THE ENGLISH WARS
I
The difficulties incident to the French wars had given the colonies
useful training to prepare them for concerted action against the
stupid enactments of the mother country in the reign of George III.
England, fully occupied with the great continental wars of which the
American conflicts were only a by-product, had been forced largely
to let the colonies fend for themselves. When border hostilities
were growing to the final French and Indian War, she had suggested
the expediency of their coöperating for defence; and just twenty-two
years before the Declaration of Independence came into being,
Benjamin Franklin had been ready to present to a Colonial Council,
called to parley with the Six Nations, a plan of confederation
which, being objected to by some as giving “too much power to the
people” and by others as conceding “too much to the king,” came to
naught. But the fact was established that all the colonies, and not
only those of New England, were learning to act together. And the
great drift away from mutual understanding with England, which in
the beginning, one would think, might have been so easily checked,
increased. The colonies knew that by their valor chiefly had been
established in America the supremacy of England, and their youthful
pride was quick to take offence. In 1760, when a Royal Governor, in
his inaugural, cited “the blessings of subjection to Great Britain,”
the Massachusetts House was careful to express their “relation” to
the Home Government. His predecessor, who had been more sympathetic
to the genius of the colonies, lived to warn Parliament that never
would America submit to injustice. Yet year by year was injustice
done. As early as 1761 oppressive trade acts had brought out the
flaming eloquence of young James Otis, of Barnstable. “I argue in
favor of British liberties,” cried he in the Massachusetts Chamber.
“I oppose the kind of power the exercise of which in former periods
of English history cost one king of England his head and another his
throne.” For four hours, spellbound, the Court listened to his plea;
and well might John Adams, who heard him that day, aver: “American
independence was then and there born.” And for the next ten years
by his pamphlets, “The Vindication of the Conduct of the House of
Representatives” and “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and
Proved,” by his letters, and other writings, it has been truly said
that Otis “led the movement for civil liberty in Massachusetts.”
As if urged on to foolishness by a decree of fate that America should
be a nation, England continued to blunder: she sought to extinguish
the military spirit that had been so useful to her by creating a
standing army which, although independent of them, the colonies
should support; she obstructed manufacturing that the colonies might
be dependent upon British markets; by prohibitive foreign duties
she restricted trade to British ports, and even taxed trade between
colony and colony for the benefit of the imperial treasury. No
wonder the colonies were assured that England meant to get an undue
portion of the war expense from them. And when Englishmen complained
that rich colonists lived like lords while they were impoverished
with taxes, the colonists were ready to retort that England had
appropriated Canada, the prize won largely through their efforts,
and that they had already taxed themselves to the limit to pay their
own way. But England, undeterred by warnings at home and plain signs
of storm in the colonies, still pleading “the vast debt” incurred
“in defence of her American possessions,” in March, 1765, passed the
obnoxious Stamp Act which prescribed the use of stamped paper for
business and legal documents, newspapers and pamphlets: an annoying
enough provision in itself, but the crux of the difficulty was that
England, without the consent of the colonies, imposed the tax.
In October a congress of deputies met in New York to “consult on the
common interest,” and was presided over by Timothy Ruggles, who had
married the Widow Bathsheba Newcomb, of Sandwich, and lived there for
some years as lawyer and tavern-keeper. He is said to have been a man
of charm and wit, a clever politician, and a patriot who later turned
Tory. The congress set forth in no uncertain terms “the rights and
liberties of the natural-born subjects of Great Britain ... which
Parliament by its recent action has invaded.” And pre-dating the
Boston Tea Party, it was another man with Cape affiliations, Captain
Isaac Sears, who, in other fashion, defeated the excisemen. “Hurrah,
boys,” cried he at the head of a New York mob, “we _will_ have the
stamps.” And have them they did, and burned them, too. Sears became
head of a Committee for Public Safety, and when Gage was trying to
buy material in New York, warned the citizens that America best keep
her supplies for her own use. His sobriquet of “King Sears” tells us
something of his personality.
England, against the advice of her ablest men, proceeded on her
ruinous way. Some parliamentary bombast about “these Americans
nurtured so carefully by the motherland” was neatly punctured by
Captain Barré, a member who had lived in the colonies: “Planted by
your care? No, your oppressions planted them in America,” thundered
he. “Nourished by your indulgence? They grew by your neglect.
Protected by your arms? They themselves have nobly taken up arms in
your defence.” “They are too much like yourselves to be driven,” was
his parting shot. And in the Lords, Camden was announcing: “You have
no right to tax America; I have searched the matter. I repeat it....
Were I an American, I would resist to the last drop of my blood.”
Asked in what book he found such law, he proudly answered: “It has
been the custom of England; and, my lords, the custom of England is
the law of the land.” At Boston, as in antiphon, James Otis declared:
“Let Great Britain rescind; if she does not, the colonies are lost
to her.”
A convention of towns, those of the Cape included, calling upon
the king for redress, appealed to “the sovereign people.” The
king’s ministers answered by garrisoning Boston with four thousand
royal troops which the Whigs were now ready to view as a foreign
aggression. Non-importation associations, under the motto, “United
we conquer; divided we die,” were formed—Boston leading, the Cape
towns following close. In the general excitement Massachusetts
boiled hottest: for in her capital were the royal troops and here,
naturally, was the first clash of arms. The year 1770 brought the
“Boston massacre”; and in the same year, under Lord North, all duties
were remitted save those on tea—England had bound herself to the
East India Company there: to no avail, since the right to tax was
reserved. Yet the repeal was welcomed as a partial victory by all
but the hot-heads who were determined on separation; and Englishmen,
who had taken a burning interest in the struggle of the colonies,
rejoiced. London celebrated the event with clash of Bow Bells and
dressed ships on the Thames.
Then, in 1773, came the little fleet of tea ships to Boston; and
Boston, though she liked tea, promptly threw it into the harbor.
