20 pages • 40 minutes read
Oliver Wendell HolmesOld Ironsides
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1830A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Cultural Context: The Boston Brahmins
In “Old Ironsides,” Oliver Wendell Holmes, despite his relative youth and lack of military background, or even a memory of the Constitution’s greatest moments in battle, presumes to direct his audience to the right course of action when it comes to the ship’s fate. It makes perfect financial sense to strip the weathered ship for parts. The problem, the speaker argues, comes from “the harpies of the shore” (Line 15), the Navy Department accountants too engaged, too fascinated by money to understand the wider, spiritual implications of wealth. In this, “Old Ironsides” epitomizes the elevated philosophy of a tight group of wealthy, conservative Boston families, among them Holmes’s, whose lives of privilege and influence directed much of New England culture in the decades leading up to the Civil War.
Holmes himself in an 1860 article in The Atlantic actually coined the term “Boston Brahmins” for the city’s powerful elite class. Educated at the finest schools, these tightknit families developed a lifestyle that reflected their admiration for the trappings and affectations of British aristocracy without all the titles and rituals. However, Holmes’s term for this class drew on his study of Eastern thought—Brahmins, in Hindu society, were the elite class of religious thinkers and spiritual philosophers. That spiritual angle informs the poem’s argument: The speaker suggests elevating thought beyond pragmatic bottom-line concerns to see the big picture and how the ship is not just some financial and economic liability but rather a glorious symbol of America itself. There is money, the Brahmin speaker suggests, and then there is true wealth.
Historical Context: The Victory Over the HMS Guerrière
Key to understanding Holmes’s passionate argument is the dramatic high-sea showdown between the Constitution and the HMS warship Guerrière in the opening months of the War of 1812, sometimes referred to as America’s Second War for Independence. The war was caused in part by tensions over territorial expansions, Britain’s Royal Navy restricting American trade, and the impressment, essentially enslavement, of American citizens into service for the Royal Navy. Indeed, the story of the battle between the two ships frames the speaker’s argument that it would be better for the Constitution to die gloriously in battle, even in surrender, than in the shame of being dismantled for parts.
On August 19, 1812, 200 or so miles off the coast of Nova Scotia, the Constitution on patrol sighted the Guerrière, a Royal Navy frigate. Although outgunned (38 cannons to the Constitution’s 55), the Guerrière pursued an engagement, its officers certain that a British man-of-war coupled with British military know-how would outmatch any American ship. When the vessels drew side by side, the firefight was ferocious. The Constitution’s heavy oak sides repelled much of the British cannon fire (giving rise later to the ship’s nickname “Old Ironsides”). Casualties on both sides were high—the deck was indeed “red with heroes’ blood” (Line 9). After hours of relentless cannon fire, the Guerrière was heavily damaged and its crew decimated. The British captain was forced to surrender. The American captain determined the Guerrière was too damaged to be salvaged (the normal protocol for captured vessels). After the British crew was taken aboard as prisoners, the British warship was loaded with gunpowder and blown up. That fate, the poem argues, befits a warship.
When the Constitution returned to Boston two weeks later, reports of the victory raised the flagging spirits of the American nation at a time when many doubted America’s ability to defeat the British again. That sense of American pride and courage, as well as the element of British arrogance and military ineptness, endowed the Constitution with a glory that, nearly 20 years later, Holmes’s speaker would use as reason to spare the ship.
