- Historic Sites The Battle Of Lake Erie "With half the western
world at stake, See Perry on the middle lake.” —Nineteenth-
century ballad February 1976 | Volume 27, Issue 2 But despite
all the creaky rationale formulated by Elliott’s friends, the
day was Perry’s and Perry’s alone. Through his own desperate
initiative he had, at the very last moment, come through the
smoke to win a lost battle. Henry Adams summed it up at the end
of his description of the action: “No process of argument …
could deprive Perry of the fame justly given him by the public,
or detract from the splendor of his reputation as the hero of
the war. More than any other battle of the time, the victory on
Lake Erie was won by the courage and obstinacy of a single man.”
As for Daniel Dobbins, he spent the rest of his life on the
Lakes, navigating them for forty years and never, he liked to
boast, losing so much as a spar. When the President awarded a
sword to each midshipman and sailing master who served well on
Lake Erie, Dobbins wrote sayi