Gentlemen rovers
by E. Alexander Powell · English · Gutenberg #37812 · 307,213 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Gentlemen rovers
Author: E. Alexander Powell
Release date: October 20, 2011 [eBook #37812]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GENTLEMEN ROVERS ***
Produced by paksenarrion, Suzanne Shell and the Online
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GENTLEMEN ROVERS
[Illustration: Commodore Truxtun leaped into the shrouds.]
GENTLEMEN ROVERS
BY E. ALEXANDER POWELL, F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF "THE LAST FRONTIER," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK 1913
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published September, 1913
[Illustration]
To
THE FINEST GENTLEMAN I KNOW
MY FATHER
"There's a Legion that never was 'listed,
That carries no colors or crest,
But, split in a thousand detachments,
Is breaking the road for the rest.
* * * * *
The ends o' the Earth were our portion,
The ocean at large was our share,
There was never a skirmish to windward
But the Leaderless Legion was there.
* * * * *
We preach in advance of the Army,
We skirmish ahead of the Church,
With never a gunboat to help us
When we're scuppered and left in the lurch.
But we know as the cartridges finish
And we're filed on our last little shelves,
That the Legion that never was 'listed
Will send us as good as ourselves.
* * * * *
Then a health (we must drink it in whispers)
To our wholly unauthorized horde--
To the line of our dusty foreloopers,
To the Gentlemen Rovers abroad!"
--_The Lost Legion._
FOREWORD
This book is written as a tribute to some men who have been overlooked
by History and forgotten by Fame. Though they won for us more than half
the territory comprised within our present-day borders, not only have no
monuments been erected to perpetuate their exploits in bronze and
marble, but they lie for the most part in forgotten and neglected
graves, some of them under alien skies. Boyd, Truxtun, Eaton, Reed,
Lafitte, Smith, Ide, Ward, Walker--even their names hold no significance
for their countrymen of the present generation, yet they played great
parts in our national drama. After two decades of history-making in
Hindustan, Boyd came back to his own country and ably seconded William
Henry Harrison in breaking the power of the great Indian confederation
which threatened to check the white man's westward march. When both
France and England were our enemies, and the gloom of despondency hung
like a cloud over the land, it was Truxtun and his bluejackets who put
new heart into the nation by their victories. Eaton and his motley army
marched across six hundred miles of African desert, and by bringing the
Barbary despots to their knees accomplished that which had been
unsuccessfully attempted by every naval power in Europe. Captain Reed,
of the _General Armstrong_, after holding off a British force twenty
times the strength of his own, sunk his vessel rather than surrender. To
a pirate and smuggler named Jean Lafitte, more than any other person
save Andrew Jackson, we owe our thanks for saving New Orleans from
capture and Louisiana from invasion. Jedediah Smith blazed the route of
the Overland Trail and showed us the way to California, and a quarter of
a century later Fremont, Ide, Sloat, and Stockton made the land beyond
the Sierras ours. William Walker came within an ace of changing the map
of Middle America, and made the name of American a synonym for courage
from the Rio Grande to Panama, while on the other side of the world
another American, Frederick Townsend Ward, raised and led that ever
victorious army whose exploits were General Gordon's chief claim to
fame. There was not one of these men of whom we have not reason to be
proud. But because they did their work unofficially, in what might
aptly be described as "shirt-sleeve warfare," and because they went
ahead without waiting for the tardy sanction of those who guided our
ship of state, the deeds they performed have never received befitting
recognition from those who follow by the trails they made, who grow rich
from the mines that they discovered, who dwell upon the lands they won.
And that is why I am going to ask you, my friends, as in the following
pages I lead these forgotten heroes before you in imaginary review, to
raise your hats in respect and admiration to this company of brave
soldiers and gallant gentlemen who so stoutly upheld American prestige
and American traditions in many far corners of the world.
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOR RENT: AN ARMY ON ELEPHANTS 1
WHEN WE FOUGHT NAPOLEON 19
WHEN WE CAPTURED AN AFRICAN KINGDOM 45
THE LAST FIGHT OF THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG" 73
THE PIRATE WHO TURNED PATRIOT 89
THE MAN WHO DARED TO CROSS THE RANGES 125
THE FLAG OF THE BEAR 153
THE KING OF THE FILIBUSTERS 179
CITIES CAPTURED BY CONTRACT 217
ILLUSTRATIONS
Commodore Truxtun leaped into the shrouds _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
The death of Tippo-Sahib at the storming of Seringapatam 12
The battle of Tippecanoe 16
The frigate _Philadelphia_ ran aground in the harbor of
Tripoli, the Tripolitans capturing Captain Bainbridge
and his entire crew 54
But even in those days the fame of American gunners
was as wide as the seas 86
The battle of New Orleans 120
Westward pressed the little troop of pioneers, across the
sun-baked lava beds of southwestern Utah 136
The Sacramento Valley in 1845 164
General William Walker and his men, after a long and stormy
voyage, landing at Virgin Bay, en route to Costa Rica 196
General Walker reviewing troops on the Grand Plaza, Granada 200
The programme was always the same: the sudden rush
of the filibusters with their high, shrill yell; the
taking of the barracks and the cathedral in the Plaza 206
"Come on, boys!" shouted Ward. "We're going in!" and plunged
through the narrow opening, a revolver in each hand 230
FOR RENT: AN ARMY ON ELEPHANTS
The pitiless Indian sun had poured down upon the Hyderabad _maidan_
until its sandy surface glowed like a stove at white heat. Drawn up in
motionless ranks, which stretched from end to end of the great
parade-ground, was a division of cavalry: squadron after squadron of
scarlet-coated troopers on sleek and shining horses; row after row of
brown and bearded faces peering stolidly from under the white turbans.
The rays of the sun danced and sparkled upon ten thousand lance-points;
the feeble breeze picked up ten thousand pennons and fluttered them into
a white-and-scarlet cloud. Now and then the silence would be broken by a
clash of steel as a horse tossed its head or a _sowar_ stirred uneasily
in his saddle. Sitting a white Arab, a score of paces in advance of the
foremost rank, very stiff and soldierly in his gorgeous uniform, was a
tall young man whose ruddy cheeks and pleasant eyes looked strangely out
of place in so Oriental a setting.
From somewhere within the city walls a bugle spoke shrilly and was
answered by another and then another, each nearer than the one
preceding. The young man in the splendid uniform barked an order, and
men and horses stiffened into rigidity as sharply as though an electric
current had gone through them. Through the twin-towered gateway of the
city advanced a procession, colorful as a circus, dazzling as a durbar.
The two figures who rode at the head of the glittering cortege formed an
almost startling contrast. One of them answered in every detail the
popular conception of an Asiatic potentate: haughty of manner, portly of
person, with a clear, dark skin and wonderfully piercing eyes and a
great black beard, spreading fan-wise upon his breast. An aigret of
diamonds flashed and scintillated in his flame-colored turban; rubies,
large as robin's eggs, gleamed in his ears, and hanging from his neck
over his pale blue surtout was a rope of pearls which would have roused
the envy of an empress. His companion, to whom he paid marked attention,
was equally noticeable, though in quite a different fashion: a lean,
smooth-shaven, lantern-jawed man, still in the middle thirties, very
cold and reserved of manner, with a great beak of a nose and a jaw like
a granite crag. It did not need the cocked hat and gold epaulets of a
British general to mark him as a soldier.
As the cortege cantered onto the _maidan_ the massed bands of the
cavalry burst into a wild, barbaric march, brass and kettle-drums
crashing together in stirring discord. The strains ceased as abruptly as
they began, and the youthful commander, rising in his stirrups, shot his
blade into the air and called in a voice like a trumpet:
"Cheers for his Highness!"
And back came a guttural roar from ten thousand throats:
"Long live the Nizam!"
Obviously gratified at the warmth of his greeting, the ruler of the
Deccan wheeled his horse and came cantering up to the cavalryman, whose
sword flashed in salute.
"Boyd Sahib," he said, "you are a veritable magician. You turn ryots
into soldiers as readily as a fakir turns a stone into bread. Your men
are admirable. I congratulate you on their appearance."
Then, turning to his taciturn companion:
"Sir Arthur Wellesley, permit me to present to you Boyd Sahib, commander
of my cavalry and my trusted friend. General Boyd," he added, glancing
at the Englishman with a malicious smile, "is a very brilliant
soldier--and an American."
* * * * *
Thus met, when the nineteenth century was still in its
swaddling-clothes, two extraordinary men: Sir Arthur Wellesley, who in
later years, as the Duke of Wellington, was to gain undying fame by
conquering Napoleon; and General John Parker Boyd, an American soldier
of fortune, who rendered most gallant service to his own people, but
whose very name has been forgotten by them.
Jack Boyd, as his boyhood companions in Newburyport used to call him,
was born with the spirit of adventure strong within him. Almost before
he had graduated from dresses to knee-trousers he would linger about the
wharfs of the quaint old town, drinking in the stories of strange places
and stranger doings told him by the seafarers who were wont to
congregate along the water-front, or staring wistfully at the big, black
merchantmen about to sail for foreign parts. He was wont to say that it
was a perverse and unkind fate which caused him to be born in so
inauspicious a year as 1764, for, though there was no more ardent
youngster in all New England, his youth caused the recruiting sergeants
of the Continental Army to whom he applied for enlistment to pat him on
the shoulder and remark encouragingly: "Come again, son, when you're a
few years older."
Thus it was that he saw unroll before him that marvellous moving-picture
of the birth of a nation, which began on the greensward at Lexington and
ended before the British lines at Yorktown, without being able to play
any greater part in those stirring events than does a spectator in the
thrilling scenes which he pays his five cents to see depicted on a
screen. Indeed, a twelve-month passed after the last British soldier
left our shores before young Boyd achieved the ambition of his life by
obtaining an ensign's commission in the 2d Regiment of Foot and donned
the blue coat and buff breeches of an officer in the American army.
Although within a year he had been promoted to lieutenant, his was not
the temperament which could long endure the monotony of garrison life,
with its unending round of guard-mounting and small-arms practice and
company drill. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that before
the gold braid on his lieutenant's uniform had time to tarnish he had
handed in his papers and had booked passage on an East Indiaman sailing
out of Boston for Madras. The year 1788, then, saw this youngster of
four-and-twenty landed on the coast of Coromandel, poor in acquaintances
and pocket but rich in adventurousness and pluck.
He could have taken his military talents to no better market, for at
this period of India's troubled history a brilliant career awaited a man
whose wits were as sharp as his sword. The last quarter of the
eighteenth century found all India ablaze with racial and religious
hatred. Wars were as frequent as strikes are in the United States.
Though the French were still supreme in the south of the peninsula, the
English power was steadily rising in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. There
were really two distinct struggles in progress: the English were
fighting the French and the Hindus were fighting the Mohammedans. The
most powerful of the native princes at this time were the Nizam of
Hyderabad, and the Peishwa, as the ruler of the Mahratta tribes was
called--both of whom had, for reasons of policy, espoused the English
cause--and Tippoo Sahib, the son of a Mohammedan military adventurer who
had made himself Sultan of Mysore, who was an ally of the French. Ranged
on the one side, then, were the British, with their allies, the Nizam
and the Peishwa, while opposed to them were the French and Tippoo of
Mysore. All of the reigning princes of India maintained extensive
military establishments, and soldiers of fortune found at their courts
rapid promotion and lavish pay. When Boyd landed in India he was
confronted with the problem which of the rival causes he should make his
own, and it speaks well for his sagacity and foresight that he promptly
decided to offer his services to the allies of the English, for at that
time most students of politics, in India and out of it, believed that
the future of the peninsula was to be Gallic rather than Anglo-Saxon.
From Madras Boyd made his way on horseback to the Mahratta country,
where his attractive personality and soldierly appearance so impressed
the Peishwa that he gave the young American the command of a cavalry
brigade of fifteen hundred men. Boyd was now in possession of the raw
material for which he had hankered, and he forthwith proceeded to show
his extraordinary skill in welding, tempering, and sharpening it. From
daybreak until dark his camp resounded to the call of bugles, the words
of command, and the clatter of galloping hoofs. He hammered his men into
shape as a blacksmith hammers a bar of iron, until they combined the
inflexible discipline of Prussian foot-guards with the mobility and
endurance of Texas rangers. His chance to test the quality of his
handiwork came in 1790, when Tippoo Sultan, failing in his attempt to
bring on a renewal of the war between England and France, turned loose
his hordes and overran the land. In the three years' war which followed,
the British, under Lord Cornwallis, who was striving to regain in India
the reputation he had lost at Yorktown, were aided by the Mahrattas and
the Nizam, who were induced by fear and jealousy to join in the struggle
against their powerful neighbor. Thus Opportunity knocked sharply on
Boyd's door. Commanding a body of as fine horsemen as ever threw leg
across saddle, his name quickly became a synonym for audacity and
daring. Riding, wholly without support, into the very heart of Tippoo's
dominions, he would strike a series of paralyzing blows, burn a dozen
towns, capture or destroy immense stores of ammunition, exact a huge
indemnity, and be back in his own territory again before any troops
could be brought up to oppose him. Boyd's flying columns played no small
part, indeed, in the campaign which ended in 1792 with the defeat of
Tippoo--a defeat for which the Sultan had to pay by ceding half his
dominions, paying an indemnity of three thousand lacs of rupees (one
hundred million dollars), and giving his two sons as hostages for his
future good behavior.
Boyd, meanwhile, had never let slip an opportunity for improving his
knowledge of Hindustani and its kindred dialects or familiarizing
himself with the complex conditions, racial, religious, and political,
which prevailed in Hindustan. Realizing that the Mahratta power was on
the wane, he resigned from the service of the Peishwa, and, bearing
letters of the highest commendation from that ruler to the British envoy
at the court of the Nizam, he turned his horse's head toward Hyderabad.
In a letter to his father, written at this time, he says: "On my arrival
I was presented to his Highness in form by the English consul. My
reception was as favorable as my most sanguine wishes had anticipated.
After the usual ceremony was over he presented me with the command of
two _kansolars_ of infantry, each of which consists of five hundred
men." Continuing, he described in detail the army of the Nizam, which at
that time consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand infantry, sixty
thousand cavalry, and five hundred elephants, each of which bore a
"castle" containing a nabob and his attendants. Can't you picture the
scene when that letter, with its strange foreign postmarks, reached the
old brick house in the quaint New England town; how the parents read and
re-read that message from the son who was adventuring in foreign parts,
and how the neighbors dropped in of evenings to hear the latest news of
the boy they all knew, who was carving out a career with his sword half
the world away? Success is, after all, a rather tasteless thing if there
are no home folks to rejoice in it.
Fortuna, that capricious beauty whose favor so many brave men have
sought in vain, seemed to have lost her heart to the stalwart American,
for in 1799, when Tippoo and his savage soldiery once more broke loose
and swept across the peninsula, leaving a trail of corpses and burning
villages behind them, the Nizam, recalling the tales he had heard of
Boyd's exploits as a cavalry leader, gave him the command of a division
of ten thousand turbaned troopers. Nor did the fair goddess desert him
even when he was captured by a body of Mysore horsemen, taken before
Tippoo Sahib himself, and, upon his stoutly refusing to turn traitor to
the Nizam, condemned to death by torture. And the torturers of the
tyrant of Mysore bore a most evil reputation. Overpowering the sentries
who were set to guard him, he succeeded in making his way, thanks to his
fluency in Hindustani, through the enemy's lines, rejoining the Nizam's
forces in time to take part in the storming of the Sultan's capital of
Seringapatam, Tippoo being killed in a hand-to-hand struggle after a
last stand at the city gates. Thus died, as he would have wished--with
his boots on--the most dangerous adversary with whom Britain had to
contend in the winning of her Eastern empire.
[Illustration: The death of Tippo-Sahib at the storming of Seringapatam.
From a painting by R. de Moraine.]