Captain Benjamin Gorham, of the Barnstable family, was master of one
of the ships, with a cargo of “Bohea”; and it was solemnly reported
that “this evening a number of Indians, it is said of his Majesty
of Ocnookortunkoog tribe, emptied every chest into the dock and
destroyed the whole twenty-eight and a half chests.” And Cape Cod
had her private Tea Party: for one of the fleet had run aground on
the “Back Side” at Provincetown. John Greenough, district clerk of
Wellfleet and teacher of a grammar school “attended by such only as
learn the Latin and Greek languages,” busied himself about the task
of transferring the cargo to Boston; but no Cape captain, though
several were idle, would undertake the job, and boats were had down
from Boston for the purpose. The Boston Committee of Correspondence,
meantime, sent out a circular letter reporting their Tea Party, and
adding: “the people at the Cape will we hope behave with propriety
and as becomes men resolved to save their Country.” For it was
suspected that not all the wrecked tea had been shipped to Boston;
and indeed it soon transpired that Master Greenough, seeing no harm
since the Government got no duty, had thriftily retained two damaged
cases for himself and a friend. Brought to see his error, his due
apology was spread upon the records: “I do declare I had no intention
to injure the liberties of my countrymen therein. And whereas the
Committee of Correspondence for this district apprehend that I have
abused them, in a letter I sent them, I do declare I had no such
intention, and wish to be reconciled to them again and to forget and
forgive on both sides.” Other tea than Greenough’s hoard was being
hunted out. A Truro town-meeting records: “Several persons appeared
of whom it had been reported that they had purchased small quantities
of the East India company’s baneful teas, lately cast ashore at
Provincetown. On examining these persons it appeared that their
buying this noxious tea was through ignorance and inadvertance, and
that they were induced thereto by the villainous example and artful
persuading of some noted pretended friends of government from the
neighboring towns.” There is evidence enough that some tea floated
into the channels of trade; but any one guilty of the traffic, when
apprehended, was quick to place the blame elsewhere.
The Cape was drawn into the great sweep of events. Town meetings
were held to consider the alarming conditions; yet, even in the
general pinch for money, maintenance was steadily voted for schools
and clergy, though it was suggested that a minister might abate his
salary “because of the scarcity of money and the difficulties of the
times; or wait for the balance.” And one parson, we know, did give
up fifty pounds of his stipend. Business was at a standstill, and
many persons, for financial rather than political reasons as yet,
left Harwich, Chatham, and other towns for Nova Scotia, the better
there to trade and carry on the fisheries. “Sons of Liberty” were
organized everywhere; each town must report its strength “on the side
of liberty.” Yarmouth would have no tea brought into the town; in
Chatham “a large number signed against tea”; Wellfleet pledged itself
to the “defence of liberty”; Barnstable, Sandwich, Eastham had their
resolutions of protest. Falmouth, in 1774, ordered every man from
sixteen to sixty years of age to be given arms. Harwich voted to buy
arms; Truro voted sympathy with the common cause. And Chatham, in
1772, had declared “civil and religious principles to be the sweetest
and essential part of their lives, without which the remainder was
scarcely worth preserving.”
England had gone beyond unjust taxation and had dared meddle with the
courts—the trial by jury, the appointees to the bench—which was held
to vitiate their function. “I argue in favor of British liberties,”
had been James Otis’s clarion call; and at Barnstable, in September,
1774, a fine comedy was played out with the connivance, it was
suspected, of James Otis, senior, who was chief justice of the Court
of Common Pleas. He was to be charged with “holding office during
the king’s pleasure” and receiving pay from revenue derived by an
“edict of foreign despotism.” On the day preceding the opening of
the court men from as far away as Middleborough came flooding into
Sandwich; and next morning a small army marched thence to Barnstable
to make their protest to the court. At their head was Doctor
Nathaniel Freeman, a young hot-head of a Whig, who was leader in many
a demonstration against the Tories, and later was to put his martial
spirit to good use as brigadier-general in the Federal Army. He was
a gallant figure, an eye-witness of the day’s doings remembered,
in “a handsome black-lapelled coat, a tied wig as white as snow, a
set-up hat with the point a little to the right: in short, he had the
very appearance of fortitude personified.” Joined now by Barnstable
men, the patriots took their stand in front of the courthouse.
They improved the interval of waiting for the court to receive
the recantations of several Tories who had been arrested by the
Commissioners and when it came to a public declaration of sentiment
were disposed, for the most part, as a current doggerel had it, to
“... renounce the Pope, the Turk,
The King, the Devil, and all his work;
And if you will set me at ease,
Turn Whig or Christian—what you please.”
Now, behold, the court: Otis, Winslow, Bacon, led by the sheriff
with a white staff in his left hand and a drawn sword in his right.
“Gentlemen,” demanded Otis, “what is the purpose for which this vast
assemblage is collected here?” Whereupon Freeman, from the steps of
the courthouse, replied in a fine speech, the upshot of which was
that they proposed to prevent their honors from holding court to
the end, particularly, that there should be no appeals to the hated
higher court of the king’s council, “well knowing if they have no
business, they can do no harm.”
“Sirs, you obstruct the law,” thundered Otis. Then, more mildly,
“Why do you leap before you come to the hedge?” He ordered them to
disperse, and cited his “duty.” “We shall continue to do ours,”
countered Freeman. “And never,” cries one who saw the play, “never
have I seen any man whatever who felt quite so cleverly as did Doctor
Freeman during the whole of this business.”
The court withdrew, and, waited upon later by a committee, signed an
agreement not to accept any commission or do any business dependent
on those acts of Parliament that tend “to change our constitution
into a state of slavery.” The protestants crowned their work by
calling upon all justices and sheriffs of the county to sign the
agreement, and by adjuring all military officers to refuse service
under the captain-general “who is appointed to reduce us to obedience
to the late unconstitutional acts and who has actually besieged the
capital of this province with a fleet and army.” Barnstable and
Yarmouth, having been interrogated as to whether they had dropped
the legislators voting against the Continental Congress, their
affirmation was received with cheers. That night some damage was done
the new Liberty Pole, which was surmounted by a gilt ball, one of the
“miscreants” blazoning thereon:
“Your liberty pole
I dare be bold
Appears like Dagon bright,
But it will fall
And make a scrawl
Before the morning light.”
Business ran over into the next day, when one of the suspects in the
affair of the Liberty Pole, whether or not the poet is not recorded,
was made to apologize. Again the assembly, in committee of the whole
and “attended by music,” waited upon Otis, who was lodged at the
house of Mr. Davis. Adjured in writing not to sit in the king’s
council, but rather as a “constitutional councillor of this province”
in the elected General Court at Salem, in writing he expressed
gratitude “for putting me in mind of my duty; I am determined to
attend at Salem in case my health permits.” To the reading of his
message listened “the whole body with heads uncovered and then gave
three cheers in token of their satisfaction and high appreciation
of his answer as well as esteem and veneration for his person and
character.” In final session the company again repudiated the hated
acts of Parliament and pledged themselves to the sacred cause of
liberty, registered their abhorrence of mobs and violence, warned
off any other molesters of the Liberty Pole, and agreed to use their
“endeavors to suppress common peddlers.” The last a matter of some
mystery until one knows that peddlers were prone to sell tea, and
were perhaps suspected of being spies. Barnstable had entertained
the host gratis, and the hottest patriot there must have welcomed
its withdrawal to Sandwich, where it proceeded to take like action
against Tories and possible meddlers with the town’s Liberty Pole.
