Meantime Captain Loring had taunted Captain Phillips with the statement that there were already a number of impressed American citizens in the Carnatic’s crew.
And all that the American government did in the matter was to dismiss the unfortunate Phillips from the service—dismiss him as a scapegoat for the scurvy sins of those really responsible for the disgrace that had fallen upon the navy. For Phillips very well knew how the administration had pigeon-holed the complaints of the friends of kidnapped seamen—knew very well that the Navy Department could not be depended on to support him in resenting such aggression.
In one respect Phillips deserved his punishment—he had sworn to defend the flag, and he did not fire a gun. Not only should he have cleared his ship for action; it was his duty to fight, Nicholas-Biddle fashion, until the last plank was shot from under his feet.
Humiliated as every patriot was when the story of this outrage was spread over the nation, greater and lingering shame was in store. Not only did the outrages on American commerce increase as the years passed on; a still heavier blow was to fall on the face of American manhood. A British ship was to shoot an American ship to pieces in order to recapture four impressed Americans who had succeeded in escaping from the slavery they had endured—the British frigate Leopard was to assault the Chesapeake on the high seas in time of peace.
But before that attack another was made that was less aggravating than the one on the Baltimore, only because it was the second of its kind—because, being the second, the American people may be supposed to have been somewhat accustomed to their humiliation. This was on June 12, 1805. Lieut. James Lawrence—he had his revenge afterward in the Hornet-Peacock fight—was carrying a small gunboat to the Mediterranean to help in the war with the pirates. Off Cadiz he had the misfortune to fall in with the British fleet under Admiral Collingwood, when three of his men were taken from him. That the administration at Washington (it was during Mr. Jefferson’s second term) rested easily under the outrage is plain from the fact that only the briefest mention of it is made in any history. The impressment of Americans was such a common, such an every-day, occurrence that the fact of three taken from a national ship was, to use a newspaper reporter’s expression, worth only a three-line jotting.
And another three-line jotting is devoted to what is called the Leander affair. A British squadron was cruising off Sandy Hook on what is, in these years, the favorite American ground for yacht races. They were lying in wait, as was their custom, for American ships, from which they could gather in seamen. When a little American sloop came along on April 25, 1806, “a shot was recklessly fired from one of them, the Leander.” It is fair to suppose that this shot was fired as a joke on the sloop’s crew. If one recalls the undisputed character of such men as Lieutenant Hope of the Macedonian, already described, one may readily believe that the average British officer of that day would have thought it a good joke to scare a sloop’s crew by firing a cannon-ball across her deck. The gunner on the Leander, to make the joke as laughable as possible, aimed carefully. His shot killed the man at the tiller.
When the people of New York learned the facts through the return of the sloop, the local excitement was very great. All the vessels in the harbor hoisted their flags at half-mast on the day the body was buried, while the Tammany Society attended the funeral in a body. So Mr. Jefferson’s government felt constrained to protest. At that, Captain Whitby, who commanded the Leander, was taken through the form of a court-martial, unanimously acquitted of wrong-doing and promoted.
The crowning outrage, however, came in the year 1807. Early in that year a squadron of British warships had congregated in the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to blockade some Frenchmen lying at Annapolis. The American Congress had granted an appropriation meantime (though with stingy hand) for enough seamen to man the frigate Chesapeake, that was to be sent out under Capt. Charles Gordon to the Mediterranean, where she was to take the place of the Constitution. She was to carry Commodore James Barron with her (his real title was captain), and he was to command at the Mediterranean station.
Capt Henry Whitby. R.N.