An Old-Time Grievance
“ LET all who are not callous to every tender human feeling guess at least how a fond mother must feel, what anguish must wring her heart, on having a beloved son, in a state of minority, torn from the arms of his parents, from brothers and sisters, and from the country in which he was born, and hurried to distant climes, in a state of servitude, awful and dangerous, where if he should be in distress (as he doubtless is) his cries cannot be heard, nor his wants met, by those to whom he is as dear as life.”
So wrote, in March, 1812, Mrs. Ruth Fling, wife of Lemuel Fling, of Cornish, New Hampshire, to Samuel Dinsmoor, member of Congress from the district in which they all lived. Her letter was inclosed with another, written by her husband, to Mr. Dinsmoor, in which was narrated in manly language the story of the impressment of his son Calvin. Mrs. Fling’s letter, of which the above passage forms only a small part, was a prolonged wail. In our times bereaved mothers do not offer to “ sit down in mournful silence, humbly praying that if we can meet no more on earth we may, through the merits of a glorious Redeemer, meet on the shore of the heavenly Canaan, where the din of war, the chain of slavery, and the apparatus of death shall be known no more forever ; ” but that the mother of Calvin Fling felt it necessary to express her grief in such involved phrases is no reason to question either the sincerity or the depth of her sorrow.
The case of this young man was not a typical example of those impressments which, together with the Orders in Council, were assigned as the causes of the declaration of war against Great Britain in June, 1812. But it illustrates the contemptuous disregard of American rights displayed by British naval officers, during a period of twenty years, without rebuke from their government. Calvin Fling, at the age of twenty years, was not a sailor, but a journeyman saddler. He had worked at his trade in Montreal and Quebec about three years when, in the streets of the latter city, he was impressed by a gang from the British sloop of war Rattler, and carried on board that vessel, where history loses sight of him.
No American who studies attentively the diplomatic history of his country from the definitive treaty of peace in 1783 until the peace of Ghent — a period that covers almost a generation — can require any further reason than he will find therein for the bitter and revengeful feelings toward England which were then almost universally entertained. It is not easy to detach from the rest one of the numerous grievances of which every President, from Washington to Madison, complained, and, having isolated that single controversy, to give its history in intelligible form ; but in this paper no reference which does not seem to be absolutely necessary will be made to the other general and particular assaults by Great Britain on the rights of neutrals. Of course it is no part of the present purpose to inquire whether or not England was a greater offender — except as its power for mischief was greater — than France. We will confine attention, as far as it is possible to do so, to the one subject of British impressments.
The correspondence on this subject was begun during Washington’s first term. Gouverneur Morris, commissioner to Great Britain, had a conversation with the English foreign minister on the subject, and it was then suggested on the part of the latter that all American seamen should carry certificates of their citizenship. This proposition was rejected by Mr. Jefferson, who, as secretary of state, wrote to Mr. Thomas Pinckney, our minister plenipotentiary, in 1792, that it was a “ condition never yet submitted to by any nation.” He indicated briefly the reasons why it should not be accepted. The strongest of these reasons was that, implying an admission of the principle that all seamen who were not American citizens might be rightfully seized from American vessels (which he did not concede), it would lead to the impressment of Americans who might happen not to be provided with certificates. The practice of carrying certificates, or “protections,” was soon afterward adopted, — without prejudice to the American contention on the general principle, — and proved completely ineffectual to prevent the impressment of our citizens.
This system was established by act of Congress, approved May 28, 1796, by which it was provided that persons should be appointed to reside abroad, — one of them to be stationed in London, — to act as agents for demanding the release of impressed American seamen; and that collectors of customs should open books for the registry of sailors who produced proof of American citizenship. Upon furnishing such proof certificates were to be issued to seamen, in a prescribed form, that they were American citizens. This act, as originally passed by the House of Representatives, required collectors to state in the certificates whether the holder was a native or a naturalized citizen. The Senate struck out the clause. The refusal to distinguish between the two classes of citizens probably made very little difference in the British practice, though in the diplomatic correspondence that followed the issue of certificates to naturalized citizens was made an excuse for numerous complaints that the protections were in many cases fraudulent and untrue. British naval officers were accustomed to treat the protections as wholly valueless for purposes of evidence.
The subject of impressment was resumed in the instructions given by Timothy Pickering, secretary of state, to Rufus King, our minister to London, in 1796. The extent of American concession at this time was that American vessels should, on arrival in a British port, report their crew at the proper office ; and “ if afterward any addition be made to them by British subjects. these may be taken away. In the ports of Great Britain and Ireland the impress of British subjects found on board our vessels must doubtless be admitted.” A few months later Mr. King had occasion to demand the release of one Maxwell, an American, who had been impressed and carried away on H. M. ship Sandwich. England refused to comply, on the ground that Maxwell was “married and settled at Bristol.” Reasons similar to this were then and always afterward given, whenever it was possible. Mr. King, in an exceedingly strong dispatch to Lord Grenville, convicted the British government of inconsistency.
It was about this time that the British government began to complain of the granting of protections by consuls, and notice was given to Mr. King that the practice must be discontinued. Our minister was also notified that all demands, for the restoration of American seamen must come through him. The concentration of the business in his hands revealed to him the astonishing magnitude of the evil. Between July 1, 1796, and April 1, 1797, he made application for no fewer than two hundred and seventy-one seamen. Of this number, eighty-six were given up ; thirtyseven were detained “ as British subjects, or as American volunteers, or for want of proof that they are Americans ; ” and the remaining one hundred and forty-eight applications received no answer.