Early in the nineteenth century Boyd, who, as the result of the generous
rewards he had received from his royal employers, had by this time
become possessed of considerable means, left the service of the Nizam,
much against the wishes of that monarch, and organized an army of his
own. Numerically, it wasn't much of an army, as armies go, having at no
time exceeded two thousand men, but it was as businesslike a force as
ever responded to a bugle. Boyd, whose reputation as a cavalry leader
extended from Bengal to Malabar, had the horsemen of all India to draw
from, and he recruited nothing but the best, the men with whom he filled
his ranks being as hard as nails and as keen as razors. His second in
command was an Irish soldier of fortune named William Tone, a brother of
Wolf Tone, the famous rebel patriot.
As Boyd reckoned on counterbalancing the smallness of his force by its
extreme mobility, he adopted the novel expedient of transporting his
artillery on the backs of elephants, thus making it possible for the
guns to keep pace with the cavalry even on his whirlwind raids, for an
elephant, though burdened with a field-piece and half a dozen soldiers,
can put mile after mile behind it at a swinging, ungainly gait which it
will tax any horse to maintain. Military history presents no more
fantastic picture than that of this sun-tanned Yankee adventurer
spurring across an Indian countryside with a brigade of beturbaned
lancers and a score or so of lumbering elephants, the muzzles of brass
field-guns frowning from their howdahs, tearing along behind him. What a
pity that the folk in Newburyport could not have seen him!
The entire outfit--elephants, horses, cannon, and weapons--was Boyd's
personal property, and he rented it to those princes who had need of and
were able to pay for its service precisely as a garage rents an
automobile. The prices he obtained for it were enormous, and ere long he
became a wealthy man. From one end of the country to the other he led
his scarlet-coated mercenaries, selling their services in turn to his
former employers, the Nizam and the Peishwa, and to the rulers of
Gwalior and Indore. When a force was needed for a particularly desperate
service or for a hopeless hope they sent for Boyd. And he always
delivered the goods. Fighting was going on everywhere, and he never
lacked employment. But he was far too discerning not to recognize the
fact that the power of England was steadily, if slowly, increasing, and
that her complete domination of India, which could not much longer be
delayed, must inevitably put an end to independent soldiering as a
profitable profession. In 1808, therefore, he sold his army, elephants
and all, to Colonel Felose, a Neapolitan who had seen service under many
flags, and with misted eyes and a choking throat for the last time rode
along the lines of his faithful troopers. A few days later he set sail
for Paris, for, with the Corsican's star high in the heavens, there
seemed no better place for such a man to seek adventure and advancement.
Disappointed in his hope of obtaining a commission under the Napoleonic
eagles, he turned his face toward home, and in 1810, after an absence of
more than twenty years, he felt the cobblestones of his native
Newburyport beneath his feet once more.
Boyd's adventurous career under his own flag and in the service of his
own people forms quite another though a scarcely less thrilling story.
Trained and experienced officers being in those days few and far
between, the government offered him the colonelcy of the 4th Regiment of
Infantry, which he promptly accepted, displaying such energy in drilling
his men that when his regiment marched through the streets of Boston on
its way to Pittsburg the local papers commented editorially on the
smartness of its appearance. When William Henry Harrison, then governor
of the Territory of Indiana (which included the present States of
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin), realizing the imperative
necessity of smashing the great Indian confederation which Tecumseh, the
Shawnee warrior-statesman, was so painstakingly building to oppose the
white man's further progress westward, called for troops to do the
business, Boyd put his men on flat-boats, floated them down to the falls
of the Ohio, and marched them overland to Vincennes, his dusty, footsore
column tramping into Harrison's stockaded headquarters almost before
that veteran frontiersman had realized that they had started. Boyd was
in direct command, under Harrison, of the little expeditionary force of
nine hundred men throughout the whirlwind campaign which culminated on a
drizzling November morning in 1811 on the banks of the Tippecanoe
River. Tippecanoe was, I suppose, the only battle which our army ever
fought in high hats, for the absurd uniform of the American infantry,
discarded a few months later, consisted of blue, brass-buttoned
tail-coats, skin-tight pantaloons, and "stovepipe" hats with red, white,
and blue cockades. Though taken by surprise and outnumbered six to one,
Boyd's soldiery showed the result of their training by standing like a
stone wall against the onset of the whooping redskins, pouring in a
volley of buckshot at close range which left the hordes of warriors
wavering, undecided whether to come on or to retreat. At this
psychological moment Boyd ordered up the squadron of dragoons which he
had been holding in reserve for just such an opportunity. "Right into
line!" he roared in the voice which had resounded over so many fields in
far-off Hindustan. "Trot! Gallop! _Charge!_ Hip, hip, here we go!" It
was the charge of the cavalry, delivered with all the smashing
suddenness with which a boxer delivers a solar-plexus blow, which did
the business. The Indians, panic-stricken at the sight of the oncoming
troopers in their brass helmets and streaming plumes of horsehair, broke
and ran. Tippecanoe was won; Harrison was started on the road which was
to end in the White House; the peril of Tecumseh's Indian confederation
was ended forever, and the civilization of the West was advanced a
quarter of a century.
[Illustration: The battle of Tippecanoe.
From a print in the New York Public Library.]
In the following year, upon the outbreak of our second war with England,
Boyd, who had been commissioned a brigadier-general, commanded a
division of Wilkinson's army in the abortive American invasion of Upper
Canada, and, on November 11, 1813, fought the drawn battle of Chrysler's
Field. "Taps" were sounded to his picturesque career on October 4, 1830.
He died, not as he would have wished, sword in hand at the head of
charging squadrons, but quite peacefully in his bed, holding the prosaic
position of port officer of Boston, to which post he had been appointed
by that other gallant fighter, President Andrew Jackson. As the end
approached I doubt not that in mind he was far away from the brick and
plaster of the New England city, and that his thoughts harked back to
those mad, glad days when he and his lancers rode across the plains of
Hindustan and his elephants rocked and rolled behind him.
WHEN WE FOUGHT NAPOLEON
This is the story of some forgotten fights and fighters in a forgotten
war. The governments of the two nations which did the fighting--France
and the United States--refused, indeed, to admit that there was any war
at all, and, in a sense, they were right, for there was never any
declaration of hostilities, and there was never signed a treaty of
peace. But it was a very real war, nevertheless, with some of the
fiercest battles ever fought on deep water, and when it was over we had
laid the foundations of a navy, we had won the respect of the European
powers, and we had humbled the pride of Napoleon as it had been humbled
only once before, when Nelson annihilated the French fleet in the battle
of the Nile.
At the time that this narrative opens Bonaparte had just finished his
wonderful campaign in northern Italy, and the French nation, flushed
with confidence by his remarkable series of victories, was swaggering
about with a chip on its shoulder, and defying the nations of the world
to knock it off. In fact, the leaders of the Reign of Terror, drunk with
unaccustomed power, had lost their heads as completely as the victims
whom they had guillotined on the Place de la Revolution. Thoroughly
typical of this insolent and arrogant attitude was the French
Directory's peremptory demand that we instantly abrogate the treaty
which John Jay, our minister to England, had just concluded with that
country, basing its unwarrantable interference with our affairs on the
ground that the terms of the treaty were injurious to the commercial
interests of France. Upon our curt refusal to accede to this
preposterous demand, Charles C. Pinckney, our minister at Paris, was
notified by the French Government that it would hold no further
intercourse with him, and the very next mail-packet brought the news
that he had been expelled from France. Not content with this
extraordinary and uncalled-for affront to a friendly nation, French
cruisers began seizing our ships under a decree of their government
authorizing the capture of neutral vessels having on board any of the
products of Great Britain or her colonies, for at this time, remember,
France and England were at war, as they were, indeed, throughout nearly
the whole of Napoleon's reign. As the bulk of our trade at this period
was with the British colonies in the West Indies, it was evident that
this decree was aimed directly at us. Every packet that came from West
Indian waters brought news of American ships overhauled and plundered,
of sailors beaten and kidnapped, and of cargoes seized and confiscated
by the French, the authenticated despatches to the State Department
naming nearly a thousand vessels which had been captured. So bold did
the French become that one of their privateers actually had the audacity
to sail into Charleston Roads and, almost under the guns of the
batteries, to burn to the water's edge a British vessel which was lying
in the harbor.
Though it was evident that nothing short of a miracle could avert war,
President Adams, appreciating the ill-preparedness of the United States,
which had only recently emerged from the Revolution in a weakened and
impoverished condition, determined to make one more try for peace by
despatching to France a special mission composed of Minister Pinckney,
Elbridge Gerry, and John Marshall, the last-named later Chief Justice of
the United States. Though in all our diplomatic history we have sent
abroad no more able or distinguished embassy, the reception its members
received at the hands of the French Government was as disgraceful as it
was ludicrous. The French Directory at this time was composed of low
and irresponsible politicians of the ward-heeler type who had climbed to
power during the French Revolution, so that, incredible as such a state
of affairs may seem in these days, the negotiations soon degenerated
into an attempt to fleece the American envoys, who were informed quite
frankly that their success depended entirely upon their agreeing to
bribe--or, as the French politely put it, to give a _douceur_
to--certain avaricious members of the Directory. Not only this, but the
American diplomatists were told that, if the bribes demanded were not
forthcoming, orders would be given to the war-ships on the French West
Indian station to ravage the coasts of the United States. The chronicles
of our foreign relations contain nothing which, for sheer impudence and
insult, even approaches this attempt to levy blackmail on the nation.
Even the astute Talleyrand, at that time French Foreign Minister, so far
misjudged the characters of the men with whom he was dealing as to
insinuate that a gift of money to members of the government was a
necessary preliminary to the negotiations, and that a refusal would
bring on war. Then all the pent-up rage and indignation of Pinckney
burst forth. "War be it, then!" he exclaimed. "Millions for defence,
sir, but not one cent for tribute!"
Upon learning of this crowning insult to his representatives, President
Adams, on March 19, 1798, informed Congress that the mission on which he
had built his hopes of peace had proved a failure. Then the war-fever,
which had temporarily been held in abeyance, swept over the country like
fire in dry grass. Talleyrand's attempt to whip America into a
revocation of Jay's treaty had ignominiously failed. He had made the
inexcusable mistake of underestimating the spirit and resources of his
opponents. Congress promptly abrogated all our treaties with France,
prohibited American vessels from entering French ports, and French
vessels from coming into American waters, and voted a large sum for
national defence. The land forces were increased, the coastwise
fortifications strengthened, ships of war were hurriedly laid down,
volunteers from every walk of life besieged the recruiting stations,
Washington reassumed command of the army. At Portland, Portsmouth,
Salem, Chatham, Norwich, Philadelphia, and Baltimore the shipyards
resounded to the clatter of tools, for those were before the days of big
guns and armor-plate, and a man-of-war could, if necessary, be built and
equipped in ninety days.
Out from behind this war-cloud rose the thrilling strains of "Hail,
Columbia." When the war-fever was at its height, a young actor and
singer named Fox--a vaudeville artist, we should call him nowadays--who
was appearing at a Philadelphia theatre, called one morning on his
friend Joseph Hopkinson, a young and clever lawyer, and a son of that
Francis H. Hopkinson whose signature may be seen at the bottom of the
Declaration of Independence.
"Look here, Joe," said Fox, dropping into a chair, "I need some help and
you're the only man I know who can give it to me. No, no, old man, it's
not money I'm after. To-morrow night I'm to have a benefit at the
theatre, but not a single box has been sold; so, unless something can be
done to attract public attention, I'm afraid I shall have a mighty thin
house. Now it strikes me that, with all this war-fever in the air, if I
could get some patriotic verses, something really fiery and inspiriting,
written to the tune of 'The President's March,' I might draw a crowd.
Several of the people around the theatre have tried it, but they have
all given it up as a bad job, and say that it can't be done. So you're
my last hope, Joe, and I think you could do it."
Shutting himself up in his study, within an hour Hopkinson had completed
the first verse and chorus of what was to prove one of the greatest of
our national songs, and had submitted them to his wife, who sang them
to a harpsichord accompaniment. The tune and the words harmonized. A few
hours later the song was completed and was being memorized by Fox. The
next morning Philadelphia was placarded with announcements that that
evening Mr. Fox would sing, for the first time on any stage, a new
patriotic song. The house was packed to the doors. As the orchestra
broke into the familiar opening bars of "The President's March," and
Fox, slender and debonair, bowed from behind the footlights, the
audience grew hushed with expectancy. When the now familiar words,
"Immortal patriots, rise once more!
Defend your rights, defend your shore!"
went rolling through the theatre from pit to gallery, the audience went
wild. Eight times they made him sing it through, and the ninth time they
rose and joined in the rousing chorus:
"Firm, united let us be,
Rallying round our Liberty.
Like a band of brothers joined,
Peace and safety we shall find."
Night after night the singing of "Hail, Columbia," in the theatres was
applauded by audiences delirious with enthusiasm, and within a few days
it was being sung by boys in the streets of every city from Portland to
Savannah. Never since the days of Bunker Hill had the nation been so
stirred as it was in that summer of 1798.
On July 6, with the red-white-and-blue ensign streaming proudly from her
main truck, the sloop of war _Delaware_, twenty guns, of Baltimore,
under Stephen Decatur, Sr., put to sea to an accompaniment of booming
cannon. Cape Henry had scarcely sunk below the horizon before she was
hailed by a merchantman which had been boarded and plundered by a French
privateer only the day before. Upon hearing this news Decatur set off in
a pursuit as eager as that with which a bloodhound follows the trail of
a fugitive criminal. A few hours later his lookouts reported four
vessels dead ahead. Being unable to determine which was the privateer,
he ran in his guns, closed his ports, and keeping on his course until he
was sure that he had been seen, stood hurriedly off, as though afraid of
being captured. Just as he had anticipated, the Frenchman fell into the
trap, and piling on his canvas, bore down upon him. It was not until the
privateersman drew close enough to make out the gun-ports and the
unusual number of men on the American's decks, that he discovered
Decatur's ruse and attempted to escape. But it was too late. The
_Delaware's_ superior speed enabled her easily to overhaul the
Frenchman, which proved to be _La Incroyable_, fourteen guns and seventy
men. So accurate and deadly was the fire poured into her by the
_Delaware's_ gunners (forerunners, remember, of those bluejackets who
handle the twelve-inch guns on the dreadnaught _Delaware_ to-day) that
within ten minutes after the action had commenced the French tricolor
came fluttering down. We had struck our first blow against the power of
France.
The captured vessel was sent into port under a prize crew, was refitted,
added to the American Navy as the _Retaliation_--fitting name!--went to
sea under command of William Bainbridge (the same who a few years later
was to lose the war-ship _Philadelphia_ to the Barbary pirates in the
harbor of Tripoli), and shortly afterward was recaptured by the French
frigate _l'Insurgente_, being the only vessel of our little navy taken
by the French.
By the beginning of 1799 the West Indian waters were as effectually
patrolled by American war-ships as a great city is patrolled by
policemen. The newly built American frigates were objects of great
amusement and derision to the French and British officers stationed in
the West Indian colonies, for they were far too heavily armed,
according to European ideas, carrying almost double the number of guns
usual to vessels of their class. It is interesting to recall the fact,
however, that sixty-odd years later European officers were equally
derisive and sceptical of another American innovation in war-ships which
was destined to revolutionize naval warfare--the monitor. But before
long the sceptics were compelled to revise their opinions of the
fighting qualities of our infant navy. Our fleet was at this time
divided into two squadrons, both of which made their headquarters at St.
Christopher, or, as it was more commonly called, St. Kitts, on the
island of Antigua; one, under Commodore Barry, running as far south as
the Guianas, while the other, under Commodore Truxtun, cruised northward
to Santo Domingo, thus effectually cutting off from commercial
intercourse with the mother country the rich French colonies in the
Caribbean.
