Jefferson and his Colleagues, A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty An Abuse of Hospitality byJohnson, Allen
While Captain Bainbridge was eating his heart out in the Pasha's
prison at Tripoli, his thoughts reverting constantly to his lost
frigate, he reminded Commodore Preble, with whom he was allowed
to correspond, that "the greater part of our crew consists of
English subjects not naturalized in America." This incidental
remark comes with all the force of a revelation to those who have
fondly imagined that the sturdy jack-tars who manned the first
frigates were genuine American sea-dogs. Still more disconcerting
is the information contained in a letter from the Secretary of
the Treasury to President Jefferson, some years later, to the
effect that after 1803 American tonnage increased at the rate of
seventy thousand a year, but that of the four thousand seamen
required to man this growing mercantile marine, fully one-half
were British subjects, presumably deserters. How are these
uncomfortable facts to be explained? Let a third piece of
information be added. In a report of Admiral Nelson, dated 1803,
in which he broaches a plan for manning the British navy, it is
soberly stated that forty-two thousand British seamen deserted
"in the late war." Whenever a large convoy assembled at
Portsmouth, added the Admiral, not less than a thousand seamen
usually deserted from the navy.
The slightest acquaintance with the British navy when Nelson was
winning immortal glory by his victory at Trafalgar must convince
the most sceptical that his seamen for the most part were little
better than galley slaves. Life on board these frigates was
well-nigh unbearable. The average life of a seaman, Nelson
reckoned, was forty-five years. In this age before processes of
refrigeration had been invented, food could not be kept edible on
long voyages, even in merchantmen. Still worse was the fare on
men-of-war. The health of a crew was left to Providence. Little
or no forethought was exercised to prevent disease; the commonest
matters of personal hygiene were neglected; and when disease came
the remedies applied were scarcely to be preferred to the
disease. Discipline, always brutal, was symbolized by the
cat-o'-nine-tails. Small wonder that the navy was avoided like
the plague by every man and seaman.
Yet a navy had to be maintained: it was the cornerstone of the
Empire. And in all the history of that Empire the need of a navy
was never stronger than in these opening years of the nineteenth
century. The practice of impressing able men for the royal navy
was as old as the reign of Elizabeth. The press gang was an
odious institution of long standing--a terror not only to rogue
and vagabond but to every able-bodied seafaring man and waterman
on rivers, who was not exempted by some special act. It ransacked
the prisons, and carried to the navy not only its victims but the
germs of fever which infested public places of detention. But the
press gang harvested its greatest crop of seamen on the seas.
Merchantmen were stopped at sea, robbed of their able sailors,
and left to limp short-handed into port. A British East Indiaman
homeward bound in 1802 was stripped of so many of her crew in the
Bay of Biscay that she was unable to offer resistance to a French
privateer and fell a rich victim into the hands of the enemy. The
necessity of the royal navy knew no law and often defeated its
own purpose.
Death or desertion offered the only way of escape to the victim
of the press gang. And the commander of a British frigate dreaded
making port almost as much as an epidemic of typhus. The deserter
always found American merchantmen ready to harbor him. Fair
wages, relatively comfortable quarters, and decent treatment made
him quite ready to take any measures to forswear his allegiance
to Britannia. Naturalization papers were easily procured by a few
months' residence in any State of the Union; and in default of
legitimate papers, certificates of citizenship could be bought
for a song in any American seaport, where shysters drove a
thrifty traffic in bogus documents. Provided the English navy
took the precaution to have the description in his certificate
tally with his personal appearance, and did not let his tongue
betray him, he was reasonably safe from capture.