Then, amid cheers for everybody, Doctor Freeman’s company broke
up and sifted back to their homes, but he himself was not to come
scathless out of his adventure.
Suspecting a ruse when, a few nights later, he was summoned to a
dying patient, he was not to be disappointed: for as he passed the
tavern, three of the “recanters” appeared as a “Committee of the
Body of the People” and demanded his presence within to answer for
his actions. Ignoring them, he walked on, but on his return he was
set upon by the “Committee,” it is said, and crying out that his
sword-cane was his only weapon he laid about him valiantly, but was
knocked senseless, and would have been in hard case had he not been
rescued by friends. The whole community, it seemed, was against such
lawlessness. The so-called Tories who had not fled were arrested,
and on the plea of Freeman got off with a fine of one hundred pounds
“lawful money.” But the people showed no such clemency. Sandwich,
after an indignation meeting of the citizens, rearrested the culprits
and forced them, on a scaffold under the Liberty Pole, to sign a
confession acknowledging that their conduct was such as “would
disgrace the character of a ruffian or a Hottentot,” and engaging
themselves in future “religiously to regard the laws of God and man.”
The Tories, for the most part, were no such “Hottentots.” It was
natural in such a settlement as Cape Cod that there should be many
conservatives: men descended from those who had never failed in
loyalty to the English Government, were it Stuart or Roundhead, who
had been taught to love England as the home of their fathers, and the
source of law and light. As late as 1766 even Franklin was declaring
before a parliamentary committee that “to be an Old England man was
of itself a character of respect and gave a kind of rank among us,”
and “they considered Parliament as the great bulwark and security
of their liberties.” There were as a fact four parties: the ardent
Whigs like Nathaniel Freeman, who were separatists at all costs;
the irreconcilable Tories who, when war was imminent, fled behind
the British lines in Boston or New York, or to Nova Scotia and
Canada, or to England, and, in the case of Cape Cod, often to the
islands southward where they could be in easy communication with
British ships. And there were the moderates of both camps: Whigs
whose sensibilities were offended by the extreme methods of the
radicals; Tories, chiefly men of the older generation, who lacked
pliancy and vision to respond to a newer order; and with the latter
were ranged, at any rate at the beginning of the trouble, those who
loved freedom, they could swear, yet loved better present securities
and feared conflict with the might of Britain. As time went on the
number of moderate Whigs steadily increased, especially in the Old
Colony as befitted the sober temper of the Pilgrim inheritance; even
Joseph Otis, of Barnstable, who had rivalled Doctor Nathaniel Freeman
in fervor, was to join them, and the lukewarm, patriots or Tories,
were ready to declare for the colonies. Even a Tory in exile could
be secretly elated by the prowess of his countrymen; and one such in
England confided to his diary that “these conceited islanders” may
learn to their cost that “our continent can furnish brave soldiers
and judicious expert commanders.” It speaks well for the Federalists
that after the war was over and many extreme Tories who had left
their homes petitioned to return, they were reinstated upon pledge
of loyalty to the new State: whether restored as generously to the
affection of their neighbors history does not record, but one may
fancy children’s gibes to the third generation. In Sandwich there
were many Tories who were brought to conform; but it is said there
was still much disaffection, and when the Declaration of Independence
was read out by the parson on a certain Sunday, a Tory who was much
esteemed in the neighborhood “trooped scornfully and indignantly out
of meeting.”
At Cape Cod the feud between Tory and Whig took on a comedy aspect
in comparison with the vindictive civil war which it presented in
many counties of New York and in the southern colonies. At Truro, as
late as 1774, the house of a Whig doctor was attacked, and many still
refused to employ him; a parson, for receiving a number of prominent
Whigs, was admonished by some of his parishioners. At Barnstable the
parties had their headquarters in rival taverns; and at Sturgis’s,
where Whigs met every evening to comment on the news, the discussion,
running high between moderates and radicals, sometimes slopped over
into action. After one such meeting a man who had criticised the
system of espionage that wasted energy in ferreting out old women’s
secret stores of tea, had his fence destroyed by his irate neighbors.
Otis and Freeman, it seems, were not popular with the militia who, at
a review one day, clubbed muskets instead of presenting arms. “The
Crockers are at the bottom of this,” cried Joseph Otis. “You lie,”
gave back Captain Samuel Crocker. A fight between the two naturally
ensued; in the midst of which Freeman, who was not the man to be an
inactive spectator, turned upon another Crocker, a moderate Whig in
politics, followed him into his house, slashing at him harmlessly
enough, and in his turn was like to have been murdered by a younger
member of the Crockers thirsting for vengeance. Freeman’s cutlass
took effect only upon the “summer beam” of the house; and years
afterwards, when it was used as a tavern, Freeman, who had come
from Sandwich to attend court, was refused entertainment there.
“My house is full,” quoth Madam Crocker. She pointed to the scars
of the “summer beam.” “And if it were not, there would be no room
for Colonel Freeman.” “Time to forget those old matters, and bury
the hatchet,” protested Freeman. “Very like,” said she, “but the
aggressor should dig the grave.”
A certain young woman, suspected of disloyalty, and asked by the
Vigilance Committee whether she were a Tory, answered in four
emphatic words which the record leaves us to imagine from the dark
comment: “The Committee never forgot them and ever after treated
her with respect.” This woman, Amos Otis tells us, never lost her
youthful vivacity; even in old age she was gay, responsive, able to
discuss with equal zest the latest novel or parson’s sermon. Her wit
was keen, and the point “never blunted in order to avoid an allusion
which prudery might condemn.”
There was a more serious business in the tarring and feathering of
the Widow Nabby Freeman of which the towns-people were sufficiently
ashamed, evidently, to charge it in turn to Whig and Tory. Freeman,
in his history, says she was a Whig, the victim of Tory spite;
Otis, with convincing detail, that she was a Tory. She kept a
small grocery, and refused to surrender her tea to be destroyed
by the Vigilance Committee. She was “a thorn in their sides—she
could out-talk any of them, was fascinating in her manners, and
had an influence which she exerted, openly and defiantly, against
the patriotic men who were then hazarding their fortunes and their
lives in the struggle for American independence.” Both narratives
agree in the fact: she was taken from her bed to the village green,
smeared with tar and feathers, set astride a rail and ridden about
the town. We may fancy the tongue-lashing her persecutors received
in the process. At last they exacted from her a promise that in the
future she would keep clear of politics. The men who carried through
this cruel comedy were not eager to be known; yet it is said feeling
against the Tories ran so high that even in Sandwich, which had
lamented the harsh treatment of Quakers, a strong party justified
the act. But that public sentiment did not approve such rowdyism is
proved by the fact that it stands out alone in unlovely prominence.