Three years later the two governments almost succeeded in coming to an agreement. Mr. Pitt’s ministry had been superseded by that of Mr. Addington, and Lord Grenville was replaced, as foreign secretary, by Lord Hawkesbury. Mr. King pressed the American grievance forcibly upon the attention of the new government, and finally the negotiation resulted in the draft of an article, to which both Lord Hawkesbury and Mr. King assented. Impressment on the high seas, from American vessels, was to be wholly discontinued. Lord Hawkesbury submitted the article to Lord St. Vincent, the first lord of the admiralty, who insisted upon excepting from the operation of the treaty vessels navigating the “ narrow seas.” This was a re-assertion by England of the old principle of mare clausum, — of an exclusive jurisdiction over the seas surrounding the British Isles. Not only was it inadmissible as favoring a pretension which no maritime nation conceded, but as rendering the article of little value. So much of American trade passed through the English Channel, St. George’s Channel, and the North Sea that if impressment in these waters was to continue the evil complained of would be hardly diminished.
Mr. King expressed his belief that if he had further time he could persuade the English government to yield this point. Our government seemed to think that, having once reduced the disagreement to a single issue regarding the narrow seas, it had obtained an advantage, and had made a defense of the general system of impressment impossible. The British ministers, instead of arguing about the matter, simply declined to treat, and the matter rested a year or two. Mr. Madison, secretary of state, sent to Mr. Monroe, who succeeded Mr. King at London, full instructions for the negotiation of a treaty, and a projet of such a treaty, the first article of which related to impressments. In this dispatch, dated January 5, 1804, Mr. Madison presented the matter strongly and at length. He denied explicitly the right of Great Britain to search for and seize her own subjects on board American vessels, not only on general grounds, but because the practice must necessarily lead to many abuses. He protested against it particularly because it placed the dearest rights of seamen visited by a British naval officer at the mercy of that officer, who was immediately interested in denying him all rights. It not only laid upon the sailor whose services were desired the burden of proof that he was an American citizen, but it gave the power to the officer to disregard, and even — as in many cases happened — to destroy, that proof.
The secretary warmly resented the idea that in granting protections to American seamen the United States admitted the right of Great Britain to take from our ships men who were not American citizens, as well as the supposition that the certificates of citizenship were meant to protect the holders under their own or under any other neutral flag. “ The document is given to prove their real character, in situations to which neither the law of nations nor the law of their own country is applicable ; in other words, to protect them within the jurisdiction of the British laws, and to secure to them within every other jurisdiction the rights and immunities due to them.”
Mr. Monroe had progressed so far as to lay the project of a treaty before Lord Hawkesbury, and to find the secretary not indisposed to consider the subject, when Mr. Addington’s government was defeated. Mr. Pitt was recalled to the head of affairs, and Lord Harrowby became foreign secretary.
The next step on the part of our government was to join Mr. William Pinkney and Mr. Monroe, as commissioners extraordinary and plenipotentiary, for the negotiation of a treaty. Mr. Pinkney had resided in London eight years, from 1796, as commissioner under Jay’s treaty, and had been successful in his mission. The instructions to the two envoys (May 17, 1806) began, as the instructions to Mr. Monroe alone had begun, with the subject of impressments. Mr. Madison referred to the “growing impatience ” of this country under the licentiousness with which the practice was pursued, and told the commissioners plainly that “ so indispensable is some adequate provision for the case that the President makes it a necessary preliminary to any stipulation requiring a repeal of the act shutting the market of the United States against certain British manufactures.” It was only in August, 1806, that Lord Holland and Lord Auckland were appointed to treat with the American envoys. The matter of impressment was a stumbling-block from the very beginning. The British agents proposed, instead of the prohibition of impressments, to which Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney were instructed to adhere, a provision that the persons forming the crews of American vessels should be furnished with authentic proofs of citizenship, the form of which was to be settled by treaty ; and these certificates were to be a complete protection to those to whom they related, “ but that, subject to such protections, the ships of war should continue to visit and impress on the main ocean as heretofore.”
This was wholly inadmissible, both because it would have conceded a right of sovereignty which no self-respecting nation could yield, and because such a regulation would imply the right of British naval officers to seize all seamen, not Americans or British, to whose services our vessels had a right, and Great Britain had none. The objection of England to forego the practice was then, as it had always been, based, when all other arguments failed, upon the allegation that American vessels were made an asylum for British deserters in large numbers ; and that unless the privilege were reserved of visiting such vessels and reclaiming deserters the evil would grow in magnitude. Our answer to this was an offer to pass a law making it a penal offense for American shipmasters to give shelter or employment to British deserters.
