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young men of the country. He recommended employing gunboats in the Chesapeake, and cutting a canal from Lynhaven river to the east branch of the Elizabeth for their retreat. He suggested keeping our navy together in fleets in fortified harbors, for the purpose of compelling the enemy to also keep together in large fleets, and thus lose the ability to block up every harbor and river, and cut off our entire coasting trade by scattered cruisers. This was the maritime policy of the Revolution-but on reading Monroe's answer to his suggestions, Mr. Jefferson became satisfied that it was not adapted to existing circum

stances.

The public movements and avowals in New England pointing towards insurrection or disunion, drew out an expression. from him, in a letter to James Martin, September 20th, in which he seemed to favor the idea that it would be well to "solemnly put the question" to those States, whether they would remain in the Union, in obedience to the laws, or leave it? He had no doubt that a majority of their people would decide to remain.

The anti-war excitement in New England had gone on rapidly increasing since the demonstrations already recorded. On the 15th of June (1813), Josiah Quincy, who was now out of Congress, and a member of the Massachusetts Senate, reported a preamble and resolution in the latter body adverse to passing a vote of thanks to Captain Lawrence for the capture of the Peacock. The preamble set forth that former resolutions of this kind had "given great discontent to many of the good people of the commonwealth, it being considered by them as an encouragement and excitement to the continuance of the present unjust, unnecessary and iniquitous war;" that the Senate had a high sense of the "naval skill and military and civil virtues of Capt. James Lawrence," and were "withheld from acting on said proposition solely from considerations relative to the nature and principles of the present war;" and "to the end that all misapprehension on this subject might be obviated," the following resolution was offered:

"Resolved, as the sense of the Senate of Massachusetts, that, in a war like the present, waged without justifiable cause, and prosecuted in a manner which indicates that conquest and ambition are its real motives, it is not becoming a moral and religious people to express any approbation of military or naval exploits which are not immediately connected with the defence of our seacoast and soil."

The preamble and resolution were adopted, and remained on the journals of the Massachusetts Senate nearly eleven years, when they were expunged by the order of that body. Fifteen days before their adoption, Lawrence had sailed from Boston roads in the unlucky frigate Chesapeake, to meet the Shannon. The Chesapeake was captured. The naval historian, Cooper, says, that at the close of the action, "both ships were charnelhouses." Lawrence fell mortally wounded, using an exclamation which has become a household word among Americans— "Don't give up the ship."

The Massachusetts Senate was doubtless unapprised of this catastrophe, at the time of its action just mentioned. But neither it, nor the governor, nor council, nor the prominent Federalists of Boston, were unapprised of the time when the mangled corpses of Lawrence and his first-lieutenant, Ludlow, were borne back from Halifax for funeral rites and interment. They did not attend his funeral, and a Federal newspaper of Boston, to deter its partisans from being present, threw out the innuendo that the ceremonies to be observed on the occasion were political in their object.'

On the 26th of June, Quincy, from a joint committee of both houses of the Massachusetts Legislature, presented a report and resolutions, declaring that the admission of States "not comprehended within the original limits of the United States," was unauthorized by the letter "or the spirit" of the Constitution, and that "it was the interest and duty of the people of Massachusetts to oppose the admission of such States into the Union, as a measure tending to the dissolution of the confederacy." The report and resolutions were adopted.

On the 15th of July a remonstrance was agreed to by the same Legislature, denouncing the continuance of the war after the repeal of the British orders in council, as improper and impolitic, because it exhibited distrust of the good faith of England, and countenanced the imputation of coöperation with France-which would tend to stir up the entire British people against us. It denounced the war as unjust, because we had not removed proper causes of complaint by providing against

The Boston Advertiser asked: "What honor can be paid where a Crowninshield is chief mourner and a Story chief priest?" Capt. G. Crowninshield had gone at his own expense in a cartel to Halifax, and brought back the bodies. Joseph Story, Associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, was to deliver the funeral oration at Salem.

employing British seamen-and because we had not exhausted negotiation on the subject of impressment. "Under such circumstances," said this remarkable paper, "silence towards the Government would be treachery to the people." The Legislature concluded with an appeal to "the Searcher of all hearts," to attest "the purity of their motives!"

If this document meant to assert that we had not offered to make any reasonable arrangements to prevent the employment of British seamen, provided England would cease to impress ours, it asserted a palpable and gross untruth. And what terms are fit to characterize a declaration, coming from men of common information, that we had not fairly exhausted negotiation?'

