by Mark Zuehlke
The U.S. government denounced impressment of Americans to no effect. Britain argued that there was no cause for complaint because merchant shipping was not sovereign territory. Therefore it could be boarded, searched, and any British subjects aboard impressed. Not so, countered the Americans, who consented only to the Royal Navy’s having a right of search during wartime for contraband trade and “persons … in the military service of the enemy.”5 Accordingly, French sailors aboard an American ship could be removed, but no Britons or Americans.
But who was a legitimate American and how was one to tell? America held to a doctrine of voluntary expatriation, whereby a man could freely apply for American citizenship and renounce loyalty or obligation to the land of his birth, but this practice had no basis in international law. Great Britain considered all Britons subjects of the Crown and bound by “indelible allegiance.” They could not, without consent of the state, change nationality or escape the obligations of subjects to the state. There was no middle ground between these two views of the rights of man relative to the rights of the state.
Through revolution America had gained independence from British rule only scant years before. Every American over thirty years of age had initially been a subject of the Crown, indeed a subject of King George III, who, although increasingly mentally incapable and having been unofficially superseded by his son, the Prince of Wales, George Augustus Frederick, still wore the crown. Before coming to think of themselves as Americans, there were hardly any who had not previously been English, Scottish, Irish, or Welsh. Indeed, many still held fiercely to their national roots even as they maintained they were now first and foremost American. They generally thought of America as a British nation in its traditions, laws, and values. In America, however, the state served the needs of the individual rather than the other way around.
America naturally looked first for British citizens to help populate the vast, unpopulated territories to the west. To foster such immigration, qualification for American citizenship was made a simple matter of residency, which after 1802 had been dramatically reduced to a mere five years.
Whether native-born or naturalized, no American was issued proof of citizenship. Hoping to avoid impressment, the wise seaman had a notary public or justice of the peace draft a sworn certification, called a protection. On July 12, 1790, a justice of the peace named Thomas Veale swore such a document on behalf of one Henry Lunt. It read: “I, Henry Lunt, do solemnly swear on the holy Evangelist of Allmighty God that I was born in Portsmouth in the County of Rockingham, State of New Hampshire and have ever been a subject of said State.”6 Such a document was easily forged by British seamen, so Royal Navy captains often dismissed their authenticity and just impressed anyone they wanted off American ships.
Had the American merchant marine not welcomed thousands of British seamen into its ranks without regard to whether some were Royal Navy deserters, the impressment problem might not have been so volatile. Wages on American ships were double that of British merchantmen and more than twice that again of the Royal Navy. Besides the great financial incentive, there was also the hope that it would prove easier to escape impressment if one served on a foreign ship. Estimates of how many seamen were impressed varied wildly in reports of both nations.
Whatever the real numbers—whether they were as high as 50,000 as one 1801 British report held or as few as 10,000 as some American reports stated—the fact that the Royal Navy considered itself lawfully empowered to board American merchantmen for the purpose of impressment was, in the eyes of many Americans, a clear act of war. Each boarding for impressment, Henry Clay argued in the Senate in 1810, formed but another part of “the long catalogue of our wrongs and disgraces, which has been repeated until the sensibility of the nation is benumbed by the dishonourable detail.”7
Not only impressment figured into Clay’s catalogue of grievances. Also gnawing at his soul was the clear violation of sovereignty imposed on June 27, 1807, against an American naval ship.