Although the British negotiators expressed serious doubts if such a law could be executed, they suggested amendments, and among other things asked that the American envoys should enlarge the scope of the term “ deserters ” by making it read “seafaring people quitting their service,” so as to include in its application deserters from the merchant service. This, and some other changes, having been consented to, Lords Holland and Auckland “ seemed to give their assent ” to an article discontinuing impressments on these conditions ; and the next meeting of the commissioners was appointed for a time sufficiently distant to allow the matter to be considered in cabinet council. The ministers rejected the article, absolutely. As though the whole subject were new to them, they requested the law officer of the crown to state the principles on which Great Britain claimed the right forcibly to take its seamen from the merchant vessels of other powers, on the high seas. His reply furnished the ground on which the government refused to treat for the discontinuance of impressments. He said that the king had a right to require the services of all his seafaring subjects against the enemy, and to take them by force wherever found, if not within the territorial limits of another powder ; and that, as the high seas were extra-territorial, the merchant vessels of other powers were not admitted to possess such a jurisdiction as to protect British subjects from the exercise of the king’s prerogative over them.
After so broad a statement of the principle, showing that England had not advanced a step toward our position, it was manifestly out of the question to obtain any treaty stipulation. But a way out of the difficulty seemed to be found. Lords Holland and Auckland proposed to send a formal note to the American envoys, in which the most explicit assurances should be given that, while the British government could not abandon its rights, it would endeavor to act in the future so as to give no further ground of complaints. “ They intimated,” say Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney, in reporting upon this affair to Mr. Madison, “ that their government gave at present no cause of offense to the United States by impressments, and that we might be satisfied if it would continue to pursue the same policy.” The form in which the promised assurance was given is of sufficient importance to be transcribed, in part at least : —
“ That his majesty’s government, animated by an earnest desire to remove every cause of dissatisfaction, has directed his majesty’s commissioners to give to Mr. Monroe and to Mr. Pinkney the most positive assurances that instructions have been given, and shall be repeated and enforced, for the observance of the greatest caution in the impressing of British seamen ; and that the strictest care shall be taken to preserve the citizens of the United States from any molestation or injury ; and that immediate and prompt redress shall be afforded upon any representation of injury sustained by them.
“ That the commissioners of the United States well know that no recent causes of complaint have occurred, and that no probable inconvenience can result, from the postponement of an article subject to so many difficulties.”
Although Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney were under instructions which made a discontinuance of impressment, by treaty, indispensably necessary to an agreement upon other points, they persuaded themselves that this assurance was quite as binding as a formal treaty would be, particularly as the English commissioners implied, by their use of the expression “ the postponement of an article,” relating to impressment, that the subject would be resumed and a formal treaty made. Accordingly, they proceeded to negotiate upon the other matters in dispute, and concluded a treaty on the 31st of December, 1806. In transmitting it the American envoys informed Mr. Madison that they believed the practice of searching our merchant vessels for British seamen would be essentially, if not completely, abandoned, and they added that the British commissioners had assured them that we were as secure under the policy adopted as we should be made by treaty.
Before these documents reached the United States a dispatch was on the way from Mr. Madison to Messrs. Monroe and Pinkney, foreshadowing the rejection of any treaty which contained no stipulation on the subject of impressments. The President attached no importance to the assurance given in the note sent by the British commissioners. He thought that not only the desire of the British government, but “the propensities of British naval commanders,” should be taken into account; and that the reasons for declining to give precise and peremptory security against the abuse of the right claimed were trivial and frivolous. As for the assertion that the United States had no recent cause of complaint on the score of impressments, he almost lost his temper in saying how egregiously mistaken the British government was on this point. Upon the receipt of the treaty these views were repeated, and, as is well known, Mr. Jefferson did not even ask the advice of the Senate upon ratifying the treaty.
Here, to all intents, the diplomatic history of the matter terminates. Mr. Monroe, to be sure, sent from Richmond, in February, 1808, after his return home, a document, in which, with characteristic verbosity, he vindicated his action. But when he did so the rejection of the treaty was already ancient history. The negotiation with the British government was not resumed. A few months after the failure of the Monroe and Pinkney treaty, in June, 1807, occurred the attack by the Leopard on the Chesapeake. Here again the object was to seize men claimed as British deserters, not only from an American vessel, but from a ship of war. In this case, too, only one of the four men claimed and taken from the Chesapeake was ultimately insisted upon by Great Britain as one of its subjects.
This, then, was a case of impressment in its most offensive form. But the circumstances surrounding the affair caused it to be treated in the correspondence as an outrage upon the national flag rather than as an example of the practice against which our government had protested so long and so earnestly. Yet it was a most striking illustration both of the “ propensities ” of British naval commanders, and of the real but unacknowledged approval of their most insolent acts by the government. For this attack was deliberately planned and expressly ordered by Admiral Berkeley ; and while the ministers expressed their regret at such an occurrence, they not only declined to censure the admiral, but formally and openly praised his zeal. Great Britain did, nevertheless, after the affair of the Chesapeake, publicly disclaim a right to visit and search the national vessels of other powers with which it was at peace.
From that time forward the subject of impressments was referred to only incidentally in the correspondence that passed between the two governments. The cessation of the discussion resulted, however, not from a discontinuance of the practice, but from the fact that new, if not more important and exciting, topics pressed for consideration. The exclusion of British armed vessels from our ports ; the embargo ; the Orders in Council, and Napoleon’s Berlin and Milan decrees ; the temporary hope that our grievances would be redressed, excited by the assurances of Mr. Erskine, British minister at Washington from 1807 until 1809 ; the emphatic refusal of the king’s government to make good Mr. Erskine’s promises ; the insulting and purposely offensive insinuations of that minister’s successor, Mr. Jackson ; the John Henry mare’s-nest, — all these events were crowded into a space of about five years, and left no time for a discussion of the old grievance of impressments.