The eastern ultra-Federalists were in the habit of asserting at this period that the number of impressments had been very small. A committee of the Massachusetts Legislature actually reported to that body that the number of impressed citizens of that State on board of British public vessels, at the opening of the war, was only eleven. General credit was ostensibly given to the declaration made by Pickering in his letter to Governor Sullivan in 1808, that Great Britain only "desired to obtain her own subjects," that "the evil we complained of arose from the impossibility of always distinguishing the persons of the two nations." The best information which could be obtained placed the number of impressments of American citizens prior to the declaration of war, as high at least as six thousand; and the accuracy of the report of the Massachusetts Legislative Committee can therefore be readily estimated. Mr. Pickering's assertions corresponded as little with known facts as they did with his own official declarations when he was Secretary of State.'

1 Not a President, not a Secretary of State, not an American minister in England since the formation of our government, had omitted to earnestly remonstrate against impressment, and urge a fair and pacific settlement of the question. Our appeals were utterly disregarded. When the practice had recently led to an outrage on one of our national vessels which England herself did not pretend to justify, she haughtily refused to allow any negotiations for the removal of the cause of the offence to be connected with the subject of reparation. She defiantly chose this period to legalize and extend the practice, by a royal proclamation. And finally, after more than twenty years of attempted negotiation on our part, she formally refused to treat with us further on the topic, and at the same time continued impressments on the broadest and most fraudulent scale. See next note.

2 In Pickering's instructions to Rufus King, Minister at the Court of London, June 8th, 1796, he said: The long but fruitless attempts that have been made to protect American seamen from British impresses, prove that the subject is in its nature difficult. But there is another cogent reason for an exemption from impresses in the British colonies --that the practice will be, as it has always been, subject to monstrous abuses; and the supreme power is so remote that the evils become irremediable before redress can even be sought for." He officially wrote Mr. King, September 10th, 1796: "For the

It is not here asserted that the better class of New England. Federalists either engaged in, or directly advocated the propriety

British Government, then, to make professions of respect to the rights of our citizens and willingness to release them, and yet deny the only means of ascertaining those rights, is an insulting tantalism." He officially reported to Congress, December 9th, 1799: Admiral Parker paid no attention to the agent's application on behalf of our impressed seamen ; the admiral having determined, and informed the agent of the determination, that no proofs would be regarded by him, unless specially presented by the American Government through the British minister; nor then but in the single case of native Americans. Under this determination there will be detained, not only the subjects of his Britannic Majesty, naturalized since the peace of 1783, but all who, born elsewhere, were then resident in, and had become citizens of the United States; also, all foreigners, as Germans, Swedes, Danes, Portuguese, and Italians, who voluntarily serve in the vessels of the United States. And it is a fact that such foreigners have frequently been impressed; although their languages and other circumstances demonstrate that they were not British subjects."

We could readily select many other equivalent declarations from the official dispatches and reports of Pickering.

Rufus King, our minister to England, is accused in no quarter of having entertained unreasonable prejudices against that government. He officially wrote Pickering, April 13th, 1797, that since the preceding July he had applied for the discharge of two hundred and seventy-one impressed seamen who, as Americans, had claimed his interference that the admiralty had ordered eighty-six of them to be discharged, had detained thirty-seven as British subjects or as American volunteers," and in regard to the remaining one hundred and forty-eight, made no answer, "the ships on board of which these seamen were detained having in many instances sailed before an examination was made, in consequence of his application." And King further declared: "It is certain that some of those who have applied to me are not American citizens, but the exceptions are in my opinion few; and the evidence, exclusive of certificates, has been such, as in most cases to satisfy me that the applicants were real Americans, who had been forced into the British service; and who, with singular constancy have generally persevered in refusing pay and bounty, though in many instances they have been in the service more than two years." "King wrote home to the Secretary of State, March 15th, 1799, that not only seamen who spoke the English language, and who were evidently English or American subjects, but also all Danish, Swedish, and other foreign seamen, who could not receive American protections, were indiscriminately taken from their voluntary service in our neutral employ and forced into the war, in the naval service of Great Britain." Silas Talbot, American agent in the West Indies, for the relief of impressed seamen, wrote Pickering, July 4th, 1797, that Captain Otway, of the British frigate Ceres, ordered American seamen to be brought to the gangway and whipped for writing to their agent to get them discharged."

Marshall's complaints when Secretary of State were as pointed and as criminatory towards the British Government as Pickering's and we need not say that the same was true of all the Republican Secretaries of State.

We could present the resolutions passed by the merchants of nearly all the principal American cities, at different periods, specially denouncing the gross and abusive impressment of our seamen by England. A Federal meeting held in the city of New York, April 26th, 1806, appointed a committee, two of whom were Rufus King and Oliver Wolcott, to report resolutions on the subject. The resolutions declare among other things, "that the suffering foreign armed ships to station themselves off our harbor, and there to stop, search, and capture our vessels-to impress, wound, and murder our citizens, is a gross and criminal neglect of the highest duties of Government, and that an Administration which patiently permits the same is not entitled to the confidence of a brave and free people." The resolutions passed unanimously.

