illegally torn from their country and pressed into the hated service of a hated nation. Over six thousand were known to have been thus seized, while the actual number was much greater.

Not content with committing these outrages on the high seas, English vessels boarded our merchantmen and impressed our seamen in our own waters. That line which runs parallel to the sea coast of every nation, and which is considered its legitimate boundary, presented no obstacles to British cruisers.

In 1804, the frigate Cambria boarded an American merchantman in the harbor of New York, and in direct opposition to the port officers, carried off several of her seamen. To complete the insult, the commander declared, in an official letter to the British Minister, that he "considered his ship, while lying in the harbor of New York, as having dominion around her within the distance of her buoys." Not long after a coasting vessel while going from one American port to another, was hailed by a British cruiser, and, refusing to stop, was fired into and one of her crew killed. Thus an American citizen was murdered within a mile of shore, and while going from port to port of his own country.[2]

These aggressions on land and insults at sea continued, at intervals, down to 1806, when our commerce received a more deadly blow from the British orders in council, and Napoleon's famous Berlin and Milan decrees. To annoy and cripple her adversary, England declared the whole coast of France, from Brest to the Elbe, in a state of blockade. Napoleon retaliated by the Berlin decree, in which he declared the British Islands in a state of blockade. The next year the English government issued other orders in council, blockading the whole continent, which were met by Napoleon's Milan decree.

These famous orders in council, so far as they affected us, declared all American vessels going to and from the harbors of France and her allies, lawful prizes, except such as had first touched at, or cleared from an English port. The Berlin and Milan decrees, on the other hand, pronounced all vessels that had so touched at an English port, or allowed themselves to be searched by a British cruiser, the property of France, while British goods, wherever found, were subject to confiscation. In short, if we did not confine our commerce to England, the latter would seize our merchantmen, wherever found, as lawful prizes, while if we did trade with her, or even touch at her ports at all, France claimed them as her property.

England, without the slightest provocation, had commenced a war against France, and irritated at her want of success, declared her coast in a state of blockade—thus violating an established law of nations. The principle has long been admitted and acted upon by the principal maritime nations of the world, that neutral flags have a right to sail from port to port of the belligerent powers, to carry any merchandise whatever, except those contraband of war, such as arms, munitions of war, or provisions for the enemy. The only exception to it is an actual blockade of a port where neutrals are forbidden an entrance. This principle is founded in common justice; otherwise two strong maritime nations might make a third neutral power the greatest sufferer from the war. Besides, if the right to create paper blockades is allowed, no restrictions can be placed upon it, and in case of another war with England, she could declare the whole coast of America, from Maine to Mexico, and that portion of our territory on the Pacific, in a state of blockade, while the naval force of the world could not maintain an actual one.

The injustice of these retaliatory measures was severely felt by our government. They placed us, a neutral power, in a worse attitude than if allied to one or the other we had been at open war with the third, for in the latter case our war ships could have defended our commerce, which would also have been under the protection of the cruisers of our ally. But now our men-of-war were compelled to look silently on and see American merchantmen seized, while two nations, instead of one, claimed the right to plunder us. Our commerce for the last few years had advanced with unparalleled strides—so that at this time our canvass whitened almost every sea on the globe, and wealth was pouring into the nation. Suddenly, as if the whole world, without any forewarning, had declared war against us; the ocean was covered with cruisers after American vessels, and the commerce of the country was paralyzed by a single blow.

But the most extraordinary part of the whole proceeding was, that while England, by her orders in council, shut the Continent from us and confiscated as a smuggler every American vessel that attempted to enter any of its ports, she herself, with forged papers, under the American flag, carried on an extensive trade. The counterfeit American vessel was allowed to pass unmolested by British cruisers, while the real American was seized. It was estimated that England made fifteen thousand voyages per annum in these disguised vessels, thus appropriating to herself all the advantages to be gained by a neutral nation in trading with the Continent, and using our flag as a protection.

These were the prominent causes of the war, sufficient, one would think, to justify the American Government in declaring it. One-hundredth part of the provocation which we then endured, would now bring the two governments in immediate and fierce collision.

But, notwithstanding England's desires and necessities, she would never have committed these outrages, had she not entertained a supreme contempt for our power, and cherished an inextinguishable hatred of the nation, rendering her utterly indifferent to our rights. The treaty of 1783, by which our independence was acknowledged, was wrung from her by stern necessity. It was not an amicable settlement of the quarrel—a final and satisfactory adjustment of all difficulties. On the part of England it was a morose and reluctant abandonment of a strife which was costing her too dear—the unwilling surrender of her best provinces under circumstances dishonorable to her flag, and humbling to her national pride. This hatred of the rebel colony was mingled with contempt for our institutions and national character, exhibited in a proud assumption of superiority and disregard of our rights and our demands. A nation sunk in helpless weakness may submit to tyrannical treatment, but one rapidly growing in strength and resources, is sure to have a day of reckoning, when it will demand a swift and complete settlement of the long-endured wrongs.

Our wisest statesmen, aware of this state of feeling, foresaw an approaching rupture. The elder Adams, as far back as 1785, says, in writing from England: "Their present system (the English) as far as I can penetrate it, is to maintain a determined peace with all Europe, in order that they may war singly against America."[3] In 1794, Washington, in a letter to Mr. Jay, after speaking of the retention of posts which the British Government had, by treaty, ceded to us, and of the conduct of its agents in stirring up the Indians to hostilities, says: "Can it be expected, I ask, so long as these things are known in the United States, or at least firmly believed, and suffered with impunity by