But it was not forgotten. When the war party gained ascendency in Congress, and won over Mr. Madison by a threat that he should not be reëlected as President unless he was willing to advise an appeal to arms, British impressments of American seamen was one of the two causes assigned for declaring war. What a triumph for Young America was that act ! Clay, Calhoun, Lowndes, and Cheves — three of them under thirty years of age, and the fourth only thirty-five, each of them serving his first term in Congress — were the real leaders of the country and the makers of the war. Clay was Speaker, and Calhoun drew up the first report, of November 29, 1811, which foreshadowed events to come. In that report, in Madison’s war message of June 1, 1812, and in the report by which the advice extorted from the President was backed up, the Orders in Council and impressments were the two reasons given for taking up arms against England. War was declared on June 18th, and proclaimed on the following day. On the 23d of the same month Lord Castlereagh communicated to Mr. Russell, American chargé at London, the revocation of the Orders in Council. Thus impressments, which seven months before had never been hinted at as a possible casus belli, became the sole cause of the war of 1812.
Before coming to the brief conclusion of the history of impressments as an international “ issue,” let us consider two points which have been purposely neglected thus far, but which are essential to a full understanding of the matter. What was to be said in defense of the British practice ? What was the real magnitude of the American grievance ?
In examining the question, if we were completely and undoubtedly in the right in our contention against the British claim and practice, we should remember, in the first place, that the controversy took place at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, when the law of nations was essentially different from what it is now. There can be no difficulty whatever about condemning absolutely and unqualifiedly certain features of British practice. Certainly there was not the least justification or excuse for the seizure of native-born Americans. Great Britain never claimed, but on the contrary expressly disclaimed, that right. She professed to be willing to surrender every native American taken by her naval officers, and as a matter of fact did restore hundreds of such persons. As we have already seen, she repeatedly professed a willingness to respect certificates of citizenship, given by authorities and in a form to be prescribed by treaty. When, therefore, a native American was taken, the act was either a willful abuse of authority, or the result of an honest mistake.
Nor does the case of foreigners who had enlisted in our merchant service present any difficulty. American merchants had a good claim upon such persons, the British navy had none. The answer given for refusing to release them, when the restoration of foreigners was demanded, was that the British government could not recognize a right in the government of the United States to demand any but its own citizens. This was a mere subterfuge. A wrong had undoubtedly been committed, and it was the duty of the government of Great Britain to give redress to those who had suffered by its acts. We asked, in such cases, not for the release of men held to service against their will, but for the services of men who had volunteered them, having a right so to volunteer, of which our merchants and shipmasters had been deprived. The demand was preferred not in the interest of the impressed foreigners, but in that of the despoiled American merchants. We had two grounds for asking the release of impressed Americans, and one only, which was nevertheless perfect as against any British claim, for asking the release of Swedish and Danish seamen seized from our ships.
Leaving out of the account cases of these kinds, and others where no doubt can be entertained of the strength of our position, what can he said in defense of the British claim of a right to search the merchant vessels of a neutral power, and to take therefrom any person who was, or had been, a British subject ? This covers the case of persons who, born under the British flag, had become American citizens in conformity with our naturalization laws. The doctrine that the flag of a ship protects its cargo and all persons on board, when not engaged in any act contrary to the laws of neutrality, is now universally accepted. How warmly Great Britain herself has since maintained the principle, so far as it related to persons, will be remembered by all who recall the incident of the seizure of Mason and Slidell from the Trent. But in 1800 and in 1815 it was unacknowledged as a rule of international law. The United States asserted it, and so did France. Each of these two governments had strong reasons for so doing. Since it is a rule which works for the advantage of neutrals, it is a sound one ; and when England began to cultivate the arts of peace assiduously, she espoused it. At the beginning of this century her interests were all the other way, and she rejected the principle as a dangerous innovation.
The British case was this : The king claimed, as under the law of Great Britain and the universal practice of European nations he had a right to do, the personal service of every subject. His government denied — and in so doing it adhered to a principle which had never been relinquished — that any person could by his own act so far denationalize or expatriate himself as to evade the duty of personal service when required to render it. The principle " Once a subject always a subject,” a most venerable maxim, has been abandoned by the nations of Europe in very recent times only. Seventy years ago the publicists of Europe sneered at America for upholding the doctrine of voluntary expatriation, the idea as well as the name of which was coined in this country. Moreover, the right to visit and search the vessels of neutral powers for contraband articles was not only maintained, but universally conceded. In these principles was contained everything necessary to justify, not the practice of impressment as it was, but the seizure of every British-born subject from American merchant vessels. The flag did not protect the vessel from visitation and search ; the native Briton could not escape his duty by enlisting in a foreign service, nor even by acquiring citizenship in another country ; the municipal law of England authorized the commander of a frigate to take him and force him into the naval service.
