JOHN DAVIS LONG
LONG, JOHN DAVIS, governor of Massachusetts, secretary of the navy of the United States. The year 1898 was a revolutionary one in American history. The events of that year lifted the United States from the position of the arbiter in American affairs, with minor standing abroad, into that of a world-power; vastly expanding the ideas and aims of its statesmen and teaching the powers of Europe that a new planet had drifted into the field of world politics. It was the brief war with Spain that made this vital change in the situation; and the events of this war, therefore, bring into special prominence all who were immediately concerned in its management. This may be especially said of John Davis Long, secretary of the navy during that period, in view of the leading part which the navy of the United States played in the contest. It was the thunder of the guns of our ironclads that made the radical change in the situation; and this fact renders a sketch of the career of the man who controlled the movements of the American navy during this year of political evolution, of importance and interest. While he did not fight the battles of the ships, he certainly had a hand in preparing for them.
John Davis Long comes to us from pioneer American stock, tracing his ancestry back to James Chilton, of the Mayflower Pilgrims, and Thomas Clark, of the Ann. His maternal ancestry goes back to the same pioneer period, being traceable to Dolor Davis, who came to New England in 1634. Good colonial stock it was, vigorous and industrious, and among other members of marked distinction in the Davis family are Governor and United States Senator John Davis and Governor George D. Robinson both of Massachusetts. The ability of John Davis Long seems to have been in a considerable degree hereditary, his father, Zadoc Long, being a man of fine intellectual powers, a diligent and discriminating reader, an excellent conversationalist, and a skilled writer in prose and verse. The most cultivated man of his region, it was his life habit to write down his daily thoughts and reflections, and the diary which he kept for fifty
