“Hitherto, Fortune, or rather with a grateful Heart would I humbly say Providence, has favoured us in a signal manner. But we must not expect that our frigates will often have the luck of meeting single ships a little inferior in strength to themselves, or of escaping from ships greatly superior to them. That they have not already all fallen into the Enemy’s hands, is matter of surprise as well as of gratulation....
“The first wish of my heart is for Peace. But the Prospects of Peace, both in Europe and America, are more faint and distant than they have been for many years. War has in the course of the year 1812 consumed in the North of Europe alone, at least half a million of human lives, without producing the slightest indication in any of the parties engaged in it of a disposition to sheathe the sword....”
John Quincy Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams
“St. Petersburg, 31 January, 1813.
“ ... The spirit of 1775 seems to be extinct in New England,[7] but I hope the profligacy of British policy will not be more successful now than it was then.
“The War between us and them is now reduced to one single point—Impressment!—A cause for which we should not have commenced a War, but without an arrangement of which our Government now say they cannot make Peace. If ever there was a just cause for War in the sight of Almighty God, this cause is on our side just. The essence of this Cause is on the British side Oppression, on our side personal liberty. We are fighting for the Sailor’s Cause. The English Cause is the Press-gang. It seems to me that in the very Nature of this Cause we ought to find some resources for maintaining it, by operation upon the minds of our own Seamen, and upon those of the Adversary’s. It is sometimes customary for the Commanders of Ships to address their crews, on going into action; and to inspirit them by motives drawn from the cause they are called to support. In this War, when our Ships go into action, their Commanders have the best possible materials for cheering their men to extraordinary exertions of duty. How the English Admirals and Captains will acquit themselves on such occasions I can easily conjecture. But I fancy to myself a Captain telling them honestly that they are fighting for the Cause of Impressment. That having been most of them impressed themselves, in the face of every principle of Freedom, of which their Country boasted, they must all be sensible how just and how glorious the right of the Press-gang is, and how clear the right of practising it upon American Sailors as well as upon themselves must be. I think they will not very readily recur to such arguments.... The English talk of the Seduction practiced by us upon their Seamen. There is a Seduction in the very Nature of this Cause, which it would be strange indeed if their Seamen were insensible to. I have heard that many of their Seamen taken by us have shown a reluctance at being exchanged, from an unwillingness to be sent back to be impressed again. A more admirable comment upon the character of the War could not be imagined. Prisoners who deem it a hardship to be exchanged! With what heart can they fight for the principle which is to rivet the chains of their own servitude?
“I have been reading a multitude of speculations in the English Newspapers, about the capture of their two Frigates Guerrière and Macedonian. They have settled it that the American forty-fours are line of battle-ships in disguise, and that henceforth all the frigates in the British Navy are to have the privilege of running away from them![8] This of itself is no despicable result of the first half-year of War. Let it be once understood as a matter of course that every single frigate in the British Navy is to shrink from a contest with the large American frigates, and even this will have its effect upon the Spirits of the Tars on both sides. It differs a little from the time when the Guerrière went out with her name painted in Capitals on her fore-topsail, in search of our disguised line of battle-ship President.[9]
“But the English Admiralty have further ordered the immediate construction of seventeen new frigates, to be disguised line of Battle ships too. Their particular destination is to be to fight the Americans. Their numbers will be six to one against us, unless we too taking the hint from one success can build frigate for frigate and meet them on their own terms; in which case if our new ships are commanded and officered, and manned like the Constitution and the United States and Wasp,[10] I am persuaded they will in process of time gain one step more upon the maxims of the British Navy, and settle it as a principle that single English ships are not to fight Americans of equal force. Thus much I believe it will be in their power to do. And further I wish them never to go. I hope they will never catch the indolent affectation of seeking Battle against superior force. An English pretension which has been so well chastised in the fate of their two frigates.
“Our Navy, like all our other Institutions, is formed upon the English model. With regard to the Navy at least the superiority of that model to all others extant is incontestable. But in the British Navy itself there are a multitude of abuses against which we may guard, and there are many improvements of which it is susceptible, and for which the field is open before us. Our three 44 gun ships were originally built not as the English pretend for line of Battle ships, but to be a little more than a match in force to the largest European Frigates, and the experience both of our partial War with France, in 1798 and 1799 as well as of our present War with England has proved the wisdom of the principle upon which they were constructed. It has been a great and momentous question among our Statesmen whether we should have any Navy or not. It will probably still be a great question, but Great Britain appears determined to solve all our doubts and difficulties upon the subject. She blockades our Coast, and is resolved to crush us instantly upon the Ocean. We must sink without a struggle, under her hand, or we must have a Navy....”