Education and Early Career
He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he attended the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating, he entered service in the United States Navy as a midshipman in 1800.
Retained in the navy reduction of 1801, Biddle served in the war against the Barbary pirates. The ship he was in, USS Philadelphia, struck rocks off Tripoli, and along with his Commodore, William Bainbridge, he was kept imprisoned by the pirates for 19 months.
During the War of 1812, Biddle was first lieutenant in USS Wasp. After this, he was in command of the sloop USS Hornet when she defeated HMS Penguin. Later, in 1817, he was sent to the Columbia River to formally take over the Oregon Country for the United States, which was completed in 1818.
After the war, Biddle performed various duties in the Gulf of Mexico, the South Atlantic and the Mediterranean. In 1830, Biddle and US consul David Offly negotiated and concluded a treaty with the Sublime Porte. The treaty was later used by US diplomats to claim extraterritorial privileges for US citizens in the Ottoman Empire.
Read more about this topic: James Biddle
Famous quotes containing the words education, early and/or career:
“Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)