August 19 · This Day in America
Four hundred miles off Nova Scotia, the young American frigate Constitution closes with the British warship Guerriere. The Royal Navy has not lost a single-ship duel in a generation; this is supposed to be a slaughter. Captain Isaac Hull holds his fire, hauls in close, and waits. Then the Constitution's guns let go all at once. Her hull is white oak over live oak, two feet thick, and the British shot strikes it and skips away into the sea. A sailor watching it cries out, "Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!" In half an hour the Guerriere is a dismasted wreck. The Americans burn her at dawn. For a fledgling navy that the British barely deigned to notice, it is electrifying proof that the sea is not entirely theirs — and the ship sails on into the 21st century still commissioned, still afloat, forever Old Ironsides.
Source: www.history.navy.mil
Also on this day · 1791
A free Black astronomer in Maryland sends the Secretary of State a draft of his almanac and a letter. Plainly, respectfully, he quotes Jefferson back to himself — that all men are created equal — and asks how a man who wrote that can hold others in bondage. "Put your soul in their souls' stead," Banneker writes. Jefferson replies politely, and keeps his slaves. The letters circulate among abolitionists. The question does not go away.
Source: founders.archives.gov
“Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!”a Constitution crewman, 1812 (as recounted in U.S. Navy accounts)