Africa and the American Flag

by Andrew H. Foote

On arriving at New York, and reporting the vessel, a letter, dated December 26th, was received from the Secretary of the Navy, of which the following is the concluding paragraph: “The Department tenders its congratulations upon your safe return to your country and friends, after an active cruise on the coast of Africa; during which, your course has met the approbation of the Department.”

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CONCLUSION—NECESSITY OF SQUADRONS FOR PROTECTION OF COMMERCE AND CITIZENS ABROAD—FEVER IN BRAZIL, CUBA AND UNITED STATES—INFLUENCE OF RECAPTURED SLAVES RETURNING TO THE DIFFERENT REGIONS OF THEIR OWN COUNTRY—COMMERCIAL RELATIONS WITH AFRICA.

Where a nation has commerce, it has a dwelling-place—a scene of action and of traffic on the sea. It ought to find its government there also. The people have a right to be protected, and the government is bound to enforce that right wherever they go. If they visit foreign countries, they have a right to just treatment. The traveller—the merchant—the missionary—the person of whatever character, if an American citizen, can demand justice. The sea is no foreign territory. Where a merchant vessel bears its country’s flag, it covers its country’s territory. Government is instituted to be watchful for the interests and safety of its citizens. A navy is the organ through which it acts. People on shore see nothing of this kind of governmental protection. There is there no marching and drumming, or clearing the streets with horsemen or footmen, or feathers and trumpets. It is the merchant who is most directly benefited by naval protection; and yet all classes share in its advantages. The planter and the manufacturer are interested in safe and free commerce; our citizens generally avow that they are also interested, by the sensitiveness with which the rights of our flag are regarded. It is more politic to prevent wrong than to punish it; therefore we have police in our streets, and locks on our doors. The shores of civilized governments are the mutual boundaries of nations. Our government is disposed to show itself there, for there are its people, and there are their interests. The shores of savage lands are our confines with savages. Just as forts are required on the frontiers of the Camanches or Utahs, so are they at Ambriz or Sumatra. Cruisers are the nation’s fortresses abroad, employed for the benefit of her citizens, and the security of their commerce. It would be discreditable, as well as unsafe, to trust to a foreign power to keep down piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, or in the West Indies and in the China seas. As commerce extends, so does the necessity of its supervision and defence extend. The navy therefore requires augmentation, and for the reasons assigned in the late report of the Head of that Department, it may be inferred that it will have it, in reorganized and greatly improved efficiency.

On this subject, the following are extracts, in substance, from a lecture delivered on the evening of February 3d, 1854, before the New York Mercantile Library Association, by the Hon. Mr. Stanton, of Tennessee, the chairman of the judiciary committee of the U. S. House of Representatives, and for a long time chairman of the naval committee of that body:

“A strong naval power is the best promoter of commerce, and hence men engaged in commercial pursuits, cannot but feel an interest in the history of the rise and progress of that navy, to which the successes of their business undertakings are principally due. At a very early period, navies became an indispensable power in war. The later invention of ordnance, and the still more recent application of steam as a motive power to ships of war, render it at present a question of some difficulty, to predict the extent to which naval military power may hereafter arrive.

“What we have to do in times of peace, is to maintain our naval force in the highest state of efficiency of which it is capable, and ready to enter upon action at a moment’s warning. With the lessons of the British war before us, it cannot be possible that the recent experiments of Lieutenant Dahlgren at Washington, and the discoveries which have resulted from them, will fail to prove of high practical service. But with all our appliances or discoveries in this regard, we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact, that we are behind other nations in all that concerns the structure of our ships.

“We must have machinery and all proper appliances, as well as the raw materials, for the construction of a naval power when required. We must have independent establishments on both sides of the continent, to protect our Pacific as well as our Atlantic coasts, which should be connected by a railroad stretching across the breadth of the country. The requirements of commerce, and the advances which it has been making in increasing the facilities for navigation, will force us into improvements in our naval power, in order to uphold our commerce.

“It may be safely presumed, that at the present state of our affairs, a moderate and efficient navy would be a great civilizing power; it would hover around the path of our ships, and by the very exhibition of its power suppress all attempts to molest them in their mission of peace and brotherhood across the seas. But in addition to this, our navy is even now aiding strenuously in the march of geographical discovery, and in enlarging our stock of scientific knowledge, and our familiarity with the facts of physical philosophy. When we consider the character of our institutions—when we consider that our great interests lie in the paths of peace—we must be impressed with the fact, that the contributions to science, and the civilizing influences of our navy, are one of the most powerful means by which we can uphold our interests, and carry out our institutions to the fullest development of which they are capable.

“Under all circumstances and all disadvantages, the navy has never, at any period of our history, failed to do honor to itself, and to shed lustre on the American character. From the Revolutionary war down to the late conquest of Mexico, in every case in which its co-operation was at all possible, it has given proofs of activity and power equal to the proud and commanding position we are to occupy among the nations of the earth. We have opportunities to supply the service with the means of moral and physical progress, to free it from the shackles of old forms, and suffer it to clothe itself with the panoply of modern science, and to be identified with the spread of civilization and enlightenment over the world. It will continue to be our pride and our boast, the worthy representative upon the ocean, of the genius, the skill, and the enterprise of our people—of the boundless resources of our growing country—of the power, and grandeur, and glory, as well as the justice and humanity of our free institutions.”