Truxtun was a most picturesque and romantic figure. Short and stout,
red-faced, gray-eyed, loud-voiced, gallant with women and short-tempered
with men, he was as typical a sea fighter as ever trod a quarter-deck
with a brass telescope tucked under his arm. From the time when, as a
boy of twelve, he ran away to sea, until, a national hero, he was laid
to rest in Christ Church graveyard in Philadelphia, his life was as full
of hair-breadth escapes and hair-raising adventures as that of one of
Mr. George A. Henty's heroes. A sailor before the mast when scarcely in
his teens, he was impressed into the British Navy, where his ability
attracted such attention that he was offered a midshipman's warrant,
which he refused. When only twenty years of age he commanded his own
ship, in which he succeeded, though at great personal hazard, in
smuggling large quantities of much-needed powder into the rebellious
colonies. Eventually his ship was captured and he was made a prisoner.
Escaping from the British prison in the West Indies where he was
confined, he made his way to the United States, obtained letters of
marque from the first Continental Congress, and was the first to get to
sea of that long line of privateersmen who, first in the Revolution, and
afterward in the War of 1812, practically drove British commerce from
the Atlantic. At the close of the Revolution Truxtun returned to the
merchant service, in which he rose to wealth and position. When the
American Navy was organized under the stimulus of French aggression, he
was offered and accepted the command of the thirty-eight-gun frigate
_Constellation_, a new and very beautiful vessel, splendidly officered
and manned, and with heels as fast as her gun-fire was heavy.
While cruising off Antigua, on February 9, 1799, the _Constellation's_
lookout reported a French war-ship, which, upon being overhauled, proved
to be _l'Insurgente_, forty guns, which had the reputation of being one
of the fastest ships in the world, and was commanded by Captain
Barreault, an officer celebrated in the French Navy as a desperate
fighter and a resourceful sailor. As the _Constellation_, with her crew
at quarters and her decks cleared for action, came booming down upon
him, Captain Barreault broke out the French tricolor at his masthead and
fired a gun to windward, which signified, in the language of the seas,
that he was ready for a yard-arm to yard-arm combat. Truxtun's reply was
to range alongside his adversary, a flag of stripes and stars at every
masthead, and pour in a broadside which raked _l'Insurgente's_ decks
from stem to stern. The first great naval action in which the American
Navy ever bore a part had begun.
Waiting until the _Constellation_ was well abreast of her, at a distance
of perhaps thirty feet (modern war-ships seldom fight at a range of less
than three miles), _l'Insurgente_ replied, firing high in an attempt to
disable the American by bringing down her rigging. Midshipman David
Porter, a youngster barely in his teens, was stationed in the foretop.
Seeing that the top-mast, which had been seriously damaged by the French
fire, was tottering and about to fall, but being unable to make himself
heard on deck above the din of battle, he himself assumed the
responsibility of lowering the foretopsail yard, thus relieving the
strain on the mast and preventing a mishap which would probably have
changed the result of the battle. That midshipman rose, in after years,
to be an admiral and the commander-in-chief of the American Navy.
Barreault, who had a much larger crew than his adversary, soon saw that
his vessel was in danger of being pounded to pieces by the American
gunners who were making every shot tell, and that his only hope of
victory lay in getting alongside and boarding, depending upon his
superior numbers to take the American vessel with the cutlass. With this
in view, he ordered the boarding parties to their stations, sent men
into the rigging with grappling-irons with which to hold the ships
together when they touched, directed the guns to be loaded with small
shot that they might cause greater execution at close quarters, and
then, putting his helm hard down, attempted to run alongside the
_Constellation_. But Truxtun had anticipated this very manoeuvre, and
was prepared for it. Seizing his opportunity--and in sea-battles
opportunities do not last long or come often--he whirled his ship about
as a polo player whirls his pony, and ran squarely across the enemy's
bows, pouring in a rain of lead as he passed, which all but annihilated
the boarding parties drawn up on the deck of _l'Insurgente_.
Foiled in his attempt to get to hand-grips with his enemy, the Frenchman
sheered off and the duel at short range continued, the _Constellation_,
magnificently handled, sailing first along _l'Insurgente's_ port side,
firing as she went, and then, crossing her bows, repeating the manoeuvre
on her starboard quarter. Nothing is more typical of the iron discipline
enforced by the American naval commanders in those early days than an
incident that occurred when this duel between the two frigates was at
its height. As a storm of shot from the Frenchman's batteries came
crashing and smashing into the _Constellation_, a gunner, seeing his
mate decapitated by a solid shot, became so demoralized that he
retreated from his gun, whereupon an officer drew his pistol and shot
the man dead.
Time after time Truxtun repeated his evolution of literally sailing
around _l'Insurgente_, until every gun in her main batteries had been
dismounted, her crew being left only the small guns with which to
continue the action. It speaks volumes for Barreault's bravery that,
with half his crew dead or wounded, and with a terribly battered and
almost defenceless ship, he did continue the action, his weary,
blood-stained, powder-blackened men loading and firing their few
remaining guns dauntlessly. Seeing the weakened condition of his enemy,
Truxtun now prepared to end the battle. Before the French had time to
grasp the full significance of his manoeuvre, he had put his helm hard
down, and the _Constellation_, suddenly looming out of the battle smoke,
bore down upon _l'Insurgente_ with the evident intention of crossing her
stern and raking her with a broadside to which she would be unable to
reply. Though no braver man than Barreault ever fought a ship, he
instantly appreciated that this would mean an unnecessary slaughter of
his men; so, with the tears streaming down his cheeks, he ordered his
colors to be struck, and in token of surrender the flag of France
slipped slowly and mournfully down. The young republic of the West had
avenged the insult of Talleyrand.
It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the desperate fighting
which characterized this battle, the _Constellation_ had only two of her
crew killed and three wounded, while the French loss was nearly twenty
times that number. Lieutenant Rodgers and Midshipman Porter were
immediately sent aboard the captured vessel with a prize crew of only
eleven men. After the dead had been buried at sea, the wounded cared for
by the American surgeons, and about half of the prisoners transferred to
the _Constellation_, Rodgers set such sails on _l'Insurgente_ as the
wrecked rigging would permit, and laid his course for St. Christopher,
it being understood that Truxtun would keep within hail in case his
assistance was needed. During the night a heavy gale set in, however,
and when day broke upon the heaving ocean the _Constellation_ was
nowhere to be seen. It was a ticklish situation in which the thirteen
Americans found themselves, for they had their work cut out for them to
navigate a leaking, shattered, and dismasted ship, while below decks,
awaiting the first opportunity which offered to rise and overpower their
captors, were nearly two hundred desperate and determined prisoners.
There were neither shackles nor handcuffs on board, and the hatchcovers
had been destroyed in the action, so that the prisoners were perfectly
aware that, could they once force their way on deck by a sudden rush,
the ship would again be theirs. But they reckoned without Rodgers, for
the first men who put their heads above the hatchway found themselves
looking into the muzzles of a pair of pistols held by the American
lieutenant, whose fingers were twitching on the triggers. During the
three days and two nights which the voyage to St. Christopher lasted, a
guard of American bluejackets stood constantly around the open hatchway,
a pile of loaded small arms close at hand, and a cannon loaded with
grape-shot trained menacingly into the prisoner-filled hold. On the
evening of the third day, after Truxtun had given her up for lost,
_l'Insurgente_ limped into port with the flag of the United States
flaunting victoriously above that of France.
The 1st of February of the following year found the _Constellation_,
still under the command of Commodore Truxtun, cruising off Guadaloupe in
the hope of picking up some of the French privateers which were using
that colony as a base from which to prey on our West Indian commerce.
While loitering off the port of Basse Terre, and praying that something
would turn up to pay him for his patience, Truxtun sighted a vessel
coming up from the southeast, which from her size and build was
evidently a French frigate of the first class. As she approached, the
keen-eyed American naval officers, scanning her through their glasses,
recognized her as the fifty-two-gun frigate _La Vengeance_, one of the
most formidable vessels in the French Navy. It was evident from the
first, however, that she would much rather run than fight, this anxiety
to avoid an encounter being due to the fact that she had on board a
large number of officials, high in the colonial service, whom she was
bringing out to the colonies from the mother country. No sooner did she
perceive the character of the _Constellation_, therefore, than she piled
on every yard of canvas and headed for Basse Terre and the protecting
guns of its forts. Never had the _Constellation_ a better opportunity to
display her remarkable sailing qualities, and never did she display them
to better advantage. It was well after nightfall, however, before she
was able to overhaul the flying Frenchman, so that it was by the light
of a full moon, which illumined the scene almost as well as though it
were day, that the preparations were completed for the combat. The sea,
which was glasslike in its smoothness, as is so often the case in
Caribbean waters, seemed to be covered with a veil of shimmering silver,
while the battle-lanterns which had been lighted on both vessels swung
like giant fireflies across the purple sky.
Seeing that escape was hopeless, the French commander hove to and
prepared for a desperate resistance. Now, Truxtun had made up his mind
that this was to be no long-range duel, in which the Frenchman's heavier
metal could not fail to give him an advantage, but a fight at close
quarters, in which the smashing broadsides which the _Constellation_ was
specially designed to deliver could not fail to tell. Just before the
beginning of the battle the stout commodore, red-faced, white-wigged,
cock-hatted, clad in the blue tail-coat and buff breeches of the
American Navy, descended to the gun-deck and walked slowly through the
batteries, acknowledging the cheers of the gunners, but emphatically
warning them against firing a shot until he gave the word. No one knew
better than Truxtun the demoralizing effect of a smashing broadside
suddenly delivered at close quarters, and it was this demoralization
which he intended to create aboard the enemy. "Load with solid shot," he
ordered, and added, speaking to his officers so that the men could hear:
"If a man fires a gun before I give the order, shoot him on the spot."
Then with boarding-nettings triced up, decks sanded, magazines opened,
and the tops filled with marines whose duty it was to pick off the
French gunners, the _Constellation_, stripped to her fighting canvas,
swept grandly into action. As she came within range the French commander
opened with his stern-chasers, and in an instant the ordered decks of
the American were turned into a shambles. The wounded were carried
groaning to the cockpit, where the white-aproned surgeons, their arms
bared to the elbow, awaited their grim work, while the dead were hastily
ranged along the unengaged side--rows of stark and staring figures
beneath the placid moon. Again and again the guns of _La Vengeance_
belched smoke and flame, and redder and redder grew the sand with which
the _Constellation's_ decks were spread, but she still kept coming on.
Not until she was squarely abreast of the Frenchman did Truxtun, leaping
into the shrouds, bellow through his speaking-trumpet: "Now, boys, give
'em hell!" The American gunners answered with a broadside which made _La
Vengeance_ reel. The effect was terrible. On the decks of the Frenchman
the dead and dying lay in quivering, bleeding heaps. But not for an
instant did the French sailors flinch from their guns. Broadside
answered broadside, cheer answered cheer, while the men, French and
American alike, toiled and sweated at their work of carnage. So rapidly
were the American guns fired that the men actually had to crawl out of
the ports, in the face of a withering fire, for buckets of water with
which to cool them off.
The different tactics adopted by the two commanders soon began to show
results, for, whereas Truxtun had given orders that his men were to
disregard the upper works and to concentrate their fire on the main-deck
batteries and the hull, the French commander had from the first directed
his fire upon the American's rigging in the hope of crippling her.
Shortly after midnight the French fire, which had grown weaker and
weaker under the terrible punishment of the _Constellation's_ successive
broadsides, ceased altogether, and an officer was seen waving a white
flag in token of surrender. Twice before, in fact, _La Vengeance_ had
struck her colors, but owing to the smoke and darkness the Americans had
not perceived it. And there was good reason for her surrender, for she
had lost one hundred and sixty men out of her crew of three hundred and
thirty, while the _Constellation_ had but thirty-nine casualties out of
a crew of three hundred and ten. Though the French fire had done small
damage to the _Constellation's_ hull, and had killed a comparatively
small number of her crew, it had worked terrible havoc in her rigging,
it being discovered, just as she was preparing to run alongside her
capture and take possession, that every shroud and stay supporting her
mainmast had been shot away, and that the mast was tottering and about
to fall. The men in the top were under the command of a little
midshipman named James Jarvis, who was only thirteen years old. He had
been warned by one of his men that the mast was likely to fall at any
moment, and had been implored to leave the top while there was still
time, which he would have been entirely justified in doing, particularly
as the battle was over. But that thirteen-year-old midshipman had in him
the stuff of which heroes are made, and resolutely refused to leave his
post without orders. The orders never came, for before the crew had time
to secure it the great mast crashed over the side, carrying with it to
instant death little Jarvis and all of his men save one. Though his name
and deed have long since been forgotten by the nation for which he died,
he was no whit less a hero than that other boy-sailor, Casabianca, whose
self-sacrifice at the battle of the Nile has been made familiar by song
and story.
The falling of the _Constellation's_ mast reversed conditions in an
instant, for the surrendered frigate, taking prompt advantage of the
victor's temporary helplessness, crowded on all sail and slowly
disappeared into the night. By the time the wreck had been chopped away
any pursuit of her was hopeless. A few days later she put into the Dutch
port of Curacao in a sinking condition.
Thus continued until February, 1801, an unbroken series of American
successes, French war-ships, French privateers, and French merchantmen
alike being sunk, captured, or driven from the seas. France's trade with
her West Indian colonies was paralyzed, and the prestige of her navy was
enormously diminished. Napoleon, as First Consul, had abolished the
Directory, and was now the virtual ruler of France, having entire
command of all administrative affairs, both civil and military. Forced
to admit that from first to last his ships had been out-sailed,
out-fought, and out-manoeuvred by the despised Americans, and that a
continuance of the war could only result in further disaster and loss of
prestige, he began negotiations which led, about the time that the
nineteenth century passed its first birthday, to a suspension of
hostilities.
During the two and a half years of this unofficial war with the most
powerful military nation in the world our infant navy had captured
eighty-four armed French vessels, mounting over five hundred guns--a
success all the more remarkable when it is remembered that our entire
naval establishment at the outbreak of hostilities comprised but
twenty-two vessels, with four hundred and fifty-six guns. In other
words, we had captured almost four times as many ships as we possessed.
Not only had we practically destroyed French commerce on this side of
the Atlantic, but our own commerce had risen, under the protection of
our guns, from fifty-seven million dollars in 1797 to more than
seventy-eight million dollars in 1799. Most important of all, however,
we had shown to France and to Europe that, when occasion demanded, we
both would and could, in the words of our national song, defend our
rights and defend our shore.
WHEN WE CAPTURED AN AFRICAN KINGDOM
Did you ever, by any chance, leave the Boston State House by the back
door? If so, you found yourself in a quiet and rather shabby
thoroughfare, cobble-paved and lined on the farther side by
old-fashioned red-brick houses, with white, brass-knockered doors, and
iron balconies, and green blinds. That is Derne Street. Though a man
standing on Boston Common could break one of its violet-glass windows
with a well thrown ball, it is, as it were, a placid backwater of the
busy streams of commerce which flow so noisily a few rods away. I wonder
how many of the smug frock-coated politicians who hurry through it as a
short cut daily have any idea how it got its name; I wonder if any of
the people who live upon it know. Though the exploit which this Boston
byway was named to commemorate has been overlooked by nearly all our
historians, perhaps because its scene was laid in a remote and barbarous
country, yet it was a feat which, for picturesqueness, daring, and
indomitable courage, is deserving of a more generous share of the
calcium light of public appreciation. Though I am perfectly aware that
history only too often makes dull reading, this chronicle, I promise
you, is as bristling with romance and adventure as a hedgehog is with
quills.
