Pennies for Old Ironsides

There were two major points when the USS Constitution threatened to go out of commission, which would have meant preventing the ship from still standing today as a Bostonian monument. The first was in 1830 when the ship was rotten and was about to get scrapped for parts by the Navy. Oliver Wendell Holmes, at this point, wrote “Old Ironsides” (see item below), and motivated a large swath of the populus to prevent this from happening.

After three more decades, the boat was over 130 years old, was rotten, and was in a dire place. Curtis D. Wilbur, the Secretary of the Navy, requested a $400,000 donation from Congress to renovate the ship, but he also thought it would be “a fine gesture” for the countrymen and “particularly the school children” to donate to the renovations. The plan was to have each American school child donate two and a half cents to the cause, which added up to $154,000 in practice. Other various programs were implemented which involved selling souvenirs, and a total of $617,000 ended up being raised, though Congress had to contribute about half as much in order to finish repairs. Wilbur also apparently refused to accept larger donations, on the premise that this was a grassroots effort. Apparently, there was even a Hollywood film about Old Ironsides which helped increase the ship’s presence in popular culture, and inevitably led to the increasing number of small donors.  

The informal campaign led by Oliver Wendell Holmes and the formal campaign "Pennies for Old Ironsides" were both grassroots efforts to save the USS Constitution. These campaigns were successful because they reached millions of people and got them excited about a ship they will probably never set foot on. In fact, the USS Constitution, for these people, was a symbol of America’s victories and history. David Harvey writes about community action in, “The Urban Process under Capitalism: A Framework for Analysis” : “The principle of community can then become a springboard for class action rather than an antidote to class struggle.” Indeed by conjuring images of patriotism, Americans were inspired to act as advocates for the USS Constitution.