In justice to Great Britain some further admissions must be made. That country was engaged in a tremendous struggle with the most unscrupulous, the most ambitious, and the most successful military adventurer of modern times. A government so occupied could hardly be expected to change its policy in such a way as to diminish by a single man its resources for recruiting its navy. Furthermore, it is beyond question that some men — whether the number was large or small was a matter in dispute between the two governments — did try to screen themselves from the impress, to which, under the laws of their country, they were liable, by false claims of American citizenship. One is compelled to add that the practice of granting protections led to three results, all of which tended to diminish the value of the protections. First, in the maintenance of the American principle of expatriation and naturalization, Congress expressly refused to sanction a distinction between native and naturalized citizens in the certificates issued. Secondly, seamen’s papers were issuable from many different offices, and were in fact issued upon very slight evidence that the applicant was a citizen. Thirdly, though of course “ not transferable,” American protections were transferred ; impecunious sailors, who were willing to trust to luck, did sell them, and there is no doubt that British sailors could at one time buy protections at two dollars apiece, in more than one American port.
Taking all these facts into consideration, it is not at all strange that England refused to give up a practice by which, if she did seize men who should have been exempt from capture, some of whom she was afterward obliged in honor to surrender, she could reclaim those to whom her laws gave her a right. She might almost be excused for refusing to do so, until full security was given that American vessels should not be an asylum for British deserters. Shall we find any difficulty in admitting also that an act of Congress is not always obeyed even in our day, and that American shipmasters had a direct interest in helping British deserters to evade any law which excluded them from service in our merchant marine ?
In saying so much for the British pretension, one has said all. Had the successive governments of Great Britain been at any time sincere in their protestations that the excesses and abuses connected with impressment from American vessels were accidental and unintentional, they easily could have put an end to the abuses. But what was to be expected of the commanders of frigates but that they should continue to impress whomsoever the whim seized them to take ? When these officers had laid hands upon a man of whose American origin there was not the slightest doubt, did their government make haste to right the wrong ? By no means. It virtually approved the act by inventing all manner of difficulties before surrendering the Yankee. There were regulations against impressing American citizens, but no naval officer was ever reprimanded for violating them. In point of fact, the government, while professing to deplore the outrages upon the persons of Americans, was morally in collusion with those who committed the greatest wrongs upon our people. Nor can a complete view of the case be taken which omits “ the propensities of British naval commanders,” about which Mr. Madison wrote in 1807. Finer specimens of the class “ bully” probably never lived than were the sea-dogs of old England during the days when Napoleon devastated the land, and the British navy swept the ocean clean of belligerents and neutrals.
But even had there been no abuses, the reasons given by England for her practices, sufficient as they may have been in the view of those who gave them, lacked one most essential element of justice and equity. Grant that Great Britain might properly search American vessels, and might rightfully reclaim its own native-born subjects : who was to judge between the commander of the searching vessel of war and the seaman whom he claimed as an Englishman ? The commander decided it off-hand. He was accuser, jury, judge, and the party to profit by his own decision. He could not legally take a handspike from the Yankee vessel until he had sent the ship into port, and had procured the condemnation of the coveted property by a prize court. But he could lay his heavy hand upon as many of the crew as he pleased, and carry them with him to the ends of the earth. Merchandise was not a prize until an admiralty court had tried the case and condemned the goods ; men were made a prize without any trial, upon the merest suspicion, or at the brutal will of a naval officer. They might, at the end of months or years, escape from bondage ; they might be food for powder or for sharks before they could recite their wrongs and demand their release. In either case, whatever the British navy could get out of them was so much clear gain, the suffering was all their own. If a wrong was done, no one was punished for it.
The cool and deliberate way in which Great Britain managed to take either side of the argument, as suited its purposes at the moment, might be illustrated by a comparison of the many reasons noted in the lists of impressed seamen sent home from London by General William Lyman, our consul in that city, for refusing to release them. But one example will suffice. Among the reasons frequently assigned was this : it lies before me in an original letter, dated at the Admiralty Office, July 11, 1810, and signed by John Wilson Croker, the famous secretary to the admiralty. It relates to “ the case of Richard Dickens, said to be an American, on board the Bellona,” and informs Mr. Lyman that, “ having voluntarily entered, he cannot be discharged.”
It is not necessary to know the exact circumstances under which Dickens was impressed. The case was, we may assume, like thousands of others. He was taken from on board of an American brig, let us say, and carried to the Bellona. Upon his arrival in a British port, London probably, he made his story and his situation known to Mr. Lyman, and begged the consul to get him clear. Mr. Lyman laid the case before the British government, and some time afterward received the reply above quoted. But, it will be said, there is something unexplained. Dickens had “ voluntarily entered.” Of course, then, he had no right to demand a discharge, and General Lyman had none to demand it in his name. The explanation is very simple. One could “ voluntarily enter ” the British navy unconsciously, — almost as easily as a special partner can become a general partner. The poor fellow may have been taken from the Nancy Ann just as he was when the crew of that unfortunate Yankee brig was mustered on deck, — hatless and barefooted. His chest did not follow him to the Bellona. Lacking and needing clothes, he drew a hat and a pair of shoes from the Bellona’s stores, and lo ! he is a British tar, bound to fight the battles of King George. It is pathetic to read in some letters in my possession, to which reference is made hereafter, the assertions of American sailors that they have never accepted any pay or bounty, so that they might be able to deny that they had “ entered.”
