162 years ago tonight one of the most audacious commando raids in American history unfolded in the dark waters of a North Carolina river. A 21-year-old Union lieutenant drove a tiny open launch straight at a monstrous Confederate ironclad, under a storm of gunfire, and sank her with a bomb on the end of a pole. His name was William Cushing, and the feat made him a legend. The problem was the CSS Albemarle, a powerful Confederate ironclad ram that had been terrorizing the North Carolina sounds. She had sunk Union ships, driven off the wooden blockading fleet, and helped the Confederates hold the town of Plymouth. The Union navy had no good answer for her. So Lieutenant William Cushing, a daring young officer with a reputation for reckless courage, proposed a plan that bordered on suicidal: sneak up the Roanoke River at night in a small steam launch and destroy the ironclad with a spar torpedo, an explosive charge mounted on a long pole that had to be jammed against the enemy hull from point-blank range. On the night of October 27, 1864, Cushing and a crew of volunteers made their run. They chugged some eight miles up the dark river, deep into Confederate territory, toward where the Albemarle lay moored at Plymouth. Astonishingly, they got close before being discovered. Then the alarm went up, and a bonfire was lit on the bank, throwing light across the water as Confederate riflemen and the ironclad's guns opened fire on the little launch. Cushing drove straight into it. The Albemarle was ringed by a protective boom of floating logs meant to keep attackers away, but Cushing drove his launch right up onto the logs, swung the long spar over, and lowered the torpedo beneath the ironclad's hull. At the very instant the Albemarle fired a cannon that could have blown the launch to splinters, the torpedo was detonated. The explosion tore a hole in the ironclad's hull, by one account big enough to drive a wagon through, and the great ram settled to the bottom of the river. The blast and the gunfire destroyed Cushing's launch too, throwing the men into the cold water under enemy fire. Most were killed or captured. But Cushing himself dove into the river, swam away through the darkness amid the chaos, and spent a harrowing day and night evading the enemy through the swamps before finally reaching the Union fleet and reporting, in effect, mission accomplished. The destruction of the Albemarle was a stunning success. It removed the ironclad threat, reopened the sounds to the Union navy, and directly led to the recapture of Plymouth days later. Cushing became one of the great heroes of the war, receiving the Thanks of Congress, while several of his crew, like Daniel George who pulled the firing lanyard, received the Medal of Honor. It remains one of the boldest single feats in the history of the United States Navy, a handful of men in a rowboat-sized launch who paddled into the enemy's lair and killed a warship.

On this day in 1776, a nearly 71-year-old man boarded a small warship and sailed out into an ocean crawling with enemy cruisers, on a mission that was arguably more important than any battle of the Revolution. His name was Benjamin Franklin, and he was going to France to win the war with words. The timing could not have been more desperate. It was the autumn of 1776, one of the lowest points of the whole war. Washington's army had been beaten badly around New York and was reeling. The Revolution was starving for money, for gunpowder, for weapons, for ships, for everything an army needs and a bankrupt young country did not have. There was really only one place to get it: France, Britain's great rival, who might just be willing to bankroll an enemy of the British Empire. Congress needed someone to go to Paris and make that happen, and they chose their best card, the most famous American alive. Franklin was already a celebrity across Europe, the self-made printer turned scientist who had tamed lightning with a kite, a genuine international sensation. But he was also an old man in failing health, racked with gout, and he was being asked to cross thousands of miles of winter ocean patrolled by the Royal Navy. And here is the part that took real courage: if a British ship had caught the Reprisal and taken him, Benjamin Franklin would not have been treated as a diplomat. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He would have been hauled to London and very likely hanged as a traitor. He sailed anyway. The crossing was rough and dangerous, the little ship even snapping up a couple of British vessels along the way, and the voyage left the old man exhausted and weak when he finally landed in France. But what Franklin did once he got there changed history. He understood that he could not win France over with arguments alone, so he turned himself into a performance. He played up the image the French adored: he set aside fancy European fashion, wore plain brown clothes and a simple fur cap, and presented himself as the wise, humble philosopher from the innocent wilderness of America. The French went wild for him. His face appeared on medallions, snuffboxes, and prints all over Paris. He was mobbed like a rock star. And he used every bit of that adoration as a weapon. Charming the French court, the salons, and the ministers, Franklin kept the aid flowing, loans, muskets, powder, and he patiently worked toward the real prize: a full military alliance. When the news of the American victory at Saratoga arrived, Franklin was perfectly positioned to close the deal, and in early 1778 France openly allied with the United States, bringing her fleets and armies into the war. That alliance is what ultimately made Yorktown, and American independence, possible. None of it happens without the voyage that began on October 26, 1776. Remember that an old, sick man, who could have stayed home honored and safe, instead sailed into danger for a cause that needed him, and then won over an empire with a fur cap and a smile. The Revolution was saved on battlefields, yes, but it was also saved in the drawing rooms of Paris, by the oldest and cleverest Founding Father, who proved that charm and patience, aimed well, can be as powerful as any cannon.