You must understand, in the first place, that the declining years of the
eighteenth century found a perfectly astounding state of affairs
prevailing in the Mediterranean, where the four Barbary states--Morocco,
Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli--which stretched along its African shore,
collected tribute from every nation whose vessels sailed that sea as
methodically as a street-car conductor collects fares. Asserting that
they were no common, vulgar buccaneers who plundered vessels
indiscriminately, the Barbary corsairs, claiming for themselves the
virtual ownership of the Mediterranean, turned it into a sort of
maritime toll-road, and professed themselves at war with all who refused
to pay roundly for using it. Nor was their boast that they were the
masters of the Middle Sea a vain one, scores of captured merchantmen and
thousands of European slaves laboring under the African sun proving
indubitably that they were amply capable of enforcing their demands. As
far as the question of economy was concerned, it was about as cheap for
a nation to be at war with these bandits of the sea as at peace, for so
heavy was the tribute they demanded that their friendship came almost as
high as their enmity. It cost Spain, at that time a rich and powerful
empire, upward of three million dollars to obtain peace with the Dey of
Algiers in 1786. Though England boasted herself mistress of the seas,
and in token thereof English admirals carried brooms at their mastheads,
she nevertheless spent four hundred thousand dollars annually in
propitiating these African despots. Previous to the Revolution there
were close on a hundred American vessels, manned by more than twelve
hundred seamen, in the Mediterranean, but with the withdrawal of British
protection this commerce was entirely abandoned. The ink was scarcely
dry on the treaty of peace, however, before we had despatched diplomatic
agents to the Barbary coast to purchase the friendship of its rulers,
and had taken our place in the line of regular contributors. We were in
good company, too, for England, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland,
Denmark, and the Italian states had been paying tribute so long that
they had acquired the habit. Think of it, my friends! Every great
seafaring nation in the world meekly paying tribute to a few thousand
Arab cutthroats for the privilege of using one of the seven seas, and
humbly apologizing if the payment happened to become overdue!
Our friendly relations with the Dey of Algiers were of short duration,
however, and by 1793 his swift-sailing, heavily armed cruisers had
captured thirteen American vessels, and sixscore American slaves were at
work on the fortifications of his capital. In his prison-yard, indeed,
one could hear every American inflection, from the nasal twang of Maine
to the drawl of Carolina. After two years of procrastination, Congress,
spurred to action by public indignation, purchased the liberty of the
captives and peace with Algiers for eight hundred thousand dollars,
though the Dey remarked gloomily, as he scrawled his Arabic flourish at
the foot of the treaty: "If I keep on making peace at this rate, there
will soon be no one left to fight. Then how shall I occupy my corsairs?
What shall I do with my fighting men? If they have no one else to rob
and slaughter, they will rob and slaughter me!"
The Bashaw of Tripoli at this time was a peculiarly insolent and
tyrannical Arab named Yussuf Karamanli, who had gained the throne by
the effective method of winning over the body-guard, quietly
surrounding the palace one night, and deposing his elder brother, Ahmet,
whom he promptly exiled. Despite the annual tribute of twenty-two
thousand dollars which we were paying to the Bashaw, not to mention the
seventeen thousand dollars' worth of presents which we presented
biennially to the officers and officials of his court, he complained
most bitterly to the American consul at Tripoli that he was not getting
as much as his neighboring rulers, and that unless the matter was
remedied immediately, he would have to get some American slaves to teach
him English. Now, Yussuf was a bad man to have for an enemy, for his
cruisers were numerous and loaded to the gunwales with pirates who would
rather fight than eat, and he had, in addition, the reputation of being
most inconsiderate to those sailors who fell into his hands, sometimes
going so far as to wall a few of them up in the fortifications which he
was constantly building. To put it bluntly, he was not popular outside
of his own circle. As Mr. Cathcart, the American consul, did not take
his demands for a larger tribute very seriously, the Bashaw wrote to
President Jefferson direct, mincing no words in saying that the American
government had better grant his request, and be quick about it, or
American seamen would find the Mediterranean exceedingly unhealthy for
them.
Incredible as it may seem in this day and age, the authorities at
Washington ordered a vessel to be loaded with the arms, ammunition, and
naval stores demanded by the Bashaw, their total value being thirty-four
thousand dollars, and hurriedly despatched it to Tripoli, with profuse
apologies for the delay. A few months later the Bashaw, who evidently
knew a good thing when he saw it, suggested that a token of our esteem
for him in the form of jewels would be highly acceptable, whereupon the
American minister in London was instructed to purchase jewelry to the
value of ten thousand dollars and have it hurried to Tripoli by special
messenger. Emboldened by his undreamed-of success in shaking the
republican tree, the Bashaw reached the very height of audacity by again
sending a peremptory note to President Jefferson, demanding that the
United States immediately present him with a thirty-six-gun war-ship! As
no attention was paid to this modest request (and in view of the other
outrageous concessions made by our government, it is somewhat surprising
that this demand was not granted also), the Bashaw ordered the flagstaff
of the American consulate to be chopped down as a sign of war, and
turned his corsairs loose on American commerce in the Mediterranean. The
war opened most disastrously for the United States, for a few months
later the frigate _Philadelphia_ ran aground in the harbor of Tripoli,
the Tripolitans capturing Captain Bainbridge and his entire crew. No
wonder the Bashaw went to the mosque that day to give thanks to Allah,
for had he not received an even larger war-ship than he had demanded,
and did he not have two hundred American slaves to instruct him in the
English tongue? "God is great!" exclaimed the Bashaw devoutly, as he
knelt on his silken prayer-rug, and "God is great!" echoed the rows of
corsairs who knelt behind him.
It was shortly after this American misfortune that William Eaton,
soldier, diplomat, and Indian-fighter, swaggered upon the scene, and
things began to happen with a rapidity that made the Bashaw's turbaned
head whirl. By birth and upbringing Eaton was a Connecticut Yankee, and
he possessed all the shrewdness, hardihood, and perseverance so
characteristic of that race. The son of a schoolmaster farmer, before he
was sixteen he had run away from home to join the Continental Army,
which he left at the close of the Revolution with the chevrons of a
sergeant on his coat-sleeve. Far-sighted enough to see the value of a
college education, he went from the camp straight to the college
classroom. Graduating from Dartmouth in 1790, he re-entered the army as
a captain, served against the Indians in Georgia and Ohio, and in 1798
received an appointment as American consul at Tunis. Resolute,
energetic, and daring, impatient with any one who did not agree with his
views, no better man could have been selected for the place. Thoroughly
understanding the Arab character, from the very outset he took a high
hand in his dealings with the Tunisian ruler. He alternately quarrelled
with and patronized the Bey, bullyragged his ministers, and actually
horsewhipped an insolent official of the court in the palace courtyard,
for five years keeping up an uninterrupted series of altercations,
provocations, and procrastinations over the payment of tribute-money. He
acted with such energy and boldness, however, that he secured to the
commerce of his country complete immunity from the attacks of Tunisian
cruisers, and made the name American respected on that part of the
Barbary coast at least. In 1801, as I have already remarked, the
American flagstaff in the adjoining kingdom of Tripoli came crashing
down at the Bashaw's order, and war promptly began between that
country and the United States. Two years later the Bey of Tunis, harried
beyond endurance by the half-insolent, half-patronizing fashion in which
Eaton treated him, ordered that gentleman to leave the country.
[Illustration: The frigate _Philadelphia_ ran aground in the harbor of
Tripoli, the Tripolitans capturing Captain Bainbridge and his entire
crew.]
Returning to the United States, Eaton went immediately to Washington and
laid before President Jefferson and his Cabinet a scheme for bringing
the war with Tripoli to a successful conclusion, and exchanging our
humiliating position as a contributor to a gang of pirates for one more
consistent with American ideals. The plan which he proposed was,
briefly, that the United States should assist in restoring to the
Tripolitan throne the exiled Bashaw, Ahmet Karamanli, on the
understanding that, upon his restoration, the exaction of tribute from
the American government and the depredations on American commerce should
cease. Eaton was outspoken in urging the desirability of carrying out
this plan, arguing that the dethronement of one of the Barbary despots
would impress the people of all that region as nothing else could do. I
can see him standing there beside the long table in the Cabinet room of
the White House, his lean Yankee face aglow with enthusiasm, his every
motion bespeaking confidence in himself and his plan, while Jefferson
and his sedate, conservative advisers lean far back in their chairs and
regard this visionary half curiously, half amusedly, as he outlines his
schemes for overturning thrones and reapportioning kingdoms. From the
President and his Cabinet he received the sort of treatment which timid
governments are apt to bestow on men of spirit and action. He was given
to understand that he was at liberty to carry out his plans, but that,
if he was successful, the government would take all the credit, and
that, if he failed, he would have to take all the blame. The only way to
explain the astounding apathy of the American government to events in
the Mediterranean is that a bitter political struggle was then in
progress in the United States, and that the very remoteness of the
theatre of war probably lessened its importance in the eyes of the
administration. At any rate, President Jefferson signed the appointment
of Eaton as American naval agent in the Mediterranean, and, happy as a
schoolboy at the beginning of the long vacation, at the wide latitude of
action conferred upon him by this purposely vague commission, he sailed
a few days later with the American fleet for Egypt. His great adventure
had begun.
Aware that the dethroned Bashaw had fled to Cairo, Eaton landed at
Alexandria, and, hastening to the Egyptian capital by camel, succeeded
in locating the exiled Ahmet, whom he found in the depths of poverty and
despair. Seated cross-legged beside him in a native coffee-house, Eaton
outlined his plan and proposition. He told Ahmet that the United States
would undertake to restore him to the Tripolitan throne upon his
agreeing to repay the expenses of the expedition immediately upon his
restoration, and upon the condition that Eaton should be
commander-in-chief of the land forces throughout the campaign, Ahmet and
his followers to promise him implicit obedience. Ahmet snapped at the
chance, slim though it was, to regain his kingdom, as a starving dog
snaps at a proffered bone. Eaton's plan of campaign was as simple as it
was reckless. He proposed to recruit a force of Greek and Arab
mercenaries, officered by Americans, in Alexandria, and, following the
North African coast-line westward across the Libyan Desert, to surprise
and capture Derna (or, as it was spelled in those days, Derne), the
capital of the easternmost and richest province of Tripoli. With Derna
as a base of operations, and with the co-operation of the American
fleet, he held that it would be a comparatively simple matter to push on
along the coast, taking in turn Benghazi, Tobruk, and the city of
Tripoli itself. The chief merit of the scheme lay in its sheer
audacity, for of all the leaders who have invaded Africa, this unknown
American was the only one who had the courage to face the perils of a
march across a waterless, trackless, sun-scorched, and uninhabited
desert. But there was in Eaton the stuff of which great conquerors are
made, and instead of letting his mind dwell on the dangers which the
desert had to offer, he dreamed of the triumphs which awaited him beyond
it.
To raise the men for so hazardous an expedition, Eaton had need of all
the energy and magnetism at his command, alternately employing the
specious promises of a recruiting sergeant and the persuasive arguments
of a campaign orator. On March 3, 1805, Eaton and the man to whom he had
promised a kingdom reviewed their forlorn hope--and it was very forlorn
indeed--at a spot called the Arab's Tower, some forty miles southwest of
Alexandria. I doubt if so strangely assorted a force ever marched and
fought under the shadow of our flag. The army, if army it could be
called, consisted of eight Americans besides Eaton: Lieutenant O'Barron,
Sergeant Peck, and six marines borrowed from the American fleet;
thirty-four Greeks, who went along professedly because they wanted to
fight the Moslem, but really because they needed the money; twenty-five
Egyptian Copts, Christians at least in name, who claimed to be trained
artillerymen, and to lend color to their assertion brought with them a
small brass field-gun; those of Ahmet's personal adherents who had fled
with him into exile, numbering about ninety men; and a squadron of Arab
mercenaries, whose services had been obtained by the promise of
unlimited opportunities for loot--these with the drivers of the
baggage-camels bringing the total strength of the "Army of North Africa"
to less than four hundred men. With this motley and ill-disciplined
force behind him, and six hundred miles of yellow sand in front, Eaton
turned his horse's nose Tripoliward, so that at about the time President
Jefferson was delivering his second inaugural address the adventurous
American was leading his little army across the desert, with the courage
of an Alexander the Great, to conquer an African kingdom.
The task which lay before him was one which great military leaders, all
down the ages, had declared impossible. For a distance equal to that
from Philadelphia to Chicago stretched an unbroken expanse of pitiless,
sun-scorched desert, boasting no single living thing save an occasional
band of nomad Arabs or a herd of gazelles. Midway between Alexandria
and Derna was the insignificant port of Bomba, where, according to a
prearranged plan, the _Argus_, under Captain Isaac Hull--the same who
became famous a few years later for his victories over the British in
the War of 1812--was to meet the expedition with supplies. Unless you
have seen the desert it will be difficult for you to appreciate how
hazardous this adventure really was. Imagine a sea of yellow sand with
billow after billow stretching in every direction as far as the eye can
see; without a tree, a shrub, a plant, a blade of grass; without a
river, a brook, a drop of water except, at long intervals, a stagnant,
green-scummed pool; the air like a blast from an open furnace-door and
overhead a sky pitiless as molten brass! During the seven weeks of the
march the thermometer never dropped during the day below 120 degrees.
The arrangements for the transport had been left to Ahmet Pasha, and it
was not until the expedition was two hundred miles into the desert, and
the camel-drivers abruptly halted and announced that they were going
back to Egypt, that Eaton learned that they had been engaged only to
that point. As the desertion of the camel-drivers and the consequent
inability to transport the tents, ammunition, and supplies would wreck
the expedition, Eaton pleaded with the men to stick by him two or three
days longer, until he could reach an encampment of Arabs with whom he
could make another contract. This they consented to do on condition that
they were paid in advance. By borrowing every piaster which his
Americans and Greeks had to lend, Eaton succeeded in raising six hundred
and seventy-three dollars, and with this the camel-drivers were
apparently content. Nothing shows more strikingly the shoe-string on
which the enterprise was being run than the fact that this unexpected
disbursement reduced Eaton's war-chest to three Venetian
sequins--equivalent to six dollars and fifty-four cents! Despite this
payment, all but four of the camel-drivers deserted the very next night,
and the four that remained sullenly refused to go any farther. In the
darkness of the following night they, too, quietly untethered their
camels and slipped silently away. Here, then, were three hundred and
fifty men, with a rapidly diminishing supply of food and water and
absolutely no means of transport, as completely marooned as though they
were on a desert island.
To make matters worse, if such a thing were possible, Eaton learned that
Ahmet had induced his Tripolitans and the Arabs to refuse to advance
until they had news of the arrival of the _Argus_ at Bomba. Eaton,
striding across to Ahmet's tent, shook his fist menacingly in the face
of the cringing Tripolitan. "I know you're a coward," said he, "and I
suspect that you're a traitor and I've a damned good mind to have you
shot." The Pasha, now thoroughly frightened, replied that his men were
too tired to march any farther. "You can take your choice between
marching and starving," Eaton retorted, turning on his heel, and placing
a guard of American marines around the tent containing the provisions,
he ordered them to shoot the first Arab who approached it. This resolute
action had an immediate effect, for the Pasha and his men lost their
tired feeling with amazing quickness, fifty of the camel-drivers
returned, and the desperate march was resumed. It was but a day or two,
however, before the Arabs became as turbulent and unruly as ever. Then
another mutiny broke out, Ahmet and his people announcing that they
preferred to be well-fed cowards rather than starved heroes, and that
they were going back to the flesh-pots of Egypt forthwith. Just as they
were on the point of departure, however, a messenger who had been
despatched to Bomba reached camp with the news that the _Argus_ was
awaiting them in the harbor. These unexpected delays had wholly
exhausted the supplies, which were slim enough, goodness knows, in the
beginning, so that during the remainder of the march to Bomba they were
compelled to kill some of the camels for food, living upon them and upon
such roots as they could gather on the way.
It was a half-starved and utterly exhausted expedition that plodded up
the sand dunes which overlook the little port of Bomba, so what must
their despair have been when they found no vessel awaiting them in the
harbor, and that the town itself had been deserted. Captain Hull,
apparently having given them up as lost, had departed. This time a more
serious mutiny occurred, the Arabs, desperate with hunger and furious
from disappointment, preparing to attack Eaton and his handful of
Europeans. Appreciating the peril of his position, Eaton hastily formed
his men into a hollow square. Just as the Arabs were preparing to charge
down upon them the musket of one of the marines was prematurely
discharged, the bullet whistling in uncomfortable proximity to the
Pasha's ear. So terror-stricken was that worthy that he called off his
men and attempted to parley with Eaton, who, standing alone well in
front of his command, relieved his mind by telling Ahmet his opinion of
him in what, according to the accounts of those who heard it, must have
been an epic in objurgation. While the two factions were growling at
each other like angry bull-dogs one of the Americans, happening to
glance seaward, suddenly broke the dangerous tension by shouting: "A
sail! A sail!" Hull, true to his promise, was returning, and the
expedition was saved. Supplies were quickly landed from the _Argus_ for
the starving men; with full stomachs the courage of the Arabs returned,
and Eaton and his little band once more turned their faces toward the
setting sun.