Now let us see where the British government logically stood. It claimed the right to seize and force into its navy Englishmen who had “ voluntarily entered ” the American merchant service ; it refused to surrender Americans who had, under rules artfully contrived for entrapping unwary seamen, nominally entered the British navy. Was not that inconsistent ? John Bull said no. The “ reconciliation,” to borrow the phrase of our new secretary of the treasury, is found in a paper on the Right and Practice of Impressment, contained in the Pamphleteer, No. XXVIII., published in 1819, though the essay was evidently written in 1814, when the war was still in progress. The writer distinguishes between the individual and personal and the national character of a seaman, adopting the distinction officially made some months before in a famous debate in the House of Commons. The seaman might lay aside his individual rights as a citizen by voluntary enlistment in the public or private service of another country, but he could not rid himself of his national duties. Consequently, his own sovereign might rightfully demand him. “ Thus,” wrote the author, “ the applications of individuals who have voluntarily entered are resisted, though the claim of their sovereign for their release is acceded to.”
So far this seems reasonable enough, from a British point of view. How, then, without inconsistency, when the United States, in accordance with this principle, demanded the release of one of its own citizens who had “ voluntarily entered,” could his act be alleged as a reason for refusing to give him up ? Listen to the sophistry of this pamphleteer : —
“ But the mere application of the sovereign, or his accredited agent, is not always enough ; because it is known by experience that the ministers, consuls, etc., and particularly those of America, never, in fact, refuse to make such an application at the wish and request of the party ; so that a distinction may reasonably be taken between such requisitions as are made at the mere instance of the individual and those made in the name and as the act of his government. Those made at the instance of the individual merely, and where the government does not either want or claim his services, may fairly be considered as if they came direct from the individual himself. But if the sovereign demands the release of one of his subjects, for his (the sovereign’s) own service, such demand is immediately to be complied with, even though the person should have voluntarily entered.”
For a nice distinction this will pass ; but the result of it is that a neutral power, not needing the services of one of its citizens, cannot demand one who has voluntarily entered ; and that a power which does not impress its subjects into its navy has no right to ask for the release of one who has volunteered. Further, it is an assertion of a right in the government which holds the subject of another sovereign to judge as to the validity of that sovereign’s reasons for demanding his surrender.
How many American seamen were wrongfully impressed, in the twenty-five or thirty years preceding the war of 1812 ? If one were to base an estimate upon the official lists sent home from London by General Lyman, and published from time to time by the State Department, one would probably obtain an exaggerated idea of the evil. On the other hand, the British government was interested in belittling the importance of its acts as much as possible, and in so doing it was greatly and successfully assisted by the opposition party, the Federalists, in the United States. It will strike any one who attempts to study the subject of impressments from original sources that the references to it are few and meagre, outside of official documents. The reason is obvious. Intellectual activity at that time was largely confined to the Eastern States, where Federalism was strong, and Federalists, being opposed to all the measures hostile to England adopted by Congress and the President, were disposed not to magnify the grievance. General Lyman made 798 applications for the discharge of impressed men between April 1, 1806, and September 30, 1807, and during the same time 272 seamen, applied for then or previously, were ordered to be discharged. Between April 1, 1809, and September 30, 1810, the number of applications was 1558. At the beginning of the war of 1812 the British government, in accordance with its merciful policy of not requiring foreign seamen in its navy to fight against their country, gave to all men claiming American citizenship then employed in its navy their choice between remaining in the service and becoming prisoners of war so long as hostilities should continue. Seven hundred and fifty-one men preferred the unspeakable horrors of the prison-ship to bearing arms against their country.
No doubt hundreds upon hundreds of applications deposited by General Lyman were fraudulent. That fact is neither strange, nor something to be set down against the consul’s honesty and good faith. Men sent to him requests that bore every appearance of being genuine. The applicants were not personally known to him. Sometimes they told him that their protections had been taken from them, a very common practice on the part of naval officers. If General Lyman had waited before applying for the discharge of these men until he could write to America and get an answer, three months of time would have been wasted, even if the winds were favorable and the mail packets prompt. Long before that time had elapsed the detained man who was being looked up would have been carried to sea. When at length, the claimant being found worthy, a request for his surrender was made, an answer in this form would be returned by the admiralty : “ The Impérieuse (or whatever the ship might be named) being on a foreign station, no steps can be taken respecting this man.” The consul properly applied for discharge in all cases where he had good reason to think there was a well-founded claim. It was certainly not for the British government to complain that he was indiscriminate in his applications, considering how indiscriminate its officers were in their impressments ; for it was the universal rule in the navy to take from American vessels all men who could not on the spot prove themselves to be American citizens, — and many who could give the proof demanded.
While the number of applications was larger than the number of applicants who were entitled to discharge, it must be remembered that many men were impressed who never had a chance to claim General Lyman’s good offices. And when we consider the number of men whom Great Britain discharged as American citizens, after unlawfully requiring their services for longer or shorter periods, the conclusions of a committee of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, which reported on the subject on February 26, 1813, appear somewhat startling. This committee examined many merchants and shipmasters, who represented “ a vast proportion of the whole shipping of this commonwealth,” and who had, during the preceding twelve or fifteen years, employed an average of 1560 seamen annually. These witnesses testified to only thirty-five cases of impressments in all (twelve American and twenty-three British seamen having been taken) from their own vessels, and, including these, but one hundred and forty-five of which they knew anything even by hearsay.
