Correspondence, between the late Commodore Stephen Decatur and Commodore James Barron, which led to the unfortunate meeting of the twenty-second of March

by Stephen Decatur; James Barron

These communications are now in the archives of the Navy Department.

If, sir, the affair of the Chesapeake excited the indignant feelings of the nation towards Great Britain; and was, as every one admits, one of the principal causes which produced the late war, did it not behove you to take an active part in the war, for your own sake?—Patriotism out of the question! But, sir, instead of finding you in the foremost ranks, on an occasion which so emphatically demanded your best exertions, it is said, and is credited, that you were, after the commencement of the war, to be found in the command of a vessel sailing under British license! Though urged, by your friends, to avail yourself of some one of the opportunities which were every day occurring in privateers, or other fast sailing merchant vessels, sailing from France, and other places, to return to your country during the war; it is not known that you manifested a disposition to do so, excepting in the single instance by the cartel John Adams, in which vessel, you must have known, you could not be permitted to return, without violating her character as a cartel.

You say you have been oppressed. You know, sir, that, by absenting yourself, as you did for years, from the country, without leave from the government, you subjected yourself to be stricken from the rolls. You know, also, that, by the 10th article of the act for the better government of the Navy, all persons in the Navy holding intercourse with an enemy, become subject to the severest punishment known to our laws. You have not, for the offences before stated, to my knowledge, received even a reprimand; and I do know, that your pay, even during your absence, has been continued to you.

As to my having spoken of you injuriously to "junior officers," I have to remark, that such is the state of our service that we have but few seniors. If I speak with officers at all, the probability is, it will be with a junior.

On your return to this country, your efforts to re-establish yourself in the service were known, and became a subject of conversation with officers as well as others. In the many and free conversations I have had respecting you and your conduct, I have said, for the causes above enumerated, that, in my opinion, you ought not to be received again into the naval service; that there was not employment for all the officers who had faithfully discharged their duty to their country in the hour of trial; and that it would be doing an act of injustice to employ you, to the exclusion of any one of them. In speaking thus, and endeavoring to prevent your re-admission, I conceive that I was performing a duty I owe to the service; that I was contributing to the preservation of its respectability. Had you have made no effort to be re-employed, after the war, it is more than probable I might not have spoken of you. If you continue your efforts, I shall certainly, from the same feelings of public duty by which I have hitherto been actuated, be constrained to continue the expression of my opinions; and I can assure you, that, in the interchange of opinions with other officers respecting you, I have never met with more than one who did not entirely concur with me.

The objects of your communication of the 23d, as expressed by you, now claim my notice. You profess to consider me as having given you "an invitation." You say that you have been told, that I have "tauntingly and boastingly observed, that I would cheerfully meet you in the field, and hoped you would yet act like a man."

One would naturally have supposed, that, after having been so recently led into an error by "rumors" which could not be traced, you would have received, with some caution, subsequent rumors; at all events that you would have endeavored to have traced them, before again venturing to act upon them as if they were true. Had you have pursued this course, you would have discovered, that the latter rumors were equally unfounded as the former.

I never invited you to the field; nor have I expressed a hope that you would call me out. I was informed by a gentleman with whom you had conferred upon the subject, that you left Norfolk for this place, somtime before our June correspondence, with the intention of calling me out. I then stated to that gentleman, as I have to all others with whom I have conversed upon the subject, that, if you made the call, I would meet you; but that, on all scores, I should be much better pleased, to have nothing to do with you. I do not think that fighting duels, under any circumstances, can raise the reputation of any man, and have long since discovered, that it is not even an unerring criterion of personal courage. I should regret the necessity of fighting with any man; but, in my opinion, the man who makes arms his profession, is not at liberty to decline an invitation from any person, who is not so far degraded, as to be beneath his notice. Having incautiously said I would meet you, I will not now consider this to be your case, although many think so; and if I had not pledged myself, I might reconsider the case.

As to "weapons, place, and distance," if we are to meet, those points will, as is usual, be committed to the friend I may select on the occasion. As far, however, as it may be left to me, not having any particular prejudice in favor of any particular arm, distance, or mode, (but, on the contrary, disliking them all,) I should not be found fastidious on those points, but should be rather disposed to yield you any little advantage of this kind. As to my skill in the use of the pistol, it exists more in your imagination than in reality; for the last twenty years I have had but little practice; and the disparity in our ages, to which you have been pleased to refer, is, I believe, not more than five or six years. It would have been out of the common course of nature, if the vision of either of us had been improved by years.

From your manner of proceeding, it appears to me, that you have come to the determination to fight some one, and that you have selected me for that purpose; and I must take leave to observe, that your object would have been better attained, had you have made this decision during our late war, when your fighting might have benefitted your country as well as yourself. The style of your communication, and the matter, did not deserve so dispassionate and historical a notice as I have given it; and had I believed it would receive no other inspection than yours, I should have spared myself the trouble. The course I adopted with our former correspondence, I shall pursue with this, if I shall deem it expedient.