On the evening of April 25 the vanguard sighted the walls of Derna. A
feat that veteran soldiers had jeered at as impossible had been
accomplished, and Eaton, without the loss of a man, had brought his army
across six hundred miles of desert, in the heat of an African spring,
and in the remarkable time, when the scantiness of the rations and the
many delays are considered, of fifty-two days. With their goal actually
in sight, still another mutiny took place, the craven Arabs claiming
that they were too few in number to attempt the capture of a walled and
heavily garrisoned city, and it was not until Eaton promised them a
bonus of two thousand dollars if they succeeded in taking it that they
could be induced to advance. The more one learns of this man the more
one must admire his unfailing resource, his tenacity of purpose, and his
bull-dog courage; for, in addition to the appalling natural obstacles
which he overcame, he was constantly harried by intrigue, treachery, and
cowardice.
On the morning of the 26th a message was sent to the governor of Derna,
under a flag of truce, offering him full amnesty if he would surrender
and declare his allegiance to his rightful sovereign, Ahmet. The answer
that came back was as curt as it was conclusive: "My head or yours," it
read. Just as the sun was rising above the sand-dunes the following
morning the _Argus_, the _Nautilus_, and the _Hornet_ swept grandly into
the harbor, their crews at quarters, their decks cleared for action, and
the red-white-and-blue ensign of the oversea republic floating defiantly
from their main trucks. Under cover of a terrific bombardment by the
war-ships, Eaton's force advanced upon the city, planning, with their
single field-piece, to effect a breach in the walls and carry the place
by storm. So murderous was the fire that the Tripolitan riflemen poured
into them from the walls and housetops, however, that they were thrown
into confusion, their single piece of artillery was put out of action
by a well-directed cannon-shot, and Eaton himself was severely wounded.
Seeing that his raw troops were on the verge of panic, and knowing that
his only chance of holding them together lay in a charge, Eaton ordered
his buglers to sound the advance, and with a cheer like the roar of a
storm his whole line--Americans, Greeks, and Arabs--swept forward on a
run. "Come on, boys!" shouted Eaton, as he raced ahead, sword in one
hand, pistol in the other. "At the double! Follow me! Follow me!" And
follow him they did. Cheering like madmen they crossed a field swept by
a withering rifle-fire. They clambered over the ramparts, and by the
very fury of their assault drove back the defenders, who outnumbered
them twenty to one. They fought with them hand to hand, sabre against
cimiter, bayonet against clubbed matchlock. Swarming into the batteries,
they cut down the gunners and turned their guns upon the town. The
defences of the city once in his possession, Eaton directed an assault
upon the palace, where the governor had taken refuge, utilizing his Arab
cavalry meanwhile to cut off the retreat of the flying garrison. Before
the sun had disappeared into the Mediterranean, Eaton, at a cost of only
fourteen killed and wounded (all of whom, by the way, were Americans
and Greeks), had made himself master of Derna. His moment of triumph
came when, still begrimed with dirt and powder, his arm in a
blood-stained sling, he stood with drawn sword before the line formed by
his ragged soldiers and the trim bluejackets from the fleet, and,
watching a ball of bunting creep up that palace flagstaff from which so
recently had flaunted the banner of Tripoli, saw it suddenly break out
into the Stars and Stripes. Our flag, for the first and only time, flew
above a fortification on that side of the Atlantic.
Reinforced by a party of bluejackets from the fleet, Eaton wasted not a
moment in preparing the city for defence. He was none too soon, either,
for the Bashaw, learning of the loss of his richest province, despatched
an overwhelming force for its recapture. This army arrived before the
walls of Derna on May 13, and immediately made an assault, which Eaton
repulsed, as he did a second one a few weeks later. By this time the
news of Eaton's victory had spread across North Africa as fire spreads
in dry grass, and thousands of natives, many of them deserters from the
Bashaw's forces, hastened to assert their undying loyalty and to offer
their services to Ahmet, for your Arab is far-seeing and takes good care
to be found on the side which he believes to be the winning one. With
his army thus largely augmented, with ample supplies, with Derna as a
base of operations, and with his own prestige equivalent to an
additional regiment, Eaton had completed the preparations for continuing
his victorious advance along the African coast-line. There is little
doubt, indeed, that with the co-operation of the fleet he could have
marched on to Benghazi, taken that city as easily as he did Derna, and
in due time planted the American flag on the castle of Tripoli itself.
So it was with undisguised amazement and indignation that on June 12 he
received orders from Commodore Rodgers to evacuate Derna and to withdraw
his forces from Tripoli, Colonel Tobias Lear, the American consul at
Algiers, having, in the face of Eaton's successes, signed an inglorious
treaty of peace with the Bashaw of Tripoli. No more degrading terms were
ever assented to by a civilized power. The Bashaw at first demanded two
hundred thousand dollars for the release of Bainbridge and the
_Philadelphia's_ crew, but as Eaton had captured a large number of
Tripolitans in the storming of Derna, an exchange was eventually
arranged, the United States agreeing to pay the pirate ruler sixty
thousand dollars to boot. The city of Derna and the great province of
which it was the capital were surrendered without so much as the mention
of an equivalent, not even the relinquishment of the ransom of the
American prisoners. The unfortunate Ahmet Pasha, who had been decoyed
from his refuge in Egypt on the promise of American assistance in
effecting his restoration, was deserted at a moment when success was
actually ours, and had to fly for his life to Sicily, his wife and
children being held as hostages by his brother and the heads of his
adherents being exposed on the walls of the Tripolitan capital. Thus
shamefully ended one of the most gallant and romantic exploits in the
history of American arms; thus terminated an episode which, more than
any other agency, compelled the rulers of the Barbary coast to respect
the citizens and fear the wrath of the United States. Though an
expedition of scarcely four hundred men may sound insignificant, the
humbling of a Barbary power was an achievement which every European
nation had attempted and which none of them had accomplished.
Disappointed and disgusted, Eaton returned to the United States in
November, 1805, to find himself a national hero. From the moment he set
his foot on American soil he was greeted with cheers wherever he
appeared; it was "roses, roses all the way." The cities of Washington
and Richmond honored him with public dinners; Massachusetts, "desirous
to perpetuate the remembrance of an heroic enterprise," granted him ten
thousand acres of land in Maine; Boston named a street after the city
which he had captured against such fearful odds; President Jefferson
lauded him in his annual message; and in recognition of his services in
effecting the release of some Danish captives in Tripoli, he was
presented by the King of Denmark with a jewelled snuff-box. He was
complimented everywhere except at the seat of government, and received
every honor except that which he most deserved--a vote of thanks from
Congress. Though his expedition had involved an expense of twenty-three
thousand dollars, for which he had given his personal notes and the
repayment of which exhausted all his means, Congress never reimbursed
him. Notwithstanding the astounding indifference and ingratitude of the
nation on whose flag he had shed such lustre, he indignantly rejected
the advances of Aaron Burr, who tried ineffectually to enlist him in his
conspiracy to establish an empire beyond the Mississippi, and died,
poverty-stricken and broken-hearted, on June 1, 1811. Though the most
modest of monuments marks his resting-place in Brimfield churchyard, and
though not one in a hundred thousand of his countrymen have so much as
heard his name, his fame still lives in that wild and far-off region
where it took an Italian army of forty thousand men to repeat the
exploit which he accomplished with four hundred.
THE LAST FIGHT OF THE "GENERAL ARMSTRONG"
We leaned over the rail of the _Hamburg_, Colonel Roosevelt and I, and
watched the olive hills of Fayal rise from the turquoise sea. Houses
white as chalk began to peep from among the orange groves; what looked
at first sight to be a yellow snake turned into a winding road; then we
rounded a headland, and the U-shaped harbor, edged by a sleepy town and
commanded by a crumbling fortress, lay before us. "In there," said the
ex-President, pointing eagerly as our anchor rumbled down, "was waged
one of the most desperate sea-fights ever fought, and one of the least
known; in there lies the wreck of the _General Armstrong_, the privateer
that stood off twenty times her strength in British men and guns, and
thereby saved Louisiana from invasion. It is a story that should make
the thrills of patriotism run up and down the back of every
right-thinking American."
* * * * *
Everything about her, from the carved and gilded figure-head, past the
rakish, slanting masts to the slender stern, indicated the privateer.
As she stood into the roadstead of Fayal late in the afternoon of
September 26, 1814, black-hulled and white-sparred, carrying an amazing
spread of snowy canvas, she made a picture that brought a grunt of
approval even from the surly Azorian pilot. Hardly had the
red-white-and-blue ensign showing her nationality fluttered to her peak
before a harbor skiff bearing the American consul, Dabney, shot out from
shore; for these were troublous times on the Atlantic, and letters from
the States were few and far between. Rounding her stern, he read, with a
thrill of pride, "_General Armstrong, New York_."
The very name stood for romance, valor, hair-breadth escape. For of all
the two-hundred-odd privateers that put out from American ports at the
outbreak of the War of 1812 to prey on British commerce, none had won so
high a place in the popular imagination as this trim-built, black-hulled
schooner. Built for speed, and carrying a spread of canvas at which most
skippers would have stood aghast, she was the fastest and best-handled
privateer afloat, and had always been able to show her heels to the
enemy on the rare occasions when the superior range of her seven guns
had failed to pound him into submission. Her list of captures had made
rich men of her owners, and had caused Lloyd's to raise the insurance on
a vessel merely crossing the English Channel to thirteen guineas in the
hundred.
The story of her desperate encounter off the mouth of the Surinam River
with the British sloop of war _Coquette_, with four times her weight in
guns, had fired the popular imagination as had few other events of the
war. Although her commander, Samuel Chester Reid, was not long past his
thirtieth birthday, no more skilful navigator or daring fighter ever
trod a quarter-deck, and his crew of ninety men--Down-East fishermen,
old man-o'-war's men, Creole privateersmen who had fought under Lafitte,
reckless adventurers of every sort and kind--would have warmed the heart
of bluff old John Paul Jones himself.
Just as dusk was falling the officer on watch reported a sail in the
offing, and Reid and the consul, hurrying on deck, made out the British
brig _Carnation_, of eighteen guns, with two other war-vessels in her
wake: the thirty-eight-gun frigate _Rota_, and the _Plantagenet_, of
seventy-four. Now, as the privateer lay in the innermost harbor, where a
dead calm prevailed, while the three British ships were fast approaching
before the brisk breeze which was blowing outside, Reid, who knew the
line which marks foolhardiness from courage, appreciating that the
chances of his being able to hoist anchor, make sail, and get out of the
harbor before the British squadron arrived to block the entrance were
almost infinitesimal, decided to stay where he was and trust to the
neutrality of the port, a decision that was confirmed by the assurances
of Consul Dabney that the British would not dare to attack a vessel
lying in a friendly harbor. But therein the consul was mistaken, for
throughout the entire duration of the war the British as cynically
disregarded the observance of international law and the rights of
neutrals as though they did not exist.
The _Carnation_, learning the identity of the American vessel from the
pilot, hauled close into the harbor, not letting go her anchor until she
was within pistol-shot of the _General Armstrong_. Instantly a string of
signal-flags fluttered from her mast, and the message was promptly
acknowledged by her approaching consorts, which thereupon proceeded to
stand off and on across the mouth of the harbor, thus barring any chance
of the privateer making her escape. So great was the commotion which
ensued on the _Carnation's_ deck that Reid, becoming suspicious of the
Englishman's good faith, warped his ship under the very guns of the
Portuguese fort.
About eight o'clock, just as dark had fallen, Captain Reid saw four
boats slip silently from the shadow of the _Carnation_ and pull toward
him with muffled oars. If anything more were needed to convince him of
their hostile intentions, the moon at that moment appeared from behind a
cloud and was reflected by the scores of cutlasses and musket-barrels in
all four of the approaching boats. As they came within hailing distance
Reid swung himself into the shrouds.
"Boats there!" he shouted, making a trumpet of his hands. "Come no
nearer! For your own safety I warn you!"
At his hail the boats halted, as though in indecision, and their
commanders held a whispered consultation. Then, apparently deciding to
take the risk, and hoping, no doubt, to catch the privateer unprepared,
they gave the order: "Give way all!" The oars caught the water together,
and the four boats, loaded to the gunwales with sailors and marines,
came racing on.
"Let 'em have it, boys!" roared Reid, and at the word a stream of flame
leaped from the dark side of the privateer and a torrent of grape swept
the crowded boats, almost annihilating one of the crews and sending the
others, crippled and bleeding, back to the shelter of their ship.
By this time the moon had fully risen, and showed the heights
overlooking the harbor to be black with spectators, among whom were the
Portuguese governor and his staff; but the castle, either from weakness
or fear, showed no signs of resenting the outrageous breach of
neutrality to which the port had been subjected. Angered and chagrined
at their repulse, the British now threw all caution aside. The
long-boats and gigs of all three ships were lowered, and into them were
crowded nearly four hundred men, armed with muskets, pistols, and
cutlasses. Reid, seeing that an attack was to be made in force,
proceeded to warp his vessel still closer inshore, mooring her stem and
stern within a few rods of the castle. Moving two of the nine-pounders
across the deck, and cutting ports for them in the bulwarks, he brought
five guns, in addition to his famous "long tom," to bear on the enemy.
With cannon double-shotted, boarding-nets triced up, and decks cleared
for action, the crew of the _General Armstrong_ lay down beside their
guns to await the British attack.
It was not long in coming. Just as the bells of the old Portuguese
cathedral boomed twelve, a dozen boats, loaded to the water's edge with
sailors and marines, whose burnished weapons were like so many mirrors
under the rays of the moon, swung around a promontory behind which they
had been forming and, with measured stroke of oars, came sweeping down
upon the lone privateer. The decks of the _General Armstrong_ were black
and silent, but round each gun clustered its crew of half-naked gunners,
and behind the bulwarks knelt a line of cool, grim riflemen, eyes
sighting down their barrels, cheeks pressed close against the butts. Up
and down behind his men paced Reid, the skipper, cool as a winter's
morning.
"Hold your fire until I give the word, boys," he cautioned quietly.
"Wait till they get within range, and then teach 'em better manners."
Nearer and nearer came the shadowy line of boats, the oars rising and
falling with the faultless rhythm which marks the veteran man-o'-war's
man. On they came, and now the waiting Americans could make out the
gilt-lettered hat-bands of the bluejackets and the white cross-belts and
the brass buttons on the tunics of the marines. A moment more and those
on the _Armstrong's_ deck could see, beneath the shadow of the leather
shakoes, the tense, white faces of the British boarders.
"Now, boys!" roared Captain Reid; "let 'em have it for the honor of the
flag!" and from the side of the privateer leaped a blast of flame and
lead, cannon and musketry crashing in chorus. Never were men taken more
completely by surprise than were those British sailors, for they had
expected that Reid, relying on the neutrality of the port, would be
quite unprepared to resist them. But, though the American fire had
caused terrible havoc in the crowded boats, with the bull-dog courage
for which the British sailors were justly famous, they kept indomitably
on. "Give way! Give way all!" screamed the boy-coxswains, and in the
face of a withering rifle-fire the sailors, recovering from their
momentary panic, bent grimly to their oars. Through a perfect hail-storm
of lead, right up to the side of the privateer, they swept. Six boats
made fast to her quarter and six more to her bow. "Boarders up and
away!" bellowed the officers, hacking desperately at the nettings with
their swords, and firing their pistols point-blank into the faces they
saw above them. The _Armstrong's_ gunners, unable to depress the muzzles
of their guns enough so that they could be brought to bear, lifted the
solid shot and dropped them from the rail into the British boats,
mangling their crews and crashing through their bottoms. From the
shelter of the bulwarks the American riflemen fired and loaded and fired
again, while the negro cook and his assistant played their part in the
defence by pouring kettles of boiling water over the British who were
attempting to scramble up the sides, sending them back into their boats
again scalded and groaning with pain.