It seems to be a good example of the small value that is to be attached to negative testimony. The evidence of the witness who did see the prisoner steal the sheep was worth more than that of the forty who swore truthfully that they did not see the theft committed. Nevertheless, as the witnesses before the committee were men of good repute for veracity, it must be admitted that they were remarkably lucky in their ventures upon a much-vexed sea. The merchant who could recall the largest number of cases was William Gray, who had been in commerce forty or fifty years, and since the year 1800 had employed about three hundred seamen annually. He could remember only two American seamen impressed from his own ships by the British, in all that time, and three Swedes taken by the French. Both the Americans afterward escaped and returned to the ship. He had heard of thirteen other cases of impressments, in addition to one affair in which the whole crew of a vessel was taken, near Batavia. Mr. Gray afterward added fourteen other cases of which he had heard. As he had closed his first deposition with the statement that he did not " recollect any other information on the subject of the present inquiry,” and appended these other instances three days later, it is possible — not to cast the least slur upon a deservedly honorable name — that if his memory had been jogged further the result of the process would have been fruitful.
While it is no doubt true that the administration took up the cause of many men who had no right to national protection, counted as genuine cases of outrage upon Americans the seizure of Irishmen, Englishmen, and Continental Europeans, and made the indictment against the British government stronger than it should have been drawn, it must also be true that the New England view of the matter was quite unfair. The number of Yankees impressed was not so great as the official lists indicated, but it was greater than Massachusetts merchants were willing to acknowledge.
But after all it was not a question of numbers, but one of principle, of national self-respect, of protection to men who were entitled to protection, though the whole power of the nation needed to be exerted in order to give it. Ninetynine men might escape impressment, but the treatment which the hundredth sailor suffered could not be endured without national humiliation. What was impressment ? John Quincy Adams gives us a rapid sketch of the practice in a passage from his posthumous justification of his charges against certain prominent Federalists, which is printed in Mr. Henry Adams’s New England Federalism : —
“ Whenever an American merchant vessel met a British armed vessel at sea, she was visited by a midshipman or lieutenant from the man - of - war, at whose command her whole crew was summoned upon her deck ; and there every man of them passed in review before this often beardless boy, who compared their persons with their protections, and finished by taking or leaving the man, just as his temper or fancy decided his choice. Fellow-citizens, I describe to you what I have seen with my own eyes, and I heard a lieutenant in the British navy threaten to take a native of Charlestown, Mass., from the ship in which I was, because he thought the person did not accurately correspond with the protection.”
What impressment was to those who suffered from it may be gathered from a perusal of a packet of letters rescued from a paper - mill by a professor in Bowdoin College, and placed in my hands. They are original letters from impressed seamen to General William Lyman, and are all dated in June, 1808. Some of them seem by their language to give ground for suspicion that the writers were born within the sound of Bow bells, but a consul would have been either very confident or very heartless if he had allowed his suspicion alone to deter him from representing any one of these cases to the government. No doubt many of these poor fellows were so little accustomed to the use of the pen that they could have echoed fervently the remark with which William H. Collins begins his epistle, — “ Sir the trouble of writing to you is Not to be compared with our unhappy state of mind,” — and have thought they were making a very strong representation of their mental condition.
A frequent entry in the official lists, opposite the names of impressed men, was this : “ Having no papers, and supposed to be an Englishman,” — this being the answer of my lords of the admiralty. Why one man had no papers is narrated in the following letter, which is copied verbatim : —
Jun the 7 1808 year.
DEAIR SIR is to Let you no that wen you Rot to me on bord the Selvedor I wos sent on bord of the bellerepon in the Chanel and never hear aney thing of the answer Witch I Rot severil Leters to you acording to your Leters and Rot on to you to go New York to my Sister and Wif for my papers Witch It Com to the Midator and Didnot no Ware I wos and It went onshor to the post Ofis and Wos Sent to the Ded Leter ofis and I Beg the favour of you If you Will be so Coind as to See in to it and Send It to my frend William Keenspir Living In plymouth Dock No 48 new Street Witch no If you Will tak It in considerasion of me and my por famley and Send me my potexion as the Other was Called to Sea in the tolbot and was never Over holed nor I never was Cuestened altho I saw It I was Sent that Saim Our to the Osptel and the Capten was onshor and nest Day the Sip Sailed for Lisburn and has never Returne Witch I Spok to the Admirel Consaruin It and he Said that the Capten ought to Sent It to his ofis again Weather or no to right to you a Gain for it Witch my potexion is right agred all But my age Witch is the mistak in Mr. Murey Witch my ag is forty Six year Old Witch It must go acording to ther Bucks as they hav Got Down my Age and It Will Cleair me If you Will Send my potexion on Bord of the belleropon as Admiral Gardner is to hav the Ship and he Will Overhol me and Question me him Self Witch the othe wold Cleard me if the Cpten had been oubord when it Com and So doing you Will Oblig Your humbel Protishner and frend TOWNSEND HUTCHINGS.
on bord of belleropon.
His papers all seem to have gone astray while he had the misfortune to be laid up in the “ Osptel.” There are several other specimens of literature quite as unique as the above, but I copy only one more: —
NORE June 13th 1808.
MR. WILLIAM LIMAN SIR.
I Take this liberty of Ritting to you as I Could Wish to know if you know if the Coppy of my Dublaket has Come out from New York as I think it very hard to Stope hear on Onboard of any of his Majhtes Ships as you are sirteen that I am an amiracan To Which I Should be Very much Oblight to you to Make all the Inquary about it and hast that you Can as I Dont know how Soun I May be Drafted out of the Land therefore I think there is Nothing Like the Present Time as I am hear on the Spote.