It is probable that many a private grudge was worked off in this cry
of “Tory, Tory.” When Joseph Otis, brother of the patriot, cited a
prominent townsman for disaffection, the court held the accusation
to proceed “rather from an old family quarrel and was the effect of
envy rather than matter of truth and sobriety, or any view to the
publick good.” And when as a deacon he had been haled before the
church for his political opinions, the church decided that it had
“no right to call its members to an account for actions of a civil
and public nature,” that the protestants “did not charge the deacon
with immorality” and that it “begged leave to refer them to a civil
tribunal.” It is further recorded in a later month that the affair
between the deacon and “the brethren, styled petitioners, was happily
accommodated.”
Until the actual clash of arms, many believed that there might be
found some ground for reconciliation; but England was blinded by
jealous tradesmen and foolish politicians, hot blood in the colonies
was all for separation. Events swept beyond the control of statesmen,
and all were carried on to the vortex of revolution. In a speech from
the throne George III asserted that “a most daring resistance to the
laws,” encouraged by the other colonies, existed in Massachusetts.
Again Camden spoke in defence of the colonies: “They say truly
taxation and representation must go together. This wise people speak
out. They do not ask you to repeal the laws as a favor; they claim it
as a right.” But Parliament charged the Americans with “wishing to
become independent” and as for any danger of revolt, determined “to
crush the monster in its birth at any price or hazard.” They were to
have a good run for their money.
II
In no long time the king’s men were marching out to Concord and
Lexington; and with the actual shedding of blood, messengers, on the
Sunday, rode out post-haste to rouse the country. “War is begun,”
cried they at church doors. “War, war,” broke in upon hymn or
parson’s prayer; and from pulpit and people rose the solemn response:
“To arms: liberty or death.”
The radicals were jubilant. Mr. Watson, of Plymouth, wrote to his
friend Freeman congratulations upon the spirit of Sandwich, where
Freeman had ordered the royal arms burned by the common hangman.
“We are in high spirits,” wrote Watson, “and don’t think it is in
the power of all Europe to subjugate us.” “The Lord of Hosts fights
on the side of the Yankees,” averred he. “I glory in the name.” Yet
Watson, an ardent patriot, in the course of a political quarrel of
later years, was denounced to Jefferson as an old Tory, and was
conveniently removed from office.
But sober men were preparing to meet the cost of choosing between a
man’s way and a child’s. Cape Cod, in particular, with a defenceless
coast and the probable interruption of her fisheries and commerce,
faced ruin; but, four-square, she stood for freedom. Immediately upon
the news of fighting, two companies of militia from Barnstable and
Yarmouth took the road, but returned on word that the royal troops
were held in Boston. With them, that day, piping them out with fifes,
were two boys who, when they were sent back, “borrowed” an old horse
grazing by the roadside to give them a mount homeward. One boy became
solicitor-general, the other a judge, and one day there chanced to
be a case of prosecution for horse-thieving between them. “Davy,”
whispered Judge Thacher, leaning from the bench, “this puts me in
mind of the horse we stole that day in Barnstable.”
As the militia had marched down the county road, an old farmer halted
them. “God be with you all, my friends,” said he as one who would
consecrate their enterprise. “And John, my son, if you are called
into battle, take care that you behave like a man or else let me
never see your face again.” A Harwich father, when he had heard of
the first blood spilled, cried out to his son: “Eben, you’re the
only one can be spared. Take your gun and go. Fight for religion and
liberty.” And that boy and others who joined on the instant were
ready to fight at Bunker Hill.
Yet there had been no open declaration of cutting loose from the
mother country; and the colonists seem to have had no more deliberate
intention of founding a nation than had the Pilgrims of declaring
a new principle of government. The second Continental Congress had
recommended a day of prayer and humiliation “to implore the blessings
of Heaven on our sovereign the King of England and the interposition
of divine aid to remove the grievances of the people and restore
harmony.” The Cape, a sturdy inheritor of the Pilgrim spirit, seems
to have been an early advocate of state rights. In 1778 Barnstable
appointed a committee to pass upon the proposed union. “It appears to
us,” said Barnstable, “that the power of congress is too great....
But if during the present arduous conflict with Great Britain it
may be judged necessary to vest such extra powers in a continental
congress, we trust that you will use your endeavors that the same
shall be but temporary.” “The Plymouth spirit, which nearly a century
before had been shy of a union with Massachusetts,” writes Palfrey,
“was now equally averse to a consolidated government which should
implicate the concerns of Massachusetts too much with those of other
states.”
Bunker Hill was fought, and by July Washington, as
commander-in-chief, was in residence at Cambridge. When he called for
troops to man Dorchester Heights, Captain Joshua Gray marched through
Yarmouth with a drummer, calling for volunteers, and eighty-one men
responded. The night was spent in preparation, the women moulding
bullets and making cartridges, and by dawn the little company,
equipped for war, was ready to take the road. As was natural,
fishermen and sailors, when they could, enlisted in the infant navy.
But the call for men pressed until even Joseph Otis protested: “We
have more men in the land and sea service than our proportion,” and
“there is scarcely a day that the enemy is not within gun-shot of
some part of our coast. It is like dragging men from home when their
houses are on fire, but I will do my best to comply.” An additional
grievance lay in the fact that the Cape troops seem to have been sent
largely to Rhode Island. And Otis added that it was unreasonable “to
detach men from their property, wives and children to protect the
town of Providence in the heart of the State of Rhode Island.”
Wellfleet, deprived of its fisheries, was all but ruined;
Provincetown, with its few inhabitants who had not fled, was
entirely at the disposal of the enemy fleet when it rode snugly at
anchor in the harbor. But even these towns struggled to furnish their
quota to feed the desperate need; and Mashpee Indians, as we know,
played their part so nobly that the war’s end saw seventy widows in
the little community.