Facing the palpable fact that British seamen were deserting just
when they were most needed and were making American merchantmen
and frigates their asylum, the British naval commanders, with no
very nice regard for legal distinctions, extended their search
for deserters to the decks of American vessels, whether in
British waters or on the high seas. If in time of war, they
reasoned, they could stop a neutral ship on the high seas, search
her for contraband of war, and condemn ship and cargo in a prize
court if carrying contraband, why might they not by the same
token search a vessel for British deserters and impress them into
service again? Two considerations seem to justify this reasoning:
the trickiness of the smart Yankees who forged citizenship
papers, and the indelible character of British allegiance. Once
an Englishman always an Englishman, by Jove! Your hound of a
sea-dog might try to talk through his nose like a Yankee, you
know, and he might shove a dirty bit of paper at you, but he
couldn't shake off his British citizenship if he wanted to! This
was good English law, and if it wasn't recognized by other
nations so much the worse for them. As one of these redoubtable
British captains put it, years later: "'Might makes right' is the
guiding, practical maxim among nations and ever will be, so long
as powder and shot exist, with money to back them, and energy to
wield them." Of course, there were hair-splitting fellows, plenty
of them, in England and the States, who told you that it was one
thing to seize a vessel carrying contraband and have her
condemned by judicial process in a court of admiralty, and quite
another thing to carry British subjects off the decks of a
merchantman flying a neutral flag; but if you knew the blasted
rascals were deserters what difference did it make? Besides, what
would become of the British navy, if you listened to all the
fine-spun arguments of landsmen? And if these stalwart blue-water
Britishers could have read what Thomas Jefferson was writing at
this very time, they would have classed him with the armchair
critics who had no proper conception of a sailor's duty. "I hold
the right of expatriation," wrote the President, "to be inherent
in every man by the laws of nature, and incapable of being
rightfully taken away from him even by the united will of every
other person in the nation."
In the year 1805, while President Jefferson was still the victim
of his overmastering passion, and disposed to cultivate the good
will of England, if thereby he might obtain the Floridas,
unforeseen commercial complications arose which not only blocked
the way to a better understanding in Spanish affairs but strained
diplomatic relations to the breaking point. News reached Atlantic
seaports that American merchantmen, which had hitherto engaged
with impunity in the carrying trade between Europe and the West
Indies, had been seized and condemned in British admiralty
courts. Every American shipmaster and owner at once lifted up his
voice in indignant protest; and all the latent hostility to their
old enemy revived. Here were new orders-in-council, said they:
the leopard cannot change his spots. England is still
England--the implacable enemy of neutral shipping. "Never will
neutrals be perfectly safe till free goods make free ships or
till England loses two or three great naval battles," declared
the Salem Register.
The recent seizures were not made by orders-in-council, however,
but in accordance with a decision recently handed down by the
court of appeals in the case of the ship Essex. Following a
practice which had become common in recent years, the Essex had
sailed with a cargo from Barcelona to Salem and thence to Havana.
On the high seas she had been captured, and then taken to a
British port, where ship and cargo were condemned because the
voyage from Spain to her colony had been virtually continuous,
and by the so-called Rule of 1756, direct trade between a
European state and its colony was forbidden to neutrals in time
of war when such trade had not been permitted in time of peace.
Hitherto, the British courts had inclined to the view that when
goods had been landed in a neutral country and duties paid, the
voyage had been broken. Tacitly a trade that was virtually direct
had been countenanced, because the payment of duties seemed
evidence enough that the cargo became a part of the stock of the
neutral country and, if reshipped, was then a bona fide neutral
cargo. Suddenly English merchants and shippers woke to the fact
that they were often victims of deception. Cargoes would be
landed in the United States, duties ostensibly paid, and the
goods ostensibly imported, only to be reshipped in the same
bottoms, with the connivance of port officials, either without
paying any real duties or with drawbacks. In the case of the
Essex the court of appeals cut directly athwart these practices
by going behind the prima facie payment and inquiring into the
intent of the voyage. The mere touching at a port without
actually importing the cargo into the common stock of the country
did not alter the nature of the voyage. The crucial point was the
intent, which the court was now and hereafter determined to
ascertain by examination of facts. The court reached the
indubitable conclusion that the cargo of the Essex had never been
intended for American markets. The open-minded historian must
admit that this was a fair application of the Rule of 1756, but
he may still challenge the validity of the rule, as all neutral
countries did, and the wisdom of the monopolistic impulse which
moved the commercial classes and the courts of England to this
decision.[*]
[* Professor William E. Lingelbach in a notable article on
"England and Neutral Trade" in "The Military Historian and
Economist" (April, 1917) has pointed out the error committed by
almost every historian from Henry Adams down, that the Essex
decision reversed previous rulings of the court and was not in
accord with British law.]