Commodore Rogers forwarded to the Secretary of the Navy (January 14th, 1813), the muster books of the Moselle and Sappho captured by him, by which it appeared that about an eighth of their seamen-that is to say, between thirty and forty-were impressed Americans; and Rogers remarked: "It will appear if there is only

a quarter part of that proportion on board their other vessels, that they have an infinitely greater number of Americans in their service than any American has yet had an idea of." Ten Americans were found on board of the Guerriere-and Captain Dacre declared to the court martial which afterwards tried him, that "what considerably weakened his quarters, was permitting the Americans belonging to the ship to quit their quarters when the Constitution hoisted her colors; and he manfully added, "that though it deprived him of the men, he thought it was his duty."

Impressments were often, in all cases where resistance was attempted, conducted with unsparing severity. But even where nothing but bold remonstrance was interposed, the cutlass and club were freely resorted to. Those who refused to go on duty

of smuggling or furnishing supplies to the enemy. But, some of them publicly held a line of argument which was well calculated to teach baser men that such offences were venial under existing circumstances; and it is certain that those practices were

were scourged, placed in irons, brought up again and scourged on the raw wounds of past whippings, until they succumbed. Their American protections in many instances were torn up before their eyes. At their pretended examinations, when taken on board British ships, commanders often treated their statements with brutal levity, affecting not to hear a portion of what they said, or turning it off with a joke, that showed that they made no pretensions to justice. Sometimes wretches whom everybody on board knew had never seen the prisoner before, would emerge from the press-gang and say: "Sir, I know this fellow. He was a schoolmate of mine. Tom, you know well enough, so don't sham Yankee any more." We cannot encumber these pages with the special proofs of the preceding statements, but every one of them rests on the affidavits of American seamen of known and unquestionable character-and some of them were sworn to in different instances by a number of such witnesses. The tearing up of protections and the whippings were pretty uniform circumstances among the petty British commanders. The scene of the captain affecting not to hear, the press-gang witness, etc., took place on board the Ceres.

To show that the most positive testimony of American citizenship was treated with contempt, not only by petty military officials, but that it (as we have understood, Mr. King already to intimate), met with intentional neglect and evasion from the highest British tribunals having cognizance of the subject, we are induced to give the particulars of a case-not because it presents more striking features than others, but because we chance to know near relatives of the impressed man, and therefore have a moral personal certainty on the question of his nativity; and because we possess a sad and illustrative sequel of the affair, not, so far as we know, hitherto made public. Hiram Thayer was born in the town of Greenwich, Connecticut. A letter from Commodore Decatur to the Secretary of the Navy, dated New London, March 18th, 1814, stated the following facts: That Thayer was impressed in 1803, and when the British ship Statira was put in commission, about 1808, he was transferred to her. Gen. Lyman, the American consul at London, had applied to the Lords Commissioners for his discharge in vain. A certificate of his nativity from the selectmen, town clerk, and minister of Greenwich were forwarded to Mitchell, the resident agent for American prisoners at Halifax; but still he was not released. He wrote to his father that on representing his case to Captain Stackpole of the Statira the latter told him if he refused to fight his countrymen "he should be tied to the mast and shot at like a dog." The Statira was one of the blockading squadron off New London in 1814, and on the 14th of March, Decatur sent off John Thayer, the father, with a flag, to ask the release of his son, and carrying a note to Captain Capel from Decatur, saying "that he felt persuaded that the application of the father, furnished as he was, with conclusive evidence of the nativity and identity of his son, would induce an immediate order for his discharge." "The son,' says Decatur, "descried his father at a distance in the boat, and told the lieutenant of the Statira, it was his father," and he adds: "I understand the feelings manifested by the old man on receiving the hand of his son, proved beyond all other evidence the property he had in him. There was not a doubt left on the mind of a single British officer of Hiram Thayer's being an American citizen. And yet he is detained, not a prisoner of war, but compelled under the most cruel threats, to serve the enemies of his country." Thayer "had so recommended himself by his sobriety, industry, and seamanship," as to be appointed a boatswain's mate: two hundred and fifty pounds sterling were then due him-but he refused to receive any bounty, or advance, lest it might afford some pretext for denying him his discharge when a proper application should be made for it. Captain Capel "regretted it was not in his power to comply with " Decatur's "request;" but he said he would "forward his application to the commanderin-chief by the earliest opportunity, and he had do doubt he would order his immediate discharge.'

Here, we believe published accounts drop the story of Hiram Thayer. We knew an uncle of his, who was a member of the New York Legislature in 1845, and also other members of his family. The uncle wrote a letter for our inspection in which he states that Hiram Thayer was not discharged until some time after the close of the war-that he then wrote to his father that he should be home at a specified time-that the father proceeded to the port to which he was to return-that when the ship arrived in which he was expected, the unfortunate father was informed that his son had fallen overboard and perished-that a trunk and some clothing bearing the name of his son were delivered to him, etc.

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