But there were malcontents enough to induce precaution, and the
Provincial Congress had immediately provided for disarming the
disaffected. In Barnstable there had been so many of little courage
that in 1776 it had voted against supporting the Congress if it
should declare for independence rather than stand out simply for
constitutional liberty; and when the draft was resorted to and
some men “refused to march,” their fines and costs were paid by
the loyalists of Barnstable and Sandwich. In August Colonel Joseph
Otis and Nathaniel Freeman were appointed to round up suspects on
the Cape, a task, we may guess, much to their liking. In December
Major Dimmock, who had fought at Ticonderoga in the French War, was
commanded to “repair to Nantucket and arrest such as are guilty of
supplying the enemy with provisions.” Tories from the mainland had
fled thither, and they were not only in constant communication with
British ships, but manned many of the ships that harried the coast.
The Cape made a brave attempt to keep up its trade, and voyages were
made with the permission of the General Court, “always provided
that the said fish &c., shall not be cleared out for any of his
Britannic Majesty’s dominions.” But affairs were in desperate case,
and loyalists plotted with some show of reason that they had chosen
the winning side. Otis reports on October 2: “Yesterday the Tories in
the Sound, about a league off Highano’s harbor, took a vessel bound
out of said harbor to Stonington and drove another ashore on the
eastward part of Falmouth. In short the refugees have got a number of
Vineyard pilot-boats (about twenty) and man them, and run into our
shores and take everything that floats.” Nevertheless, he engages to
get two small vessels, if they will give him guns, and “scour the
Sound.” On October 12 the head of “a refugee gang in the Sound” sent
a flag of truce to ask an exchange of prisoners. And in this same
month the General Court appropriated money for four cannon, four to
nine-pounders—no formidable armament for the long coast-line of the
Cape. But the Sound, especially, was the scene of many an adventure,
and enemy raids upon its shores seem to have been prompted largely
by a desire for fresh meat. In 1779 marauders drove away some cattle
from farms near Wood’s Hole, but were surprised and put off to their
ships without their booty; an attack in force was planned against
Falmouth, but was received by such hot fire from the shore that the
ships were driven out into the Sound; at Wood’s Hole, again, they
met with a like reception. But the Sound the Britishers succeeded
in making their own. Nevertheless, one hundred men, under Colonel
Dimmock, were sent over for the defence of Martha’s Vineyard; and
among other exploits Dimmock captured an enemy vessel in Old Town
Harbor, and took her crew, under hatches, to Hyannis whence they were
sent overland to Boston. A Federal grain vessel, as it entered the
Sound one day, fell into the hands of the British; but its captain
escaped, roused Captain Dimmock, who got together twenty men and
three whaleboats, next morning retook the prize from under the nose
of the British at Tarpaulin Cove, and made safe harbor at Martha’s
Vineyard.
The outer coast was blockaded, but sometimes a boat from Boston or
the fishing-grounds would slip through; sometimes, even, such a one
would be allowed to pass. None other than the great Nelson—Lieutenant
Nelson he was then, in command of His Majesty’s Ship Albemarle
stationed that year in Cape Cod Bay—released the Schooner Harmony,
Plymouth owned, to its captain “on account of his good services,”
as pilot, we may guess. Nor was the relation of fleet and mainland
wholly unfriendly. These straight Britishers were much better liked
by the people than the loyalist refugees that, for the most part,
manned the hostile boats off Wood’s Hole and Falmouth. English
officers often landed and called upon the people, or attended church;
one ship’s surgeon even found opportunity to fall in love with a
Truro girl, and win her, too; and after the war, he resigned His
Majesty’s service, married his sweetheart, and settled down to the
village practice. The Reverend “William Hazlett, a Briton,” baptized
several children at Truro in 1785. Rich thinks he may have been a
retired navy chaplain, but it seems quite as reasonable to suppose
that he was the father of William Hazlitt, the essayist, who, at
about that time, happened to be in Weymouth. As early as December,
1776, a committee was appointed to “acquaint his excellency, General
Washington, with the importance of Cape Cod Harbor and consider with
him on some method to deprive the enemy of the advantage they now
receive therefrom.” But to the end of hostilities the English fleet
continued to enjoy that advantage, though, as we have seen, they were
content to use their ships for blockade purposes rather than their
men to molest the inhabitants. The British seem to have been able to
get needed supplies by purchase instead of bloodshed, although there
is some evidence of disturbance ashore. Mr. Rich in his history of
Truro tells us of a man who, one fine evening, was enjoying a pipe
under an apple-tree on his farm near High Head when stray shots from
a man-of-war came ploughing up the ground near him. And once the
militia captain at Truro, believing a raid imminent, used the clever
ruse of boldly parading his tiny “cornstalk brigade” in and out among
the dunes near Pond Village for two hours; and he frightened off the
British, he averred, by such a demonstration of strength.
By sea Truro men did not get off so easily. In 1775 David Snow and
his son, a lad of fifteen, were fishing off the “Back Side” one day
when they were captured by an enemy frigate known, significantly,
as “the shaving-mill.” They were taken to England and locked up,
with other Yankee prisoners, in the Old Mill Prison near Plymouth,
where they set their wits at work on methods of escape. Mr. Snow,
one night, proposed a dance, when the fiddle squeaked its loudest
and the dancers shuffled noisily in heavy brogans, to drown the
noise of the file that willing hands kept hard at work eating at
the bars. Thirty-six men, under cover of the hilarity, succeeded
in slipping out into the yard, overpowered the guard, walked the
fifteen miles to Plymouth Harbor, boarded a scow, and before daylight
were afloat in the Channel. There they captured a small boat, and
set sail for France where they sold their prize for hard cash, Snow
and his son receiving as their share forty dollars. The French
Government, when occasion served, set them on the shore of Carolina
whence they finally worked their way overland to Boston, took boat
for Provincetown, and so home again to Truro. Seven years had been
consumed in the adventure, and they had long been mourned as dead.
The boy was now a man, but a quick-eyed girl cried, as she saw him:
“If that isn’t David Snow, it’s his ghost.” And the father found
his wife “spending the afternoon” with her sewing, at a neighbor’s.