Had the impressment of seamen and the spoliation of neutral
commerce occurred only on the high seas, public resentment would
have mounted to a high pitch in the United States; but when
British cruisers ran into American waters to capture or burn
French vessels, and when British men-of-war blockaded ports,
detaining and searching--and at times capturing--American
vessels, indignation rose to fever heat. The blockade of New York
Harbor by two British frigates, the Cambrian and the Leander,
exasperated merchants beyond measure. On board the Leander was a
young midshipman, Basil Hall, who in after years described the
activities of this execrated frigate.
"Every morning at daybreak, we set about arresting the progress
of all the vessels we saw, firing of guns to the right and left
to make every ship that was running in heave to, or wait until we
had leisure to send a boat on board 'to see, in our lingo, 'what
she was made of.' I have frequently known a dozen, and sometimes
a couple of dozen, ships lying a league or two off the port,
losing their fair wind, their tide, and worse than all their
market, for many hours, sometimes the whole day, before our
search was completed."[*]
[* "Fragments of Voyages and Travels," quoted by Henry Adams, in
"History of the United States", vol. III, p. 92.]
One day in April, 1806, the Leander, trying to halt a merchantman
that she meant to search, fired a shot which killed the helmsman
of a passing sloop. The boat sailed on to New York with the
mangled body; and the captain, brother of the murdered man,
lashed the populace into a rage by his mad words. Supplies for
the frigates were intercepted, personal violence was threatened
to any British officers caught on shore, the captain of the
Leander was indicted for murder, and the funeral of the murdered
sailor was turned into a public demonstration. Yet nothing came
of this incident, beyond a proclamation by the President closing
the ports of the United States to the offending frigates and
ordering the arrest of the captain of the Leander wherever found.
After all, the death of a common seaman did not fire the hearts
of farmers peacefully tilling their fields far beyond hearing of
the Leander's guns.
A year full of troublesome happenings passed; scores of American
vessels were condemned in British admiralty courts, and American
seamen were impressed with increasing frequency, until in the
early summer of 1807 these manifold grievances culminated in an
outrage that shook even Jefferson out of his composure and evoked
a passionate outcry for war from all parts of the country.
While a number of British war vessels were lying in Hampton Roads
watching for certain French frigates which had taken refuge up
Chesapeake Bay, they lost a number of seamen by desertion under
peculiarly annoying circumstances. In one instance a whole boat's
crew made off under cover of night to Norfolk and there publicly
defied their commander. Three deserters from the British frigate
Melampus had enlisted on the American frigate Chesapeake, which
had just been fitted out for service in the Mediterranean; but on
inquiry these three were proven to be native Americans who had
been impressed into British service. Unfortunately inquiry did
disclose one British deserter who had enlisted on the Chesapeake,
a loud-mouthed tar by the name of Jenkin Ratford. These
irritating facts stirred Admiral Berkeley at Halifax to
highhanded measures. Without waiting for instructions, he issued
an order to all commanders in the North Atlantic Squadron to
search the Chesapeake for deserters, if she should be encountered
on the high seas. This order of the 1st of June should be shown
to the captain of the Chesapeake as sufficient authority for
searching her.
On June 22, 1807, the Chesapeake passed unsuspecting between the
capes on her way to the Mediterranean. She was a stanch frigate
carrying forty guns and a crew of 375 men and boys; but she was
at this time in a distressing state of unreadiness, owing to the
dilatoriness and incompetence of the naval authorities at
Washington. The gundeck was littered with lumber and odds and
ends of rigging; the guns, though loaded, were not all fitted to
their carriages; and the crew was untrained. As the guns had to
be fired by slow matches or by loggerheads heated red-hot, and
the ammunition was stored in the magazine, the frigate was
totally unprepared for action. Commodore Barron, who commanded
the Chesapeake, counted on putting her into fighting trim on the
long voyage across the Atlantic.
