Chapter V.
"We have a right to enter any of your vessels without your leave to seek for suspected deserters from our navy, and to take them away when found," said the British government to the Americans again after the war with the Barbary States.
"By so doing you insult our flag. Beware!" replied the Americans.
There was no power in that "Beware!" for our little navy, which had performed such valiant deeds, had, under the pretext of "public economy," been transformed into a swarm of gun-boats—a "mosquito fleet"—that was ridiculed at home and despised abroad. British cruisers patrolled American waters, and insulted our flag whenever they pleased. They became legalized plunderers, and no American merchant vessel leaving port was safe from their depredations.
In 1807 a British squadron lay in a bay on the coast of Virginia. The American frigate Chesapeake put to sea from Hampton Roads, when the Leopard, one of the English ships, stopped her, and demanded the delivery of three or four alleged deserters on board of her. When the demand was refused, the Leopard sent no less than twenty round-shot through the surprised and unprepared Chesapeake, and British officers boarded her, and carried away the men. This outrage excited a hot war spirit among the Americans. The government ordered all armed British vessels to leave American waters immediately. Did they do it? No. There was no power back of the order to enforce it. The ridiculous gun-boat fleet was laughed at, and the government was placed in the position of a weak blusterer. British cruisers continued to patrol American waters. The people demanded more war ships. The government heeded the demand. The gun-boats retired, and in 1810 the Americans had four frigates and eight smaller armed vessels afloat.
In the spring of 1811 a British frigate was seen prowling along our coasts. Commodore Rodgers went in search of her in the frigate President, and on a pleasant May evening he gave chase to a vessel which he supposed to be the one he was searching for. As he drew near he asked, through his trumpet, "What sail is that?" The stranger repeated the question. Rodgers again asked, "What sail is that?" and was answered by a cannon-ball, which lodged in the main-mast of the President. Rodgers opened a broadside upon the surly stranger, and after a short combat silenced her guns. At daylight she was seen several miles away. She was the British sloop-of-war Little Belt.
This affair created great excitement, and from that time until the summer of 1812 the American war vessels were kept actively cruising along our coasts. Meanwhile, navy-yards had been built, the moral tone of the navy had been greatly improved, and its discipline was efficient. It was almost unconsciously preparing for a great conflict, in which it was to gain imperishable renown.
Insult after insult caused the Americans to declare war against England in the summer of 1812. Measures were taken to create an efficient army, but, strange as it may seem, when war was to be waged against a powerful maritime nation there was persistent opposition in Congress to a navy. The Southern members, representing a purely agricultural region, could not sympathize with New Englanders in desires for a navy to protect commerce. In vain it was wisely urged that protection to commerce is protection to agriculture. A South Carolina member declared he would "go further to see a navy burned than to extinguish the flames," and a proposition of a Massachusetts member to build thirty frigates was voted down. And yet, so unprepared for maritime war, the Americans went boldly out on the ocean with a few public vessels and active privateers to defy the royal navy of England. The United States had twenty war vessels, exclusive of one hundred and twenty gun-boats. Great Britain had eight hundred efficient cruisers.
The British had nothing but sneers at and ribald jokes about the American Navy. They laughed in derision at our declaration of war. They spoke of the Constitution frigate, which had performed such gallant deeds in the Mediterranean, as "a bundle of pine boards sailing under a bit of striped bunting," and they declared that "a few broadsides from England's wooden walls" would, "drive the paltry striped bunting from the ocean." They did not heed the injunction, "Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off."
When war was declared, there was a small American squadron in the harbor of New York under Commodore Rodgers. It immediately went to sea in search of a large fleet of Jamaica merchantmen known to be off the coast. The President frigate was Rodgers's flag-ship. She soon encountered the British frigate Belvidera, which, after a sharp combat, was lightened, and, outsailing the President, escaped. This was the first battle on sea or land of the war of 1812-15, which is properly called the "Second War for Independence." The Belvidera carried the news of the declaration of war to the British at Halifax.