There has been no fiercer struggle in all the annals of the sea. The
Yankee gunners, some of them gray-haired men who had seen service with
John Paul Jones in the _Bon Homme Richard_, changed from cannon-balls to
grape, and from grape to bags of bullets, so that by the time the
British boats drew alongside they were little more than floating
shambles. The dark waters of the harbor were lighted up by spurts of
flame from muskets and cannon; the high, shrill yell of the Yankee
privateersmen rose above the deep-throated hurrahs of the English
sailors; the air was filled with the shouts and oaths of the combatants,
the shrieks and groans of the wounded, the incessant trampling of
struggling men upon the decks, the splash of dead and injured falling
overboard, the clash and clang of steel on steel, and all the savage,
overwhelming turmoil of a struggle to the death. Urged on by their
officers' cries of "No quarter! Give the Yankees no quarter!" the
British division which had attacked the bow hacked its way through the
nettings, and succeeded by sheer weight of numbers in getting a footing
on the deck, all three of the American lieutenants being killed or
disabled in the terrific hand-to-hand struggle that ensued.
At this critical juncture, when the Americans on the forecastle, their
officers fallen and their guns dismounted, were being pressed slowly
back by overwhelming numbers, Captain Reid, having repulsed the attack
on the _Armstrong's_ quarter, led the after division forward at a run,
the privateersmen, though outnumbered five to one, driving the English
overboard with the resistless fury of their onset. As the British boats,
now laden with dead and dying, attempted to withdraw into safety, they
were raked again and again with showers of lead; two of them sank, two
of them were captured by the Americans. Finally, with nearly three
hundred of their men--three-quarters of the cutting-out force--dead or
wounded, the British, now cowed and discouraged, pulled slowly and
painfully out of range. Some of the most brilliant victories the British
navy has ever gained were far less dearly purchased.
At three in the morning Reid received a note from Consul Dabney asking
him to come ashore. He then learned that the governor had sent a letter
to the British commander asking him to desist from further hostilities,
as several buildings in the town had been injured by the British fire
and a number of the inhabitants wounded. To this request Captain Lloyd
had rudely replied that he would have the Yankee privateer if he had to
knock the town into a heap of ruins. Returning on board, Reid ordered
the dead and wounded taken ashore, and told the crew to save their
personal belongings.
At daybreak the _Carnation_, being of lighter draught than the other
vessels, stood close in for a third attack, opening on the privateer
with every gun she could bring to bear. But even in those days the fame
of American gunners was as wide as the seas, and so well did the crew of
the _General Armstrong_ uphold their reputation that the _Carnation_ was
compelled to beat a demoralized retreat, with her rigging cut away, her
foremast about to fall, and with several gaping holes between wind and
water. But Reid, appreciating that there was absolutely no chance of
escape, and recognizing that further resistance would entail an
unnecessary sacrifice of his men's lives, by which nothing could be
gained, ordered the crew to throw the nine-pounders which had rendered
such valiant service overboard and to leave the ship. The veteran
gunners, who were as much attached to their great black guns as a
cavalryman is to his horse, obeyed the order with tears ploughing
furrows down their powder-begrimed cheeks. Then Reid with his own hand
trained the long-tom down his vessel's hatchway, and pulling the lanyard
sent a charge of grape crashing through her bottom, from which she at
once began to sink. Ten minutes later, before a British crew could reach
her side, the _General Armstrong_ went to the bottom with her flag still
defiantly flying.
Few battles have been fought in which the odds were so unequal, and in
few battles have the relative losses been so astounding. The three
British war-ships carried two thousand men and one hundred and thirty
guns, and of the four hundred men who composed the boarding party they
lost, according to their own accounts, nearly three hundred killed and
wounded. Of the American crew of ninety men, two were killed and seven
wounded. This little crew of privateersmen had, in other words, put out
of action more than three times their own number of British, and had
added one more laurel to our chaplet of triumphs on the sea.
The Americans had scarcely gained the shore before Captain Lloyd--who,
by the way, had been so severely wounded in the leg that amputation was
necessary--sent a peremptory message to the governor demanding their
surrender. But the men who could not be taken at sea were not the men to
be captured on land, and the Americans, retreating to the mountainous
centre of the island, took possession of a thick-walled convent, over
which they hoisted the stars and stripes, and from which they defied
British and Portuguese alike to come and take them. No one tried.
[Illustration: But even in those days the fame of American gunners was
as wide as the seas.]
All of the following day was spent by the British in burying their one
hundred and twenty dead--you can see the white gravestones to-day if you
will take the trouble to climb the hill behind the little town--but it
took them a week to repair the damage caused by the battle. And so deep
was their chagrin and mortification that when two British ships put into
Fayal a few days later, and were ordered to take home the wounded, they
were forbidden to carry any news of the disaster back to England.
To Captain Reid and his little band of fighters is due in no small
measure the credit of saving New Orleans from capture and Louisiana from
invasion. Lloyd's squadron was a part of the expedition then gathering
at Pensacola for the invasion of the South, but it was so badly crippled
in its encounter with the privateer that it did not reach the Gulf of
Mexico until ten days later than the expedition had planned to sail.
The expedition waited for Lloyd and his reinforcements, so that when it
finally approached New Orleans, Jackson and his frontiersmen, who had
hastened down by forced marches from the North, had made preparations to
give the English a warm reception. Had the expedition arrived ten days
earlier it would have found the Americans unprepared, and New Orleans
would have fallen.
Captain Reid and his men, landing on their native soil at Savannah,
found their journey northward turned into a triumphal progress. The
whole country went wild with enthusiasm. There was not a town or village
on the way but did them honor. The city of Richmond gave Captain Reid a
great banquet, and the State of New York presented him with a sword of
honor. But of all the tributes which were paid to the little band of
heroes, none had the flavor of the concluding line of a letter written
by one of the British officers engaged in the action to a relative in
England. "If this is the way the Americans fight," he wrote, "we may
well say, 'God deliver us from our enemies.'"
THE PIRATE WHO TURNED PATRIOT
How many well-informed people are aware, I wonder, that the fact that
the American flag, and not the British, flies to-day over the
Mississippi valley is largely due to the eleventh-hour patriotism of a
pirate? Of the many kinds of men of many nationalities who have played
parts of greater or less importance in the making of our national
history, none is more completely cloaked in mystery, romance, and
adventure than Jean Lafitte. The last of that long line of buccaneers
who for more than two centuries terrorized the waters and ravaged the
coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, his exploits make the wildest fiction
appear commonplace and tame. Although he was as thorough-going a pirate
as ever plundered an honest merchant-man, I do not mean to imply that he
was a leering, low-browed scoundrel, with a red bandanna twisted about
his head and an armory of assorted weapons at his waist, for he was
nothing of the sort. On the contrary, from all I can learn about him, he
appears to have been a very gentlemanly sort of person indeed, tall and
graceful and soft-voiced, and having the most charming manners. Though
he regarded the law with unconcealed contempt, there came a crisis in
our national history when he placed patriotism above all other
considerations, and rendered an inestimable service to the country whose
laws he had flouted and to the State which had set a price on his head.
Indeed, we are indebted to Jean Lafitte in scarcely less measure than we
are to Andrew Jackson for frustrating the British invasion and conquest
of Louisiana.
Though the palmy days of piracy in the Gulf of Mexico really ended with
the seventeenth century, by which time the rich cities of Middle America
had been impoverished by repeated sackings and the gold-freighted
caravels had taken to travelling under convoy, even at the beginning of
the nineteenth century these storied waters still offered many
opportunities to lawless and enterprising sea-folk. But the pirates of
the nineteenth century, unlike their forerunners of the seventeenth,
preyed on slave-ships rather than on treasure-galleons. Consider the
facts. On January 1, 1808, Congress passed an act prohibiting the
further importation of slaves into the United States. By this act the
recently acquired territory of Louisiana, over which prosperity was
advancing in three-league boots, was deprived of its supply of labor.
With crops rotting in the fields for lack of laborers, the price of
slaves rose until a negro fresh from the coast of Africa would readily
bring a thousand dollars at auction in New Orleans. At the same time,
remember, shiploads of slaves were being brought to Cuba, where no such
restrictions existed, and sold for three hundred dollars a head. Under
such conditions smuggling was inevitable. At first the smugglers bought
their slaves in the Cuban market, and running them across the Gulf of
Mexico, landed them at obscure harbors on the Louisiana coast, whence
they were marched overland to New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The smugglers
soon saw, however, that the slavers carried small crews, poorly armed,
and quickly made up their minds that it was a shameful waste of money to
buy slaves when they could get them for nothing by the menace of their
guns. In short, the smugglers became buccaneers, and as such drove a
thriving business in captured cargoes of "black ivory," as the slaves
were euphemistically called.
As the demand was greatest on the rich new lands along the Mississippi,
it was at New Orleans that the buccaneers found the most profitable
market for their human wares, for they could easily sail up the river to
the city, dispose of their cargoes, and be off again with the quick
despatch of regular liners to resume their depredations. But the
buccaneers did not confine their attention to slave-ships, so that in a
short time, despite the efforts of British, French, and American
war-ships, the waters of the Gulf became as unsafe for all kinds of
merchant-vessels as they were in the days of Morgan and Kidd.
As a base for their piratical and smuggling operations, as well as for
supplies and repairs, the buccaneers chose Barataria Bay, a place which
met their requirements as though made to order. The name is applied to
all of the Gulf coast of Louisiana between the mouth of the Mississippi
and the mouth of another considerable stream known as the Bayou La
Fourche, the latter a waterway to a rich and populous region. The Bay of
Barataria is screened from the Gulf, with which it is connected by a
deep-water pass, by the island of Grande Terre, the trees on which were
high enough to effectually hide the masts of the buccaneers' vessels
from the view of inquisitive war-ships cruising outside. Between the
Mississippi and the La Fourche there is a perfect network of small but
navigable waterways which extend almost to New Orleans, so that the
buccaneers thus had a back-stairs route, as it were, to the city, which
brought their rendezvous at Grande Terre within safe and easy reach of
the great mart of the Mississippi valley.
Such supplies as the buccaneers did not get from the ships they
captured, they obtained by purchase in New Orleans. For the chains which
were used in making up the caufles of slaves for transportation into the
interior, they were accustomed to patronize the blacksmith-shop of the
Brothers Lafitte, which stood--and still stands--on the northeast corner
of Bourbon and St. Philippe Streets. Of the history of these brothers
prior to their arrival in New Orleans nothing is definitely known. From
their names, and because they spoke with the accent peculiar to the
Garonne, they are credited with having been natives of the south of
France, though whence they came and where they went are questions which
have never been satisfactorily answered. They were quite evidently men
of means, and might have been described as gentlemen blacksmiths, for
they owned the slaves who pounded the iron. Being men of exceptional
business shrewdness, it is not to be wondered at that from doing the
buccaneers' blacksmithing they gradually became their agents and
bankers, the smithy in St. Philippe Street coming in time to be a sort
of clearing-house for many questionable transactions. Now Jean Lafitte
was an extremely able man, combining a remarkable executive ability with
a genius for organization, and had he lived a century later these
traits, together with his predatory instincts and his utter contempt for
the law, would undoubtedly have made him the president of a trust.
Through success in managing their affairs, he gradually increased his
usefulness to the buccaneers until he obtained complete control over
them, and ruled them as despotically as a tribal chieftain. This was
when his genius for organization had succeeded in uniting their
different, and often rival, efforts and interests into a sort of
pirates' corporation, composed of all the buccaneers, privateers, and
freebooters doing business in the Gulf, this combination of outlaws,
incredible as it may seem, as effectually controlling the price of
slaves and many other things in the Mississippi valley as the Standard
Oil Company controls the price of petroleum to-day.
The influence of this new element in the buccaneer business soon made
itself felt. At that time New Orleans was a sort of cross between an
American frontier town and a West Indian port, its streets and barrooms
being filled with swaggering adventurers, gamblers, and soldiers of
fortune from every corner of the three Americas, the presence of most of
whom was due to the activity of the sheriffs in their former homes. It
was from these men, cool, reckless, resourceful, that Lafitte recruited
his forces. Leaving his brother Pierre in charge of the New Orleans
branch of the enterprise, Jean Lafitte took up his residence on Grande
Terre, where, under his directions, a fort was built, around which there
soon sprang up a veritable city of thatched huts for the shelter of the
buccaneers, and for the accommodation of the merchants who came to
supply their wants or to purchase their captured cargoes. Within a year
upward of a dozen armed vessels rendezvoused in Barataria Bay, and their
crews addressed Jean Lafitte as "_bosse_." One of the Baratarians, a
buccaneer of the walk-the-plank-and-scuttle-the-ship school named
Grambo, who boldly called himself a pirate, and jeered at Lafitte's
polite euphemism of privateer, was one day unwise enough to dispute the
new authority. Without an instant's hesitation Lafitte drew a pistol and
shot him through the heart in the presence of the whole band. After that
episode there was no more insubordination.
By 1813 the Baratarians, who had long since extended their operations to
include all kinds of merchandise, were driving such a roaring trade that
the commerce and shipping of New Orleans was seriously diminished (for
why go to New Orleans for their supplies, the sea-captains and the
plantation-owners argued, when they could get what they wanted at
Barataria for a fraction of the price), the business of the banks
decreased alarmingly under the continual lessening of their deposits,
while even the National Government began to feel its loss of revenue.
The waters of Barataria, on the contrary, were alive with the sails of
incoming and outgoing vessels; the wharfs which had been constructed at
Grande Terre resounded to the creak of winches and the shouts of
stevedores unloading contraband cargoes, and the long, low warehouses
were filled with merchandise and the log stockades with slaves waiting
to be sold and transported to the up-country plantations. So defiant of
the law did Lafitte become that the streets of New Orleans were
placarded with handbills announcing the auction sales at Barataria of
captured cargoes, and to them flocked bargain-hunters from all that part
of the South. An idea of the business done by the buccaneers at this
time may be gained from an official statement that four hundred slaves
were sold by auction in the Grande Terre market in a single day.
Of course the authorities took action in the matter, but their efforts
to enforce the law proved both dangerous and ineffective. In October,
1811, a customs-inspector succeeded in surprising a band of Baratarians
and seizing some merchandise they had with them, but before he could
convey the prisoners and the captured contraband to New Orleans Lafitte
and a party of his men overtook him, rescued the prisoners, recovered
the property, and in the fight which ensued wounded several of the
posse. Some months later Lafitte killed an inspector named Stout, who
attempted to interfere with him, and wounded two of his deputies. Then
Governor Claiborne issued a proclamation offering a reward for the
capture of Lafitte dead or alive, at the same time appealing to the
legislature for permission to raise an armed force to break up the
buccaneering business for good and all. The cautious legislators
declined to take any action, however, because they were unwilling to
interfere with an enterprise that, however illegal it might be, was
unquestionably developing the resources of lower Louisiana, and
incidentally adding immensely to the fortunes of their constituents. As
for the Baratarians, they paid as scant attention to the governor's
proclamation as though it had never been written. Surrounded by groups
of admiring friends, Lafitte and his lieutenants continued to swagger
through the streets of New Orleans; his men openly boasted of their
exploits in every barroom of the city, and in places of public resort
announcements of auctions at Barataria continued to be displayed.
Then Governor Claiborne played his last card, and secured indictments of
the Lafittes on the charge of piracy. Pierre Lafitte was arrested in his
blacksmith-shop and confined without bail in the calaboose. Jean Lafitte
promptly trumped the governor's card by retaining the services of Edward
Livingston and John R. Grymes, the two most distinguished members of the
Louisiana bar, at the enormous fee of twenty thousand dollars apiece.