Another Truro lad was of the crew that rowed Benedict Arnold out
to the Vulture, and when he knew the significance of that night’s
story, fearing that he might be implicated in a charge of treason,
he fled straight to Canada. There he married, and it was forty-eight
years before he returned to visit his old home. A Yarmouth man was
one of the gallant André’s guards the night before his execution,
and lamented his unhappy fate. And Watson Freeman, of Sandwich, who
in 1754 at the age of fourteen had joined the expedition to Canada,
fought in the Revolution, and was present at the taking of Burgoyne
in 1777. The next year he was stationed with General Sullivan on Long
Island, where, being one of a “foraging party” that was surprised
by the enemy in the relaxation of attending a ball, he received a
sabre-cut on the forehead that scarred him for life. Later, having
joined an uncle who commanded a privateer, he was taken prisoner by
the enemy, wounded in an encounter between them and a French boat,
invalided to a hospital at Portsmouth, England, and discharged
as incurable. Wandering about the country, he came upon an old
herb-woman who proved wiser than the doctors, and he lived to amass a
fortune in Boston as an “importer of English goods and concerned also
in navigation.”
Nor did the British cruisers have things all their own way.
Swift-sailing privateers were fitted out—Cape Cod sailors we may be
sure eager for such service—and in the two years between 1776 and
1778 nearly eight hundred prizes had been captured; while during the
war nearly two hundred thousand tons of British shipping were taken
by privateers that were manned largely by fishermen.
Certainly, whether of men high in council or of the rank and file,
Cape Cod furnished her due share in the conflict: unnamed sailors and
soldiers, brave men all; Nathaniel Freeman, Joseph Otis, Dimmock;
and, greater than all, the James Otises, father and son. From the
evacuation of Boston in 1776 to 1780 when the new government was
established, Massachusetts affairs were in the hands of the Council
that was elected annually as provided by the charter of William
and Mary; of this Council Colonel James Otis, as senior member,
was presiding officer and virtually the Governor of the Province.
James, the patriot, never entirely recovered from the effects of a
dastardly assault in 1769, and in 1783 he was killed by a stroke of
lightning as he stood in his doorway at Andover. The last years of
his life were dark with tragedy. His daughter, to his great grief,
had married an English officer, who was wounded at Bunker Hill; his
son, James, third of the name, had enlisted as a midshipman and
died, at twenty-one, on the notorious British prison-ship Jersey.
But the patriot had accomplished his great work. And of him John
Adams well said: “I have been young and now am old, and I solemnly
say I have never known a man whose love of country was more ardent
and sincere—never one who suffered so much—never one whose services
for any ten years of his life were so important and essential to the
cause of his country as those of Mr. Otis from 1760 to 1770.”
III
Affairs moved on toward peace, and on April 19, just eight years
after Lord Percy had set out on his expedition to Concord and
Lexington, Washington proclaimed an armistice. But joy in the victory
was tempered for thoughtful men: if it had cost England a hundred
million pounds and fifty thousand men to lose her colonies, the
relative price they paid for independence was far greater. The
currency was practically worthless, the soldiers and their families
were destitute, the salaries of public officers and clergy but a
pittance. Each State wanted to secure its revenue to its own use,
which ensured conflict with the Federal Government; the individual,
in his meagre circumstances, grudged any contribution to such
revenue, which ensured conflict between the State and its citizens.
That the general unrest was present in Barnstable County is evident
from a proclamation of the Government calling upon “the good people
of said county for their aid and assistance” in handling a rumored
attempt to “obstruct the sitting of the Court at Barnstable.” But
in the main the people who had broken the might of Britain now,
war ended, applied themselves with like energy to recovering from
its effects. And in spite of war and threatened ruin the Cape had
continued its healthy growth.
In 1793 Dennis, which had long functioned as a separate town, was
incorporated; its name derived from that of the first minister of
the East Precinct of Yarmouth, the Reverend Josiah Dennis. In 1797
Orleans was set off from Eastham; and in 1803 the North Parish
of Harwich, the older in point of settlement, became Brewster.
It was then that argument for and against division hit upon the
extraordinary compromise that irreconcilables of the North Parish,
“together with such widows as live therein and request it, have
liberty to remain, with their families and estates, to the town of
Harwich.” No less than sixty-five persons, including two widows,
stiff-necked old conservatives we may guess, filed such request with
the town clerk and the Secretary of the Commonwealth. Here was an
arrangement well calculated to nourish old animosities, which, in the
natural course of things, had to be abandoned. Nor was the new town
slow in making her voice heard: in 1810 she was remonstrating against
the appointment of a certain postmaster, “he being a foreigner and
in the opinion of the inhabitants an alien.” A little later she was
petitioning “the Postmaster General, praying him to fix the day of
the week and the hour of the day in which the post-rider shall arrive
at Brewster on his way down the Cape, and also on his return, and
that the Committee of Safety attend to this matter.” And she was one
of the loudest to protest against the Embargo Act of 1807.
America had been making no small profit during the Napoleonic wars
that wrecked Europe. By wise federal legislation trade and credit
gradually righted, and the neutrality of the United States permitted
lucrative intercourse with all the belligerents. But American traders
took their risks, and by no means came off scatheless: England and
France had established mutual blockades; their ships preyed upon the
Yankee blockade-runners, their captains impressed captured American
seamen. England by the British Orders in Council, France by the
Berlin and Milan decrees, all but put an end to our commerce, and
the _coup de grâce_ threatened when, in 1807, the United States
hoped to save her ships by declaring an embargo on all outgoing
shipping. As between England and America, there were accusations
and counter-accusations that the other country was not carrying
out the provisions of their peace treaty, nor had the old Tory and
Whig animosities of the Revolution had time to die; and the whole
exasperating state of affairs worked out to a formal declaration of
war against England in 1812.
Brewster, in solemn town-meeting assembled, had inveighed thus
against the Embargo Act: “That imperious necessity calls upon us
loudly to remonstrate” against the embargo laws “as unjust in their
nature, unequal in their operation, a cruel infringement of our most
precious rights.” In impassioned words she memorialized the General
Court: “Whilst the mouth of labor is forbidden to eat, the language
of complaint is natural. With ruin at our doors, and poverty staring
us in the face, we beseech, conjure and implore your honorable body
to obtain a redress of the oppressive grievances under which we
suffer.” And Brewster, having thus recorded her protest, felt herself
free to join in the sport of evading the new law. It was a boat owned
there, captured by a revenue cutter and taken into Provincetown, that
was recaptured by the owners who had hurriedly fitted up a packet
as a man-of-war, and cleared off for her port of Surinam, while the
United States Marshal whistled for any satisfaction he could get.
