HAMPTON, NOVEMBER 20, 1819.
Sir: Unavoidable interruption has prevented my answering your two last communications as early as it was my wish to have done, but in a few days you shall have my reply.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
JAS. BARRON.
Commodore Stephen Decatur.
No. 9
HAMPTON, NOVEMBER 30, 1819.
Sir: I did not receive, until Tuesday, the 9th inst. your very lengthy, elaborate, and historical reply, without date, to my letter to you of the 23d ultimo; which, from its nature and object, did not, I conceive, require that you should have entered so much into detail, in defence of the hostile and unmanly course you have pursued towards me, since the "affair of the Chesapeake," as you term it. A much more laconic answer would have served my purpose, which, for the present, is nothing more than to obtain at your hands honorable redress for the accumulated insults which you, sir, in particular, above all my enemies, have attempted to heap upon me, in every shape in which they could be offered. Your last voluminous letter is alone sufficient proof, if none other existed, of the rancorous disposition you entertain towards me, and the extent to which you have carried it. That letter I should no otherwise notice, than merely to inform you it had reached me, and that I am prepared to meet you in the field upon any thing like fair and equal grounds; but, inasmuch as you have intimated that our correspondence is to go before the public, I feel it a duty I owe to myself, and to the world, to reply particularly to the many calumnious charges and aspersions with which your "dispassionate and historical notice" of my communication so abundantly teems; wishing you, sir, at the same time, "distinctly to understand" that it is not for you alone, or to justify myself in your estimation, that I take this course. You have dwelt much upon our "June correspondence," as you stile it, and have made many quotations from it. I deem it unnecessary, however, to advert to it, further than to remark, that, although "nearly four months" did intervene between that correspondence and my letter of the 23d ultimo, my silence arose not from any misapprehension of the purport of your contumacious "underscored" remarks, nor from the malicious designs they indicated, nor from a tame disposition to yield quietly to the operation which either might have against me; but, from a tedious and painful indisposition, which confined me to my bed, the chief part of that period, as is well known to almost every person here. I anticipated, however, from what I had found you capable of doing to my injury, the use to which you would endeavour to pervert that correspondence; and have not at all been disappointed. So soon as I was well enough, and heard of your machinations against me, I lost no time in addressing to you my letter of the 23d ultimo; your reply to which I have now more particularly to notice. I have not said, nor did I mean to convey such an idea, nor will my letter bear the interpretation, that your forwarding to Norfolk, our "June correspondence," had, "in any degree, alienated my friends from me;" but, that it was sent down there with that view. It is a source of great consolation to me, sir, to know, that I have more friends, both in and out of the navy, than you are aware of; and that it is not in your power, great as you may imagine your official influence to be, to deprive me of their good opinion and affection. As to the reason which seems to have prompted you to send that correspondence to Norfolk, "that a female of my acquaintance had stated that such an one had taken place," I will only remark, that she did not derive her information from me: that it has always been, and ever will be, with me, a principle, to touch as delicately as possible, upon reports said to come from females, intended to affect injuriously the character of any one; and that, in a correspondence like the present, highly as I estimate the sex, I should never think of introducing them as authority. Females, sir, have nothing, or ought to have nothing to do in controversies of this kind. In speaking of the court martial which sat upon my trial, I have cast no imputation or reflection upon the members individually who composed it (saving yourself,) which required that you should attempt a vindication of their proceedings; champion as you are, and hostile as some of them may have been to me: nor does the language of my letter warrant any such inference. I merely meant to point out to you, sir, what you appear to have been incapable of perceiving: the indelicacy of your conduct, (to say the least of it) in hunting me out as an object for malignant persecution, after having acted as one of my judges, and giving your voice in favour of a sentence against me, which I cannot avoid repeating, was "cruel and unmerited." It is the privilege, sir, of a man, deeply injured as I have been by that decision, and conscious of his not deserving it, as I feel myself, to remonstrate against it; and I have taken the liberty to exercise that privilege.
You say that "the proceedings of the Court have been approved by the Chief Magistrate of our country, that the nation approved of them, and that the sentence has been carried into effect." It is true the President of the United States did approve of that sentence, and that it was carried into effect—full and complete effect, which I should have supposed ought to have glutted the envious and vengeful disposition of your heart; but I deny that the nation has approved of that sentence, and as an appeal appears likely to be made to them, I am willing to submit the question. The part you took on that occasion, it was totally unnecessary, I assure you, "to revive in my recollection;" it is indelibly imprinted on my mind, and can never, while I have life, be erased. You acknowledge you were present at the Court of Inquiry in my case, "heard the evidence for and against me, and had, therefore, formed and expressed an opinion unfavorable to me," and yet, your conscience was made of such pliable materials, that, because the then "honorable Secretary of the Navy was pleased to insist on your serving as a member of the Court Martial, and because I did not protest against it," you conceive that "duty constrained you, however unpleasant, to take your seat as a member," although you were to act under the solemn sanction of an oath, to render me impartial justice upon the very testimony which had been delivered in your hearing before the Court of Inquiry, and from which you "drew an opinion, altogether unfavorable to me." How such conduct can be reconciled with the principles of common honor and justice, is to me inexplicable. Under such circumstances, no consideration, no power or authority on earth, could, or ought to, have forced any liberal high minded man to sit in a case which he had prejudged, and, to retort upon you your own expressions, you must have been "incapable of seeing the glaring impropriety of your conduct, for which, although you do not conceive yourself in any way accountable to me," I hope you will be able to account for it with your God, and your conscience.