Grymes was then the district attorney, but he resigned his office for
the fee. When his successor accused him in open court of having bartered
his honor for pirate gold Grymes challenged him to a duel, and crippled
him for life with a pistol bullet through the hip. When the two eminent
lawyers had cleared their poor, innocent, persecuted clients of the
unfounded and outrageous charges brought against them, and had taught
them certain legal tricks whereby they could continue doing business at
the old stand and still keep on the right side of the bars, Pierre
Lafitte sent them an invitation to visit Barataria and collect their
fees in person. Livingston, a cautious gentleman who had no desire to
risk himself among the pirates whose virtues he had just extolled so
highly to a jury, declined the invitation with thanks, offering his
colleague a commission of ten per cent to collect his fee for him.
Grymes, who was a hard-drinking, high-living Virginian, and afraid of
nothing on two feet or four, accepted the invitation with alacrity, and
until the end of his life was wont to convulse his friends with lurid
descriptions of the magnificent entertainment which Lafitte provided for
him. After a carouse which lasted for a week, and which, from Grymes's
accounts, was a combination of the feasts of Lucullus with the orgies of
Nero, Lafitte sent his legal adviser back to New Orleans in a sailing
vessel, together with several huge chests containing his fee in Spanish
gold pieces. It is an interesting commentary on the customs which
prevailed in those days that by the time Grymes reached New Orleans,
after having visited the various plantations along the lower Mississippi
and tried his luck at their card-tables, not a dollar of his fee
remained.
Now, it should be understood that the feebleness which characterized all
the attempts of the Federal Government to break the power of the
buccaneers was not due to any reluctance to prosecute them, but to the
fact that it already had its attention taken up with far more pressing
matters, for we were then in the midst of our second war with Great
Britain. The long series of injuries which England had inflicted on the
United States, such as the plundering and confiscation of our ships, the
impressment into the British Navy of our seamen, and the interruption of
our commerce with other nations, had culminated on June 18, 1812, by
Congress declaring war. So unexpected was this action that it found the
country totally unprepared. Our military establishment was barely large
enough to provide garrisons for the most exposed points on our far-flung
borders; the numerous ports on our seaboard were left unprotected and
unfortified; and our navy consisted of but a handful of war-ships. The
history of the first two years of the struggle, which was marked by
brilliant American victories at sea, but by a disastrous attempt to
invade Canada, has no place in this narrative. Early in the summer of
1814, however, the British Government, exasperated by its failure to
inflict any vital damage in the northern States, determined to bring
the war to a quick conclusion by the invasion and conquest of Louisiana.
The preparations made for this expedition were in themselves startling.
Indeed, few Americans have even a faint conception of the strength of
the blow which England prepared to deal us, for with Napoleon's
abdication and exile to Elba, and the ending of the war with France, she
was enabled to bring her whole military and naval power against us. The
British armada consisted of fifty war-ships, mounting more than a
thousand guns. It was commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane,
under whom was Sir Thomas Hardy, the friend of Nelson, Rear-Admiral
Malcolm, and Rear-Admiral Codrington, and was manned by the same sailors
who had fought so valorously at the Nile and at Trafalgar. This great
fleet acted as convoy for an almost equal number of transports, having
on board eight thousand soldiers, which were the very flower of the
British Army, nearly all of them being veterans of the Napoleonic
campaigns. Such importance did the British Government attach to the
success of this expedition that it seriously considered giving the
command of it to no less a personage than the Duke of Wellington. So
certain were the British that the venture would be successful that they
brought with them a complete set of civil officials to conduct the
government of this new country which was about to be annexed to his
Majesty's dominions, judges, customs-inspectors, revenue-collectors,
court-criers, printers, and clerks, together with printing-presses and
office paraphernalia, being embarked on board the transports. A large
number of ladies, wives and relatives of the officers, also accompanied
the expedition, to take part in the festivities which were planned to
celebrate the capture of New Orleans. And, as though to cap this
exhibition of audacity, a number of ships were chartered by British
speculators to bring home the booty, the value of which was estimated
beforehand at fourteen millions of dollars. Whether the British
Government expected to be able to permanently hold Louisiana is
extremely doubtful, for it must have been fully aware that the Western
States were capable of pouring down a hundred thousand men, if
necessary, to repel an invasion. It is probable, therefore, that they
counted only on a temporary occupation, which they expected to prolong
sufficiently, however, to give them time to pillage and lay waste the
country, a course which they felt confident would quickly bring the
government at Washington to terms.
This formidable armada set sail from England early in the summer of 1814
and, reaching the Gulf of Mexico, established its base of operations,
regardless of all the laws of neutrality, at the Spanish port of
Pensacola. One morning in the following September a British brig hove to
off Grande Terre, and called attention to her presence by firing a
cannon. Lafitte, darting through the pass in his four-oared barge to
reconnoitre, met the ship's gig with three scarlet-coated officers in
the stern, who introduced themselves as bearers of important despatches
for Mr. Lafitte. The pirate chief, introducing himself in turn, invited
his unexpected guests ashore, and led the way to his quarters with that
extraordinary charm of manner for which he was noted even among the
punctilious Creoles of New Orleans. After a dinner of Southern
delicacies, which elicited exclamations even from the blase British
officers, Lafitte opened the despatches. They were addressed to Jean
Lafitte, Esquire, commandant at Barataria, from the commander-in-chief
of the British forces at Pensacola, and bluntly offered him thirty
thousand dollars, payable in Pensacola or New Orleans, a commission as
captain in the British Navy, and the enlistment of his men in the naval
or military forces of Great Britain if he would assist the British in
their impending invasion of Louisiana. Though it was a generous offer,
no one knew better than the British commander that Lafitte's
co-operation was well worth the price, for, familiar with the network of
streams and navigable swamps lying between Barataria Bay and New
Orleans, he was capable of guiding a British expedition through these
secret waterways to the very gates of the city before the Americans
would have a hint of its approach. It is not too much to assert that at
this juncture the future of New Orleans, and indeed of the whole
Mississippi Valley, hung upon the decision of Jean Lafitte, a pirate and
a fugitive from justice with a price upon his head.
Whether Lafitte seriously considered accepting the offer there is, of
course, no way of knowing. That it must have sorely tempted him it seems
but reasonable to suppose, for he was not an American, either by birth
or naturalization, and the prospect of exchanging his hazardous outlaw's
life, with a vision of the gallows ever looming before him for a
captain's commission in the royal navy, with all that that implied,
could hardly have failed to appeal to him strongly. That he promptly
decided to reject the offer speaks volumes for the man's strength of
character and for his faith in American institutions. Appreciating that
at such a crisis every hour gained was of value to the Americans, he
asked time to consider the proposal, requesting the British officers to
await him while he consulted an old friend and associate whose vessel,
he said, was then lying in the bay. Scarcely was he out of sight,
however, before a band of buccaneers, acting, of course, under his
orders, seized the officers and hustled them into the interior of the
island, where they were politely but forcibly detained. Here they were
found some days later by Lafitte, who pretended to be highly indignant
at such unwarrantable treatment of his guests. Releasing them with
profuse apologies, he saw them safely aboard their brig, and assured
them that he would shortly communicate his decision to the British
commander. But that officer's letter was already in the hands of a
friend of Lafitte's in New Orleans, who was a member of the legislature,
and accompanying it was a communication from the pirate chief himself,
couched in those altruistic and patriotic phrases for which the rascal
was famous. In it he asserted that, though he admitted being guilty of
having evaded the payment of certain customs duties, he had never lost
his loyalty and affection for the United States, and that,
notwithstanding the fact that there was a price on his head, he would
never miss an opportunity of serving his adopted country. A few days
later Lafitte forwarded through the same channels much valuable
information which his agents had gathered as to the strength, resources,
and plans of the British expedition, enclosing with it a letter
addressed to Governor Claiborne in which he offered the services of
himself and his men in defence of the State and city on condition that
they were granted a pardon for past offences.
Receiving no reply to this communication, Lafitte sailed up the river to
New Orleans in his lugger and made his way to the residence of the
governor. Governor Claiborne was seated at his desk, immersed in the
business of his office, when the door was softly opened, and Lafitte,
stepping inside, closed it behind him. Clad in the full-skirted,
bottle-green coat, the skin-tight breeches of white leather, and the
polished Hessian boots which he affected, he presented a most graceful
and gallant figure. As he entered he drew two pistols from his pockets,
cocked them, and covered the startled governor, after which ominous
preliminaries he bowed with the grace for which he was noted.
"Sir," he remarked pleasantly, "you may possibly have heard of me. My
name is Jean Lafitte."
"What the devil do you mean, sir," exploded the governor, "by showing
yourself here? Don't you know that I shall call the sentry and have you
arrested?"
"Pardon me, your Excellency," interrupted Lafitte, moving his weapons
significantly, "but you will do nothing of the sort. If you move your
hand any nearer that bell I shall be compelled to shoot you through the
shoulder, a necessity, believe me, which I should deeply regret. I have
called on you because I have something important to say to you, and I
intend that you shall hear it. To begin with, you have seen fit to put a
price upon my head?"
"Upon the head of a pirate, yes," thundered the governor, now almost
apoplectic with rage.
"In spite of that fact," continued Lafitte, "I have rejected a most
flattering offer from the British government, and have come here, at
some small peril to myself, to renew in person the offer of my services
in repelling the coming invasion. I have at my command a body of brave,
well-armed, and highly disciplined men who have been trained to fight.
Does the State care to accept their services or does it not?"
The governor, folding his arms, looked long at Lafitte before he
answered. Then he held out his hand. "It is a generous offer that you
make, sir. I accept it with pleasure."
"At daybreak to-morrow, then," said Lafitte, replacing his pistols, "my
men will be awaiting your Excellency's orders across the river." Then,
with another sweeping bow, he left the room as silently as he had
entered it.
Governor Claiborne immediately communicated Lafitte's offer to General
Andrew Jackson, then at Mobile, who had been designated by the War
Department to conduct the defence of Louisiana. Jackson, who had already
issued a proclamation denouncing the British for their overtures to
"robbers, pirates, and hellish bandits," as he termed the Baratarians,
promptly replied that the only thing he would have to do with Lafitte
was to hang him. Nevertheless, when the general arrived in New Orleans a
few days later, Lafitte called at his headquarters and requested an
interview. By this time Jackson was conscious of the feebleness of the
resources at his disposal for the defence of the city and of the
strength of the armament directed against it, which accounts, perhaps,
for his consenting to receive the "hellish bandit." Lafitte, looking the
grim old soldier squarely in the eye, repeated his offer, and so
impressed was Jackson with the pirate's cool and fearless bearing that
he accepted his services.
On the 10th of December, 1814, ten days after Jackson's arrival in New
Orleans, the British armada reached the mouth of the Mississippi. Small
wonder that the news almost created a panic in the city, for the very
names of the ships and regiments composing the expedition had become
famous through their exploits in the Napoleonic wars. It was a
nondescript and motley force which Jackson had hastily gathered to repel
this imposing army of invasion. Every man capable of bearing arms in New
Orleans and its vicinity--planters, merchants, bankers, lawyers--had
volunteered for service. To the local company of colored freedmen was
added another one composed of colored refugees from Santo Domingo, men
who had sided with the whites in the revolution there and had had to
leave the island in consequence. Even the prisoners in the calaboose had
been released and provided with arms. From the parishes round about came
Creole volunteers by the hundred, clad in all manner of clothing and
bearing all kinds of weapons. From Mississippi came a troop of cavalry
under Hinds, which was followed a few hours later by Coffee's famous
brigade of "Dirty Shirts," composed of frontiersmen from the forests of
Kentucky and Tennessee, who after a journey of eight hundred miles
through the wilderness answered Jackson's message to hurry by covering
the one hundred and fifty miles between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in
two days. Added to these were a thousand raw militiamen, who had been
brought down on barges and flat-boats from the towns along the upper
river, four companies of regulars, Beale's brigade of riflemen, a
hundred Choctaw Indians in war-paint and feathers, and last, but in many
respects the most efficient of all, the corps of buccaneers from
Barataria, under the command of the Lafittes. The men, dragging with
them cannon taken from their vessels, were divided into two companies,
one under Captain Beluche (who rose in after years to be
admiral-in-chief of Venezuela) and the other under a veteran
privateersman named Dominique You. These men were fighters by
profession, hardy, seasoned, and cool-headed, and as they swung through
the streets of New Orleans to take up the position which Jackson had
assigned them, even that taciturn old soldier gave a grunt of
approbation.
Jackson had chosen as his line of defence an artificial waterway known
as the Rodriguez Canal, which lay some five miles to the east of the
city, and along its embankments, which in themselves formed pretty good
fortifications, he distributed his men. On the night of December 23 a
force of two thousand British succeeded, by means of boats, in making
their way, through the chain of bayous which surrounds the city, to
within a mile or two of Jackson's lines, where they camped for the
night. Being informed of their approach (for the British, remember, had
the whole countryside against them), Jackson, knowing the demoralizing
effect of a night attack, directed Coffee and his Tennesseans to throw
themselves upon the British right, while at the same moment Beale's
Kentuckians attacked on the left. Trained in all the wiles of Indian
warfare, the frontiersmen succeeded in reaching the outskirts of the
British camp before they were challenged by the sentries. Their reply
was a volley at close quarters and a charge with the tomahawk--for they
had no bayonets--which drove the British force back in something closely
akin to a rout.
Meanwhile Jackson had set his other troops at work strengthening their
line of fortifications, so that when the sun rose on the morning of the
day before Christmas it found them strongly intrenched behind
earthworks, helped out with timber, sand-bags, fence-rails, and
cotton-bales--whence arose the myth that the Americans fought behind
bales of cotton. The British troops were far from being in Christmas
spirits, for the truth had already begun to dawn upon them that men can
fight as well in buckskin shirts as in scarlet tunics, and that these
raw-boned wilderness hunters, with their powder-horns and abnormally
long rifles, were likely to prove more formidable enemies than the
imposing grenadiers of Napoleon's Old Guard, whom they had been fighting
in Spain and France. On that same day before Christmas, strangely
enough, a treaty of peace was being signed by the envoys of the two
nations in a little Belgian town, four thousand miles away.
On Christmas Day, however, the wonted confidence of the British soldiery
was somewhat restored by the arrival of Sir Edward Pakenham, the new
commander-in-chief, for even in that hard-fighting day there were few
European soldiers who bore more brilliant reputations. A brother-in-law
of the Duke of Wellington, he had fought side by side with him through
the Peninsular War; he had headed the storming party at Badajoz; and at
Salamanca had led the charge which won the day for England and a
knighthood for himself. An earldom and the governorship of Louisiana, it
was said, had been promised him as his reward for the American
expedition.
Pakenham's practised eye quickly appreciated the strength of the
American position, which, after a council of war, it was decided to
carry by storm. During the night of the 26th the storming columns, eight
thousand strong, took up their positions within half a mile of the
American lines. As the sun rose next morning over fields sparkling with
frost, the bugles sounded the advance, and the British army, ablaze with
color, and in as perfect alignment as though on parade, moved forward to
the attack. As they came within range of the American guns, a group of
plantation buildings which masked Jackson's front were blown up, and the
British were startled to find themselves confronted by a row of ship's
cannon, manned as guns are seldom manned on land. Around each gun was
clustered a crew of lean, fierce-faced, red-shirted ruffians, caked with
sweat and mud: they were Lafitte's buccaneers, who had responded to
Jackson's orders by running in all the way from their station on the
Bayou St. John that morning. Not until he could make out the brass
buttons on the tunics of the advancing British did Lafitte give the
command to fire. Then the great guns of the pirate-patriots flashed and
thundered. Before that deadly fire the scarlet columns crumbled as
plaster crumbles beneath a hammer, the men dropping, first by twos and
threes, then by dozens and scores. In five minutes the attacking
columns, composed of regiments which were the boast of the British army,
had been compelled to sullenly retreat.
