
sell her or to break her up. On the appearance of this bit of news in
a Boston paper, Oliver Wendell Holmes, a law student at Harvard,
scribbled some verses and sent them to the editor.

This poem of twenty-four lines was at once published, and was soon
copied into the leading newspapers of the country. In our large
cities, the poem was circulated as a handbill. Popular indignation
rose to a white heat, and swept everything before it.

The order was at once revoked, and Congress decided that the old
frigate, so dear to the hearts of the American people, should be
rebuilt.

Why did the people care so much about "Old Ironsides"?

[Illustration: "Old Ironsides"]

For twenty-five years after the adoption of the Constitution, we had
a rough road to travel. We were {170} nearly crushed by our foreign
debts, and could do little to defend ourselves on the high seas.
England boarded our ships and carried off our sailors, and France
captured our vessels and stole their cargoes. Even the Barbary
pirates, when they spied the new flag, began to plunder and burn our
merchantmen, and sell their crews into slavery.

In the fall of 1793, eight Algerine pirate craft sailed out into the
Atlantic, and within a month had captured eleven of our ships and
made slaves of more than a hundred of our sailors.

Think of our consul at Lisbon writing home, "Another Algerine pirate
in the Atlantic. God preserve us!"

In behalf of American citizens held as slaves by these pirates, a
petition was sent to Congress. A bill was then passed, allowing
President Washington to build or to buy six frigates.

It was a fortunate day for our nation when the plans of Mr.
Humphreys, a shipbuilder of Philadelphia, were accepted. He was
directed by Congress to prepare the models of six war ships, to be
built in different towns on the coast.

The design of the Constitution was sent to Boston, and her keel was
laid in Hartt's Naval Yard, near what is now Constitution Wharf. The
ideas of Mr. Humphreys were carried out to the letter. The new
frigate was to have better guns, greater speed, greater cruising
capacity,--in fact, was to be a little better {171} in every respect
than the British and the French ships of the same rating.

The Constitution was called a forty-four-gun frigate, although she
actually carried thirty twenty-four-pounders on her main deck, and
twenty-two thirty-two-pounders on her spar deck. She had one gun deck
instead of