Sir I Beg that you Will be so kind as to Return me an anser to this and When that you Rite to me Direct it to me on board of his Majhtes Ship Namur at the Nore and Like Wise I Beg that you will doe all your Indevers for my Clearans and In So Doing you will oblige you Humble Servent
THOMAS MORRAL.
General Lyman indorsed this letter, upon filing it, with the remark, “ No answer.” But it is certainly to be hoped that, to use Morrell’s tautological phrase, he finally got the “ Coppy of his Dublaket,” or the duplicate itself.
Here is the case of a man who signed himself John Jackson, and wrote a neat and correctly spelled letter to General Lyman. He says that he was impressed and has been a long time in the service, but never entered it or received the bounty. In 1805, he wrote two letters to his father, Ebenezer Jackson, painter, of Boston, and the year following he received from that father a certificate of his baptism. The ship being on a foreign station, he could do nothing. On arriving at Plymouth he found that the officer who had transmitted his letters to his father had been superseded ; and before he could take fresh steps to get clear he was put upon another ship and sent to the Mediterranean. Then a fire occurred in the ship. Jackson had a narrow escape with his life, and lost all his clothes and papers. The postscript to this letter shows the man’ s candor, and at the same time illustrates the avidity with which the British government seized upon an inconsistency discovered in a seaman’s protection.
“ N. B. My Fathers name is Ebenezer Jackson (painter in Boston.) I am the youngest son. My name is Ebenezer Jackson also — when I was first impressed into H M Service several people not knowing my name called me Jack or John which I answered to as I then did not care much about. So that I was put on the Ships Books and have gone by that name ever since, so I imagine that might be a principal flaw in not getting clear before.”
Those who wish to read an account of what impressment was at its worst may find in Niles’s Register, volume ii., page 349, the story of James Brown. It was published a month after the declaration of war, and was well calculated to excite the sympathy and stir the indignation of the people. Brown was captured in 1807, with the vessel in which he was serving, and taken into Portsmouth. There he was impressed, applied to Mr. Lyman, and obtained his discharge. He went to Lisbon, hoping to find an American vessel bound home, and was there impressed again. Although he had, and offered to show to the commander of the British vessel, his discharge as an American citizen, the captain would not look at it. Brown was put in irons for writing to the American consul, and was threatened with a flogging if he should repeat the offense. The man was compelled to serve in the same ship from July, 1808, until January, 1812, and was only released when he was in the last stages of consumption. He was landed in Boston in May, 1812, and died a week or two after. At his funeral a sermon was preached by the Rev. Theophilus Smith from the text Job iii. 17-19 : “There the wicked cease from troubling,” etc.
There was not a little force in the assertion of the Federalists — it was echoed in England — that the Americans had never, in all the diplomatic correspondence on the subject of impressment, hinted that it might become a cause of war. The surprise with which they found the administration of Mr. Madison and the war party in Congress taking up so warmly a grievance felt as such most keenly in those parts of the country where the Federalists were strong and the war party was weak was not affected ; it was genuine. Our government had contented itself with protests and with efforts, always unavailing, to procure a stipulation that impressments should be discontinued, for the very simple but cogent reason that it could do no more. It accepted the humiliation of seeing its citizens seized and held, and surrendered reluctantly, if at all, as it put up with other slights and indignities. The practice of impressment was a sufficient cause of war for twenty years. From the beginning of the French and English war in 1793 until the declaration of war by Congress in 1812, there was never a year in which scores of outrages were not perpetrated such as would now lead to hostilities, unless promptly disavowed and redressed. Great Britain and France presumed upon our national weakness until, what with the exasperating restrictions upon commerce imposed by the Orders in Council and the contemptuous disregard of personal and national rights in the practice of impressment, " forbearance ceased to be a virtue.” A cold and calculating policy dictated further forbearance, though it might no longer be classed among the Christian traits. Young America said that patience in the past, under oppression, must not be cited as a reason why fresh and grievous outrages should continue to be borne.
One can hardly maintain, after studying all the facts, that the declaration of war was a wise and statesmanlike act. On the contrary, it was a piece of headstrong rashness ; for while justified by what the United States had suffered from Great Britain, it was not justified by the condition of the country. That was abundantly proved by the event. The military non-success of our arms led to a constant diminution of the demands of Mr. Madison upon the negotiators of peace at Ghent. As is well known, the treaty which closed the war of 1812 was completely silent upon the subject of impressments.
Nor have the two governments ever reached an agreement on the matter. President Monroe in 1818, and again in 1823, endeavored to make a treaty to cover such cases, and President John Quincy Adams also tried to do so, but without success. But no case of impressment has occurred since the unsuccessful war which we waged to redress our wrongs. In fact, Great Britain has not been engaged in any war, since 1815, that forced her to recruit her navy by drafting foreigners. In 1833, after a long agitation in England, upon proof that the practice of employing the press-gang was not merely cruel and unjust, but demoralizing to the navy, as well as a costly, clumsy, and wasteful way of securing seamen, impressment was abolished by act of Parliament. But long before that time we had reached such a point in our national growth that a single act of impressment committed upon an American citizen would have been resented by a prompt appeal to arms.
Edward Stanwood.