A more complicated adventure befell two Cape men, Mayo and Hill, who
were of the crew of Captain Paine, of Truro. In 1811 they cleared for
Mediterranean ports with a cargo of fish, but off the coast of Spain
they were boarded and searched by a French corvette, and for some
reason Mayo and Hill were taken prisoner and landed in Lisbon. There
they were attached to a French force that was to convoy a rich pay
train through the enemy country, the most dangerous point of which
was a deep defile in the mountains some three miles in length. There
a murderous fire was opened upon them from the overhanging cliffs,
every officer and all but a handful of men killed, and the rest
marched off to a Spanish prison. And among the prisoners were Mayo
and Hill who had come through the engagement without a scratch. The
Frenchmen were inclined to make game of their Yankee fellow-captives,
and something of a race war developed. But Mayo “was, like Miles
Standish, small of stature but soon red-hot.” He whipped several
“Frenchies,” and offered to fight the lot, an invitation, courteously
declined, which left him master of the field. Whether by intrigue or
not, Hill was condemned as a spy and marched out to be shot when, in
the approved style of romance, a horseman in the nick of time dashed
up with a reprieve; and Hill had earned his title to “scape-gallows.”
In a few months the two Cape men managed somehow to make their way to
Flanders, and, after years crammed with adventure, reached home. “Mr.
Mayo,” says Rich who tells the story, “died in good old age, in the
peace of Christ, having raised a large family of enterprising boys.
Like the patriarch, he saw his children’s children to the fourth
generation.”
Captain Isaiah Crowell, of Yarmouth, had successfully run the
blockade at Marseilles after the French decrees were in force; and
in 1812, knowing that a strict embargo of ninety days, preliminary
to war, was imminent, he loaded hastily at Boston with a cargo for
Lisbon, cleared for Eastport, where he gave the first news of the
embargo, and cleared there for Lisbon. War having been declared, on
his return he was captured by an English cruiser, taken into Saint
John’s where his ship was condemned, and he was being returned to the
United States on the British sloop-of-war Alert when it was captured
by the Yankee Essex. But if Crowell lost in this venture, he was to
gain by his skill and daring in many another; and he retired from sea
with a comfortable fortune, to live out many humdrum years ashore as
a bank president and legislator.
When it came to this second war with England, although the United
States now proved herself a nation, there was no unanimity of opinion
among the people; and as a fact the Americans had been nearly as
indignant with their own government for its embargoes as with England
and France for their unjust decrees and their seizure of American
seamen and ships. Politics seethed hot in New England as elsewhere,
and men for or against the war wrangled in high place and low. The
majority on the Cape were anti-war. Chatham, remembering old wars and
fresh wrongs, addressed the President expressing “the abhorrence of
the people to any alliance with France.” Other towns were, at best,
lukewarm. Yarmouth never ceased to be bitterly anti-war, and many
who had fought devotedly in the Revolution refused to fight now, or
only so far as it might be necessary to prevent the invasion of their
soil. Yet the county was strongly Federalist, and a powerful minority
were able to push through a fine resolution: “It becomes us, in
imitation of the patriots of the Revolution, to unite in the common
cause of the country, patiently bearing every evil, and cheerfully
submitting to those privations which are necessarily incident to a
state of war. We consider the war in which we are engaged as just,
necessary and unavoidable, and we will support the same with our
lives and fortunes.”
The fine old breed of American seamen flocked into the navy, and
success on the ocean did much to offset reverses on land. During
the first seven months of the war, five hundred British merchantmen
were taken; and the Essex, the Constitution, the Wasp had made their
kill of English men-of-war. In 1814 Great Britain, relieved from the
pressure of continental wars, was ready to turn her full attention
to America, Washington was burned, and again a British fleet
rendezvoused in Provincetown Harbor and harried the coast of the
Cape. A landing party at Wood’s Hole was driven off by the militia;
Falmouth, after due notice to remove non-combatants, was bombarded,
with considerable loss to buildings and salt-works, but none to life.
The contention had been that Falmouth had been annoying British ships
with her cannon which Captain Weston Jenkins, the Yankee commander,
had thereupon dared the British to come and get. The determined
attitude of his militia seems to have discouraged any landing and the
British withdrew without their cannon. Several months later Falmouth
was to have her revenge. Captain Jenkins, with thirty-two volunteers,
set sail in the sloop Two Friends for Tarpaulin Cove, Wood’s Hole,
where H.M.S. Retaliation lay at anchor. Brought to by a shot from the
ship, Jenkins concealed all but two or three of his men to encourage
a boarding party of the enemy. This it was easy to overcome;
whereupon he trained his guns upon the ship, overcame all resistance,
and returned in triumph to Falmouth with the Retaliation, its crew of
twelve men, its plunder, and two Yankee prisoners.
Meantime Yankee merchantmen were running the blockade with even more
zest than they had enjoyed in evading their own embargo. At Hyannis,
the Kutuzoff, with a full cargo of cotton and rice, came bowling
into port followed close by a British privateer-schooner. The cargo
safe landed, one hundred militia gathered to repel possible invasion
and trained a four-pounder on the enemy who, after an unsuccessful
attempt to destroy a beached British prize, prudently withdrew. At
Hyannis, again the Yankee landed “upwards of a hundred packages
of dry goods”; other boats, without benefit of revenue officers,
landed stores of spirits and wine and other products from the South.
Coasting vessels tried to keep up a desultory trade with Boston,
though Boston was so thoroughly blockaded it was easier to make the
run to New York. Fleets of whaleboats followed the old route that
Bradford and De Rasieres had used, by way of Sandwich and Manomet,
and so, on, hugging the shores of southern New England to their
destination. Two Eastham captains, safely landing a whaleboat cargo
of rye at Boston, were encouraged by success to exchange for a larger
boat and cargo for the homeward voyage. At the Gurnet, however, they
were brought to by a “pink-stern” schooner that was masquerading as
a fisherman, but proved to belong to H.M.S. Spencer. One captain was
sent to Boston for three hundred dollars ransom of their boat; the
other, Mayo, was retained aboard the prize as pilot, and orders given
him to cruise about the bay. In a stiff gale Mayo counselled taking
shelter in the lee of Billingsgate Point, forthwith grounded the
schooner on the Eastham flats, quieted criticism with assurance that
they would soon be floating over the bar into the safety of inner
waters, and advised the officers to go below that their number might
not excite suspicion on shore. He had previously secured two pistols
for himself and provided for the helplessness of the crew by giving
them a gimlet to tap a barrel of rum. He then threw all available
firearms overboard, and, when the officers presented themselves in
alarm as the boat canted with the receding tide, held them off with
his pistols, coolly walked ashore over the sands, and roused the
militia who took boat and crew as prize. The crew, later, was allowed
to escape to their frigate and the boat was awarded to Captain Mayo,
who released it to its owners for two hundred dollars. But the
town was not to come off so easily in the affair: for the British
commander, in reprisal for the indignity to his men, threatened to
destroy boats, buildings, and salt-works, if twelve hundred dollars
were not forthcoming as the price of immunity and as recompense for
the prisoners’ baggage. The town fathers decided to pay the sum, and
made no such bad bargain as their receipt promised to hold Eastham
scatheless for the duration of the war.
