Alexandria, Virginia
February 28, 1844 

A pleasure cruise on the Potomac River turned into the deadliest single-day loss of senior government officials in American history when the world's largest naval cannon exploded on the deck of the USS Princeton. Secretary of State Abel Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Thomas Gilmer, and four others were killed instantly in front of four hundred horrified guests. President John Tyler survived only because someone handed him a glass of champagne at the foot of the ladder. Among the dead was David Gardiner, whose twenty-three-year-old daughter Julia fainted at the news and was carried off the ship in the President's arms. Four months later, she married him. The blast derailed the annexation of Texas, reshaped Tyler's cabinet, and launched a romance born from carnage aboard the Navy's most celebrated warship. The gun was called the Peacemaker. Nobody renamed it.

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