American harbouring of Royal Navy deserters had long been a thorn in the side of the British Admiralty. In early 1807 the matter came to a head when a Royal Navy squadron blockaded two French ships of war sheltered in Annapolis, about a hundred miles inside Chesapeake Bay. For several weeks the squadron lurked a little distance from Hampton Roads, ready to pounce the moment the French attempted to flee their safe harbour. Buffeted by storms and other calamities, a few British ships lay up in the anchorage at Hampton Roads or the navy yard at nearby Gosport for repairs or to take on supplies. Also anchored in Hampton Roads was the American frigate Chesapeake, flagship of Commodore James Barron, which was being outfitted for a two-year term of sea duty in the Mediterranean.8
Within easy distance of American soil, several sailors risked either execution or at best a severe flogging by fleeing their posts to take refuge ashore. In late February, three men crept down ropes from the decks of the squadron’s flagship, Melampus, stole the captain’s gig, and rowed it to shore.9 On March 7, an entire crew manning a jolly boat from the gun sloop Halifax deserted.10
The three men who deserted Melampus were all impressed Americans—William Ware, an Indian from Pipe Creek, Maryland; Daniel Martin, a Negro from Westport, Massachusetts; and a white Marylander, John Strachan. All three had been impressed about two years earlier onto Melampus.11 In each of these group desertions the captains of the ships involved shortly learned that some or all of the men had volunteered for and been accepted as seamen aboard Chesapeake while the others were granted protection by local authorities. Among those who deserted Halifax was a stocky former London tailor named Jenkin Ratford, who enlisted on Chesapeake under the alias John Wilson.12
Soon after the Halifax desertions, the sloop’s captain encountered Ratford and another of the men ashore and asked them to return to service. Ratford berated the officer with “abuse and oaths,” adding “that he was in the land of liberty and would do as he liked.” Formal complaints were filed with the local authorities, and the British consul in Washington, also duly alerted to the incident, lodged a protest that resulted in the secretary of the navy ordering an inquiry into whether Chesapeake. ’ s captain was knowingly recruiting deserters. The inquiry ruled that the three men off Melampus were Americans and so not subject to reclamation by the British. The presence of Ratford or other British deserters aboard the ship went unmentioned.13 As for the deserters who had not signed on with Chesapeake, they were allowed to head off to new lives in America.
While the inquiry was under way, the desertions were duly reported to Vice-Admiral George Cranfield Berkeley in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In charge of “His Majesty’s Ships and Vessels employed & to be employed in the River St. Lawrence, along the coast of Nova-Scotia, the Islands of Prince Edward and Cape Breton, in the bay of Fundy & the islands of Bermuda,” Berkeley was one of the most powerful figures in British North America.14 He also owed his position less to ability than to political influence he and his brother wielded in Britain. Since arriving in Halifax in the spring of 1806, Berkeley had distinguished himself mostly by way of authoring “a steady stream of complaints against the Admiralty, against Jefferson, against the United States,” which, with scant regard for normal channels, he forwarded directly to Lord William Grenville, the leader of the opposition party responsible for his appointment to the command.15
The fifty-two-year-old vice-admiral was incensed that any of the deserters should have been taken on the roster of an American ship of war. Deciding the affront to King and Crown was too much to be left to diplomats to resolve, Berkeley determined to settle the matter by force of arms if necessary. On June 1, 1807, he issued orders to all ships under his command that in a long preamble argued that deserters off at least six Royal Navy ships were aboard Chesapeake. Included in this list of ships was Halifax, but not Melampus. These same deserters, he wrote, had “openly paraded the streets of Norfolk, in sight of their officers, under the American flag, protected by the magistrates of the town and the recruiting officer belon
ging to the above-mentioned frigate, which magistrates and naval officer refused giving them up, although demanded by his Britannic Majesty’s consul, as well as the captains of the ships from which the said men had deserted.”
The “captains and commanders of his Majesty’s ships and vessels under my command are therefore hereby required and directed, in case of meeting with American frigate Chesapeake at sea, to show to the captain of her this order, and to require to search his ship for deserters.”16
To ensure that the squadron standing off Hampton Roads brought Chesapeake to heel, Berkeley ordered his flagship, Leopard, to deliver the order and then remain on station there in hopes the American frigate would venture out to sea. Although an aging 50-gun fourth-rater whose career as a fighting ship was nearing an end, Leopard was more than a match for the 36-gun frigate. Capt. Salusbury P. Humphreys dropped anchor in the bay on June 21. The very next morning Chesapeake put up sails and departed Hampton Roads on a fair breeze. Humphreys quickly weighed anchor and headed seaward, keeping well ahead of the American vessel in order to present the illusion that he was engaged on a routine reconnaissance mission and had no interest in Chesapeake. Six and a half hours later, the two ships were about 10 miles southeast by east of Cape Henry and beyond the 3-mile territorial limit.