Brewster, prudently, chose a like alternative, although here the
price was raised to four thousand dollars. An emergency town
meeting was held in the church to consider the question, scouts
sent out to neighboring towns to sound opinion as to the likelihood
of help in resisting the demand, the artillery commander directed
to “engage horses to be in readiness for the ordnance; and there
being a deficiency in that branch of the service a committee should
ascertain how many exempts from forty-five to sixty in each school
district could be brought to enlist therein.” The scouts returning
with the disheartening news “that the town of Brewster can make no
dependence on any of our neighbors for assistance in our alarming and
distressed situation,” it was decided to employ arbiters rather than
ordnance, and that “the committee of safety who went on board his
B.M. Spencer, go again this night and make the best terms possible
with Com. Ragget.” Ragget held to his demand, and the committee,
though they “used their best endeavors,” “could not obtain the
abatement of a dollar,” the sum to be paid in specie in two weeks’
time. The tribute money was borrowed, and to reimburse the lenders
a tax levied on “salt-works, buildings of every description, and
vessels owned in this town of every description frequenting, or lying
on, the shore.” It is interesting that the sixty-five irreconcilable
alien residents who had adhered to the jurisdiction of Harwich
managed to evade their share of the tax, although their property was
thus secured from the British guns. The faithful of Brewster bore
the burden none too willingly one may guess: three years later they
petitioned the legislature to refund the sum paid “Rd. Ragget, Esq.
as a contribution,” but received no redress. And when, as a crowning
wrong, they were upbraided by fireside patriots for paying tribute
to the enemy, they had the valid excuse that since Government and
neighbors had left them to fend for themselves, they were justified
in saving the town.
Orleans, of bolder kidney, it would seem, rejected a like demand, and
repulsed several landing parties. It may be said that the village of
Orleans lay inland at a safer distance from ship’s guns. In December
the British frigate Newcastle ran ashore near Orleans, and, floated
with some difficulty, sent a four-oared barge into Rock Harbor and
captured therein a schooner and three sloops, two of which, being
aground, were fired but were saved by the natives. Prize crews were
put aboard the other sloop and the schooner, and anchor weighed for
Provincetown. But the schooner, under command of a Yankee pilot who
emulated the example of Captain Mayo, of Eastham, ran her ashore
on the Yarmouth flats, and the crew were sent prisoners to Salem.
Meantime the Orleans militia had driven off the landing force; and
sixty years later the surviving heroes or their widows received
a bounty of one hundred and sixty acres of public land for their
prowess at “the battle of Orleans.” Boat after boat in the bay
was taken by the British, and usually released after the captors
had replenished their stores from the cargoes. The Two Friends of
Provincetown, taken off Gloucester, was sent to Nova Scotia, as,
also, was the Victory of Yarmouth. But the master of the Victory
saved his captor, the Leander, from being wrecked on some dangerous
shoals and received as reward an order on the Governor of Halifax for
his schooner and a safe-conduct home for himself and his crew.
On the other side of the account, many Cape Cod captains made
successful ventures in privateering. Captain Reuben Rich, of
Wellfleet, captured an East Indiaman on the first day out, and
cleared seventeen thousand dollars for his share in the transaction;
men from Brewster, Truro, Eastham likewise made satisfactory
cruises under letters of marque. Cape Cod fishermen served in these
privateers and in the navy, and sometimes were captured, and many a
man from Cape Cod was familiar with the interior of Dartmoor Prison.
The last survivor of them, at Truro, lived well into the opening of
a new era, and died in 1878 at the ripe age of ninety. Two Harwich
men were in the fight between the Constitution and Guerrière, and no
doubt could sing with gusto:
“You thought our frigates were but few,
And Yankees could not fight,
Until bold Hull the Guerrière took,
And banished her from sight.
_Chorus_:
“Ye parliaments of England, ye Lords and Commons too,
Consider well what you’re about and what you mean to do;
You are now at war with Yankee boys, and soon you’ll rue the day
You roused the sons of Liberty in North America.”
The “sons of Liberty,” although consecrated by no such spirit as won
the war for independence, had considerable ground for exultation.
But British ships dominated Cape Cod Bay, and the flagship, anchored
off Truro, sometimes used the old mill on Mill Hill for a target. On
such occasions, says Rich, the inhabitants preferred the eastern side
of the hill. Again British seamen used Provincetown as their own,
and, individually, established friendly relations ashore; officers
often landed to buy fresh provisions for which they paid hard British
gold to the considerable profit of the natives; and although some
timid farmers kept their cattle in the woods, there is no record
of any looting. Mr. Rich remembers an old lady who confessed the
girls liked to watch the British barges come in; another recalls
that on the way from school one day with a bevy of her mates, they
encountered a squad of the British, and making as if to turn aside,
were accosted gallantly by the officer. “Don’t leave the road,
ladies,” cried he, touching his cap, “we won’t harm you.” It is
probable that more than once youth and bright eyes managed some
amelioration of the rigors of war.
It was a futile war, growing out of old animosities at home and the
great Napoleonic conflicts overseas, and all were ready for peace
when it came about through the Treaty of Ghent in December, 1814. Yet
the war had served Americans well by clearing obstacles in the way of
a further development of trade, which again leaped forward with the
building of the clipper ships that beat the lumbering East Indiamen
on the oceans of the world, and were ready for the swift voyages
around the Horn to the gold-fields of the Pacific. For America now
had a navy: in the years between the Revolution and the Embargo War,
our growing trade, unprotected as it was then, had been at the mercy
not only of the European belligerents, but of the Mediterranean
corsairs and pirates. For many years regular tribute was paid the
Barbary States to buy exemption from attack; and even so it was no
unusual thing for offerings to be asked of a Sunday in some Cape
Cod meeting-house to defray the ransom of a sailor captured by the
Barbary pirates. It was not until after the War of 1812 that the
nuisance was stopped by sending a squadron to the Mediterranean under
Decatur, when the Dey of Algiers was compelled to a treaty forbidding
his profitable exaction of tribute, and Tunis and Tripoli promised to
hold our commerce exempt from the depredations of the corsairs.