Just ahead of the Chesapeake as she passed out to sea, was the
Leopard, a British frigate of fifty-two guns, which was
apparently on the lookout for suspicious merchantmen. It was not
until both vessels were eight miles or more southeast of Cape
Henry that the movements of the Leopard began to attract
attention. At about half-past three in the afternoon she came
within hailing distance and hove to, announcing that she had
dispatches for the commander. The Chesapeake also hove to and
answered the hail, a risky move considering that she was
unprepared for action and that the Leopard lay to the windward.
But why should the commander of the American frigate have
entertained suspicions?
A boat put out from the Leopard, bearing a petty officer, who
delivered a note enclosing Admiral Berkeley's order and
expressing the hope that "every circumstance . . . may be
adjusted in a manner that the harmony subsisting between the two
countries may remain undisturbed." Commodore Barron replied that
he knew of no British deserters on his vessel and declined in
courteous terms to permit his crew to be mustered by any other
officers but their own. The messenger departed, and then, for the
first time entertaining serious misgivings, Commodore Barron
ordered his decks cleared for action. But before the crew could
bestir themselves, the Leopard drew near, her men at quarters.
The British commander shouted a warning, but Barron, now
thoroughly alarmed, replied, "I don't hear what you say." The
warning was repeated, but again Barron to gain time shouted that
he could not hear. The Leopard then fired two shots across the
bow of the Chesapeake, and almost immediately without parleying
further--she was now within two hundred feet of her
victim--poured a broadside into the American vessel.
Confusion reigned on the Chesapeake. The crew for the most part
showed courage, but they were helpless, for they could not fire a
gun for want of slow matches or loggerheads. They crowded about
the magazine clamoring in vain for a chance to defend the vessel;
they yelled with rage at their predicament. Only one gun was
discharged and that was by means of a live coal brought up from
the galley after the Chesapeake had received a third broadside
and Commodore Barron had ordered the flag to be hauled down to
spare further slaughter. Three of his crew had already been
killed and eighteen wounded, himself among the number. The whole
action lasted only fifteen minutes.
Boarding crews now approached and several British officers
climbed to the deck of the Chesapeake and mustered her crew.
Among the ship's company they found the alleged deserters and,
hiding in the coal-hole, the notorious Jenkin Ratford. These four
men they took with them, and the Leopard, having fulfilled her
instructions, now suffered the Chesapeake to limp back to Hampton
Roads. "For the first time in their history," writes Henry
Adams,[*] "the people of the United States learned, in June, 1807,
the feeling of a true national emotion. Hitherto every public
passion had been more or less partial and one-sided; . . . but
the outrage committed on the Chesapeake stung through hidebound
prejudices, and made democrat and aristocrat writhe alike."
[* History of the United States, vol. IV, p. 27.]
Had President Jefferson chosen to go to war at this moment, he
would have had a united people behind him, and he was well aware
that he possessed the power of choice. "The affair of the
Chesapeake put war into my hand," he wrote some years later. "I
had only to open it and let havoc loose." But Thomas Jefferson
was not a martial character. The State Governors, to be sure,
were requested to have their militia in readiness, and the
Governor of Virginia was desired to call such companies into
service as were needed for the defense of Norfolk. The President
referred in indignant terms to the abuse of the laws of
hospitalitv and the "outrage" committed by the British commander;
but his proclamation only ordered all British armed vessels out
of American waters and forbade all intercourse with them if they
remained. The tone of the proclamation was so moderate as to seem
pusillanimous. John Randolph called it an apology. Thomas
Jefferson did not mean to have war. With that extraordinary
confidence in his own powers, which in smaller men would be
called smug conceit, he believed that he could secure disavowal
and honorable reparation for the wrong committed; but he chose a
frail intermediary when he committed this delicate mission to
James Monroe.