Suddenly Leopard came about and rode down the wind to come alongside Chesapeake. Shouting into a brass speaking trumpet, an officer aboard Leopard reported that he bore dispatches for Commodore Barron. The commodore ordered Capt. Charles Gordon, who while in nominal command of Chesapeake deferred to the senior officer in every decision, to heave to and prepare to receive a boat from the British ship. At 3:45 a young lieutenant named Meade clambered up from a rowboat onto the frigate’s deck, was escorted to Barron’s cabin, and delivered a copy of Berkeley’s order with a short covering note from Humphreys stating that he hoped Berkeley’s instructions could be respected “in a manner that the harmony subsisting between the two countries may remain undisturbed.”17
While reading Berkeley’s order, Barron noted that Melampus was not on the list of ships reported to have lost deserters to Chesapeake. While Barron knew that the three sailors from this ship were aboard, he was unaware of any from the ships that Berkeley cited. Taking up his quill, Barron penned a reply. “I know of no such men as you describe,” he wrote. The commodore stated that the ship’s recruiters were under standing instructions “not to enter any deserters from his Britannic Majesty’s ships, nor do I know of any being here. I am also instructed never to permit the crew of any ship that I command to be mustered by any other but their own officers.”18
As Meade scrambled back into the rowboat and the oarsmen started rowing back to Leopard at 4:15, Barron told Gordon to clear the gun deck for possible action. Chesapeake’s poorly trained 340-man crew set to in a desultory manner, with Gordon and his officers little hurrying the pace.
Meade, meanwhile, had rejoined Leopard. Seeing Chesapeake’s crew preparing for action and having read Barron’s note, Humphreys fetched up his speaking trumpet and shouted, “Commodore Barron, you must be aware of the necessity I am under of complying with the order of my commander-in-chief.”
Knowing Chesapeake could not be ready for battle in less than thirty minutes, Barron played for time. “I do not hear what you say,” he replied.
Not intending to give Barron the time needed, Humphreys ordered a shot fired across the American frigate’s bow and, when this failed to elicit a response, fired another after a delay of only one minute. Then, at precisely 4:30, and just two minutes after the second warning shot, Leopard unleashed a full broadside. Eleven 24-pound guns on Leopard. ’ s lower deck and a matching number of 12-pound guns on the upper deck roared, and a deadly barrage of solid shot and canister fired point-blank at a range of about 150 feet crashed into Chesapeake. Round shot tore through the hull, ripped holes in the sails, and battered the ship’s three masts. Spars and rigging crashed down upon the decks, joining a deadly rain of grapeshot. Without pause, Leopard followed its first broadside with two more.
With Chesapeake’s guns still covered, the American crew huddled behind whatever cover presented itself. Three men died, eight were severely wounded, and ten less so. Barron was among those lightly wounded. Fifteen minutes after Leopard’s first broadside, Barron ordered Chesapeake’s colours struck. As the flag dropped, a single gun on the American ship fired a ball into the British hull.
A British boarding party mustered the Americans and detained the three deserters from Melampus. Although between twelve and fifteen other alleged deserters were pointed out by members of the boarding party, the officers in charge were uncertain enough of their identity to decline to take them into custody. A thorough search of the ship turned up Jenkin Ratford hiding in a hold loaded with coal. After Ratford was dragged onto the deck, the British boarding party returned to Leopard.
They carried with them a note to Humphreys from Barron conceding that Chesapeake was the British captain’s prize. Humphreys declined his right of battle and offered instead whatever assistance the commodore might need to see to the safety of his ship. “I … do most sincerely deplore that any lives have been lost in the execution of a service which might have been adjusted more amicably, not only with respect to ourselves but the nations to which we respectively belong.”19
Leopard returned with its four prisoners to the squadron off Hampton Roads while Chesapeake limped slowly back to the port itself. The four men lifted off the American vessel were taken to Halifax, where the three Americans were imprisoned. Tried for mutiny, desertion, and contempt, Ratford was convicted and hanged. One of the Americans died in custody while the other two were released only in 1812, just before war broke out between the United States and Britain.20
THREE
The Search for Satisfaction
SUMMER 1807
In the aftermath of Leopard’s attack on Chesapeake it seemed reasonable to assume that war would come five years earlier than it eventually did. Along the Virginian side of Chesapeake Bay, the militia, acting under orders from their governor, barred British ships from taking on supplies. A young lance corporal named Winfield Scott took prisoner a party of Royal Navy sailors who had rowed ashore to take on water. Ever prone to riot, a New York mob vandalized an English ship that lay alongside a dock, while the city’s British consul had to be placed under police protection. Elsewhere public meetings were held and Great Britain resoundingly condemned. Even in staunchly pro-British Boston more than two thousand people gathered to demand action.1
David Erskine, Britain’s youthful ambassador, cautioned his superior two weeks after the incident that even the “most temperate people and those most attracted to England say that they are bound as a nation and that they must assert their honour of the first attack upon it, or subject themselves to an imputation which it may be difficult to remove.” While war over the orders-in-council was unlikely, Erskine feared the Chesapeake incident could inflame “the passions of the people” to such a point that the Jefferson administration would be forced to act.2
President Jefferson recognized that the country “has never been in such a state of excitement since the battle of Lexington” and that, if he sought it, Congress would approve a declaration of war. But neither Jefferson nor his secretary of state, James Madison, wished to take that fateful step.3
As in so many things, the two most powerful men in America were of like mind. These Virginians of the old landed gentry were the closest of friends, enjoying an intimacy many observers described as like that of a father and son. Having been born in 1743, Jefferson played father to Madison, eight years younger. Where Jefferson was tall and patrician in manner, Madison was short and painfully shy. Always outgoing, Jefferson revelled in large dinner parties followed by long discussions over Madeira. Madison preferred small gatherings and an early bed. Both men shared an appetite for good wine and expensive books, but Jefferson acquired both without concern for the costs. He was subsequently a president shouldering a crush
ing debt that his $25,000 annual salary did little to relieve. Both men, in terms of land and slaves owned, appeared wealthy, but the cash value of these was far less than either imagined. More realistic, Madison chose to moderate his desire for wine and books, but found it impossible to curb his wife Dolley’s appetite for luxury. New gowns were a constant, a carriage to whisk her about Washington absolutely essential, and the pursuit endless for all considered fashionable and necessary to maintain their proper station in the ranks of America’s elite. This placed serious strain on Madison’s meagre $5,000 salary as secretary of state that was little augmented by income from the plantation.4
It was not only their lifestyles and background that bound Madison and Jefferson. They were both men of the Revolution who shared its ideals and desired to build a nation anchored on the principles of liberty and individualism that had led America to revolt against king and country. The America they sought was one where the power of government was limited, taxes were minimal, and Congress represented and expressed the will of the people.
Jefferson and Madison were grateful that Congress was not in session, and the president astutely resisted recalling it for an emergency sitting that would certainly result in rapid drafting and passage of a war bill.5
Jefferson urged the Virginia governor to restrain his militiamen to avoid any clash with the British. Showing restraint now, he argued, would leave Congress the freedom later to decide “whether, having taught so many other useful lessons to Europe, we may not add that of showing them that there are peaceable means of repressing injustice, by making it the interest of the aggressor to do what is just.”6
When the French minister to America, Gen. Louis Marie Turreau, sounded Jefferson out about whether war was imminent—something France desired—the president declared, “If the English do not give us the satisfaction we demand we will take Canada, which wants to enter the Union.” A shrewd man, Turreau recognized bluster. He reported that “the President does not want war and that Mr. Madison dreads it now still more.”7