The British commander, appreciating that the repulse of his forces was
largely due to the fire of the Baratarian artillery, gave orders that
guns be brought from the fleet and mounted in a position where they
could silence the fire of the buccaneers. Three days were consumed in
the herculean task of moving the heavy pieces of ordnance into position,
but when the sun rose on New Year's morning it showed a skilfully
constructed line of intrenchments, running parallel to the American
front and armed with thirty heavy guns. While the British were thus
occupied, the Americans had not been idle, for Jackson had likewise
busied himself in constructing additional batteries, while Commodore
Patterson, the American naval commander, had gone through the sailors'
boarding-houses of New Orleans with a fine-tooth comb, impressing every
nautical-looking character on which he could lay his hands, regardless
of nationality, color, or excuses, to serve the guns. With their
storming columns sheltered behind the breastworks, awaiting the moment
when they would burst through the breach which they confidently expected
would shortly be made in the American defences, the British batteries
opened fire with a crash which seemed to split the heavens. Throughout
the artillery duel which ensued splendid service was rendered by the men
under Lafitte, who trained their guns as carefully and served them as
coolly as though they were back again on the decks of their privateers.
The storming parties, which were waiting for a breach to be made, waited
in vain, for within an hour and thirty minutes after the action opened
the British batteries were silenced, their guns dismounted, and their
parapets levelled with the plain. The veterans of Wellington and Nelson
had been out-fought from first to last by a band of buccaneers,
reinforced by a few-score American bluejackets and a handful of
nondescript seamen.
Pakenham had one more plan for the capture of the city. This was a
general assault by his entire army on the American lines. His plan of
attack was simple, and would very probably have proved successful
against troops less accustomed to frontier warfare than the Americans.
Colonel Thornton, with fourteen hundred men, was directed to cross the
river during the night of January 7, and, creeping up to the American
lines under cover of the darkness, to carry them by assault. His attack
was to be the signal for a column under General Gibbs to storm Jackson's
right, and for another, under General Keane, to throw itself against the
American left, General Lambert, who had just arrived with two fresh
regiments, being held in reserve. So carefully had the British
commanders perfected their plans that the battle was already won--in
theory.
No one knew better than Jackson that this was to be the deciding round
of the contest, and he accordingly made his preparations to win it with
a solar-plexus blow. He also had received a reinforcement, for the
long-expected militia from Kentucky, two thousand two hundred strong,
had just arrived, after a forced march of fifteen hundred miles, though
in a half-naked and starving condition. Our history contains nothing
finer, to my way of thinking, than the story of how these mountaineers
of the Blue Ridge, foot-sore, ragged, and hungry, came pouring down from
the north to repel the threatened invasion. The Americans, who numbered,
all told, barely four thousand men, were scattered along a front of
nearly three miles, one end of the line extending so far into a swamp
that the soldiers stood in water to their waists during the day, and at
night slept on floating logs made fast to trees.
Long before daybreak on the morning of the 8th of January the divisions
of Gibbs and Keane were in position, and waiting impatiently for the
outburst of musketry which would be the signal that Thornton had begun
his attack. Thornton had troubles of his own, however, for the swift
current of the Mississippi, as though wishing to do its share in the
nation's defence, had carried his boats a mile and a half down-stream,
so that it was daylight before he was able to effect a landing, when a
surprise was, of course, out of the question. But Pakenham, naturally
obstinate and now made wholly reckless by the miscarriage of his plans,
refused to recall his orders; so, as the gray mists of the early morning
slowly lifted, his columns were seen advancing across the fields.
"Steady now, boys! Steady!" called Jackson, as he rode up and down
behind his lines. "Don't waste your ammunition, for we've none to spare.
Pick your man, wait until he gets within range, and then let him have
it! Let's get this business over with to-day!" His orders were obeyed
to the letter, for not a shot was fired until the scarlet columns were
within certain range. Then the order "Commence firing" was repeated down
the line. Neither hurriedly, nor excitedly, nor confusedly was it
obeyed, but with the utmost calmness and deliberation, the frontiersmen,
trained to use the rifle from boyhood, choosing their targets, and
calculating their ranges as unconcernedly as though they were hunting in
their native forests. Still the British columns pressed indomitably on,
and still the lean and lantern-jawed Jackson rode up and down his lines,
cheering, cautioning, exhorting, directing. Suddenly he reined up his
horse at the Baratarian battery commanded by Dominique You.
"What's this? What's this?" he exclaimed. "You have stopped firing? What
the devil does this mean, sir?"
"Of course we've stopped firing, general," said the buccaneer, touching
his forelock man-o'-war fashion. "The powder's good for nothing. It
might do to shoot blackbirds with, but not redcoats."
Jackson beckoned to one of his aides-de-camp.
"Tell the ordnance officer that I will have him shot in five minutes as
a traitor if Dominique complains again of his powder," and he
galloped off. When he passed that way a few minutes later the rattle
of the musketry was being punctuated at half-minute intervals with the
crash of the Baratarian guns. "Ha, friend Dominique," called Jackson,
"I'm glad to see you're at work again."
[Illustration: The battle of New Orleans.
From a painting by D.M. Carter.]
"Pretty good work, too, general," responded the buccaneer. "It looks to
me as if the British have discovered that there has been a change of
powder in this battery." He was right. Before the combined rifle and
artillery fire of the Americans the British columns were melting like
snow under a spring rain. Still their officers led them on, cheering,
pleading, threatening, imploring. Pakenham's arm was pierced by a
bullet; at the same instant another killed his horse, but, mounting the
pony of his aide-de-camp, he continued to encourage his disheartened and
wavering men. Keane was borne bleeding from the field, and a moment
later Gibbs, mortally wounded, was carried after him. The panic which
was just beginning to seize the British soldiery was completed at this
critical instant by a shot from one of the Baratarians' big guns which
burst squarely in the middle of the advancing column, causing terrible
destruction in the solid ranks. Pakenham's horse fell dead, and the
general reeled into the arms of an officer who sprang forward to catch
him. Terribly wounded, he was carried to the shelter of a spreading
oak, beneath which, five minutes later, he breathed his last. Then the
ebb-tide began. The shattered regiments, demoralized by the death of
their commander, and themselves fearfully depleted by the American fire,
broke and ran. Ten minutes later, save for the crawling, agonized
wounded, not a living foe was to be seen. But the field, which had been
green with grass half an hour before, was carpeted with scarlet now, and
the carpet was made of British dead. Of the six thousand men who took
part in the attack, it is estimated that two thousand six hundred were
killed or wounded. Of the Ninety-third Regiment, which had gone into
action nine hundred strong, only one hundred and thirty-nine men
answered to the roll-call. The Americans had eight men killed and
thirteen wounded. The battle had lasted exactly twenty-five minutes. At
eight o'clock the American bugles sounded "Cease firing," and
Jackson--whom this victory was to make President of the United
States--followed by his staff, rode slowly down the lines, stopping at
each command to make a short address. As he passed, the regimental fifes
and drums burst into "Hail, Columbia," and the rows of weary,
powder-grimed men, putting their caps on the ends of their long rifles,
swung them in the air and cheered madly the victor of New Orleans.
There is little more to tell. On March 17 the British expedition,
accompanied by the judges and customs-inspectors and revenue-collectors,
and by the officers' wives who had come out to take part in the
festivities which were to mark the conquest, set sail from the mouth of
the Mississippi, reaching Europe just in time to participate in the
Waterloo campaign. In the general orders issued by Jackson after the
battle the highest praise was given to the Lafittes and their followers
from Barataria, while the official despatches to Washington strongly
urged that some recognition be made of the extraordinary services
rendered by the erstwhile pirates. A few weeks later the President
granted a full pardon to the inhabitants of Barataria, his message
concluding: "Offenders who have refused to become the associates of the
enemy in war upon the most seducing terms of invitation, and who have
aided to repel his hostile invasion of the territory of the United
States, can no longer be considered as objects of punishment, but as
objects of generous forgiveness." Taking advantage of this amnesty, the
ex-pirates settled down to the peaceable lives of fishermen and
market-gardeners, and their descendants dwell upon the shores of
Barataria Bay to this day. As to the future movements of the brothers
Lafitte, beyond the fact that they established themselves for a time at
Galveston, whence they harassed Spanish commerce in the Gulf of Mexico,
nothing definite is known. Leaving New Orleans soon after the battle,
they sailed out of the Mississippi, and out of this story.
THE MAN WHO DARED TO CROSS THE RANGES
About the word frontiersman there is a pretty air of romance. The very
mention of it conjures up a vision of lean, sinewy, brown-faced men, in
fur caps and moccasins and fringed buckskin, slipping through virgin
forests or pushing across sun-scorched prairies--advance-guards of
civilization. Hardy, resolute, taciturn figures, they have passed
silently across the pages of our history and we shall see their like no
more. To them we owe a debt that we can never repay--nor, indeed, have
we even publicly acknowledged it. We followed by the trails which they
had blazed for us; we built our towns in those rich valleys and pastured
our herds on those fertile hillsides which theirs were the first white
men's eyes to see. The American frontiersman was never a self-seeker.
His discoveries he left as a heritage to those who followed him. In
almost every case he died poor and, more often than not, with his boots
on. David Livingstone and Henry M. Stanley, the two Englishmen who did
more than any other men for the opening up of Africa, lie in Westminster
Abbey, and thousands of their countrymen each year stand reverently
beside their tombs. To Cecil Rhodes, another Anglo-African pioneer, a
great national memorial has been erected on the slopes of Table
Mountain. Far, far greater parts in the conquest of a wilderness, the
winning of a continent, were played by Daniel Boone, William Bowie, Kit
Carson, Davy Crockett; yet how many of those who to-day enjoy the fruits
of the perils they faced, the hardships they endured, know much more of
them than as characters in dime novels, can tell where they are buried,
can point to any statues or monuments which have been erected to their
memories?
There are two million four hundred thousand people in the State of
California, and most of them boast of it as "God's own country." They
have more State pride than any people that I know, yet I would be
willing to wager almost anything you please that you can pick a hundred
native sons of California, and put to each of them the question, "Who
was Jedediah Smith?" and not one of them would be able to answer it
correctly. The public parks of San Francisco and Los Angeles and San
Diego and Sacramento have innumerable statues of one kind and another,
but you will find none of this man with the stern old Puritan name; they
are starting a hall of fame in California, but no one has proposed
Jedediah Smith as deserving a place in it. Yet to him, perhaps more than
to any other man, is due the fact that California is American: he was
the greatest of the pathfinders; he was the real founder of the Overland
Trail; he was the man who led the way across the ranges. Had it not been
for the trail he blazed and the thousands who followed in his footsteps
the Sierra Nevadas, instead of the Rio Grande, might still mark the line
of our frontier.
The westward advance of population which took place during the first
quarter of the nineteenth century far exceeded the limits of any of the
great migrations of mankind upon the older continents. The story of the
American onset to the beckoning West is one of the wonder-tales of
history. Over the natural waterway of the great northern lakes, down the
road to Pittsburg, along the trail which skirted the Potomac, and then
down the Ohio, over the passes of the Cumberland into Tennessee, round
the end of the Alleghanies into the Gulf States, up the Missouri, and so
across the Rockies to the head waters of the Columbia, or south-westward
from St. Louis to the Spanish settlements of Santa Fe, the hardy
pioneers poured in an ever-increasing stream, carrying with them little
but axe, spade, and rifle, some scanty household effects, a small store
of provisions, a liberal supply of ammunition, and unlimited faith,
courage, and enterprise.
During that brief period the people of the United States extended their
occupation over the whole of that vast region lying between the
Alleghanies and the Rockies--a territory larger than all of Europe,
without Russia--annexed it from the wilderness, conquered, subdued,
improved, cultivated, civilized it, and all without one jot of
governmental assistance. Throughout these years, as the frontiersmen
pressed into the West, they continued to fret and strain against the
Spanish boundaries. The Spanish authorities, and after them the Mexican,
soon became seriously alarmed at this silent but resistless American
advance, and from the City of Mexico orders went out to the provincial
governors that Americans venturing within their jurisdiction should be
treated, whenever an excuse offered, with the utmost severity. But,
notwithstanding the menace of Mexican prisons, of Indian tortures, of
savage animals, of thirst and starvation in the wilderness, the pioneers
pushed westward and ever westward, until at last their further progress
was abruptly halted by the great range of the Sierra Nevada,
snow-crested, and presumably impassable, which rose like a titanic wall
before them, barring their further march.
It was at about the time of this halt in our westward progress that
Captain Jedediah Smith came riding onto the scene. You must picture him
as a gaunt-faced, lean-flanked, wiry man, with nerves of iron, sinews of
rawhide, a skin like oak-tanned leather, and quick on his feet as a
catamount. He was bearded to the ears, of course, for razors formed no
part of the scanty equipment of the frontiersman, and above the beard
shone a pair of very keen, bright eyes, with the concentrated wrinkles
about their corners that come of staring across the prairies under a
blazing sun. He was sparing of his words, as are most men who dwell in
the great solitudes, and, like them, he was, in an unorthodox way,
devout, his stern and rugged features as well as his uncompromising
scriptural name betraying the grim old Puritan stock from which he
sprang. His hair was long and black, and would have covered his
shoulders had it not been tied at the back of the neck by a leather
thong. His dress was that of the Indian adapted to meet the
requirements of the adventuring white man: a hunting-shirt and trousers
of fringed buckskin, embroidered moccasins of elkhide, and a cap made
from the glossy skin of a beaver, with the tail hanging down behind. On
hot desert marches, and in camp, he took off the beaver-skin cap and
twisted about his head a bright bandanna, which, when taken with his
gaunt, unshaven face, made him look uncommonly like a pirate. These
garments were by no means fresh and gaudy, like those affected by the
near-frontiersmen who take part in the production of Wild West shows;
instead they were very soiled and much worn and greasy, and gave
evidence of having done twenty-four hours' duty a day for many months at
a stretch. Hanging on his chest was a capacious powder-horn, and in his
belt was a long, straight knife, very broad and heavy in the blade--a
first cousin of that deadly weapon to which William Bowie was in after
years to give his name; in addition he carried a rifle, with an
altogether extraordinary length of barrel, which brought death to any
living thing within a thousand yards on which its foresight rested. His
mount was a plains-bred pony, as wiry and unkempt and enduring as
himself. Everything considered, Smith could have been no gentle-looking
figure, and I rather imagine that, if he were alive and ventured into a
Western town to-day, he would probably be arrested by the local
constable as an undesirable character. I have now sketched for you, in
brief, bold outline, as good a likeness of Smith as I am able with the
somewhat scanty materials at hand, for he lived and did his pioneering
in the days when frontiersmen were as common as traffic policemen are
now, added to which the men who were familiar with his exploits were of
a sort more ready with their pistols than with their pens.
The dates of Smith's birth and death are not vital to this story, and
perhaps it is just as well that they are not, for I can find no record
of when he came into the world, and only the Indian warrior who wore his
scalp-lock at his waist could have told the exact date on which he went
out of it. It is enough to know that, just as the nineteenth century was
passing the quarter mark, Smith was the head of a firm of fur-traders,
Smith, Jackson & Soublette, which had obtained from President John
Quincy Adams permission to hunt and trade to their hearts' content in
the region lying beyond the Rocky Mountains. It would have been much
more to the point to have obtained the permission of the Mexican
governor-general of the Californias, or of the great chief of the
Comanches, for they held practically all of the territory in question
between them. Those were the days whose like we shall never know again,
when the streams were alive with beaver, when there were more elk and
antelope on the prairies than there are cattle now, and when the noise
made by the moving buffalo herds sounded like the roll of distant
thunder. They were the days when a fortune, as fortunes were then
reckoned, awaited the man with unlimited ammunition, a sure eye, and a
body inured to hardships. What the founder of the Astor fortune was
doing in the Puget Sound country, Smith and his companions purposed to
do in the Rockies; and, with this end in view, established their base
camp on the eastern shores of the Great Salt Lake, not far from where
Ogden now stands. This little band of pioneers formed the westernmost
outpost of American civilization, for between them and the nearest
settlement, at the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers,
stretched thirteen hundred miles of savage wilderness. Livingstone, on
his greatest journey, did not penetrate half as far into unknown Africa
as Smith did into unknown America, and while the English explorer was at
the head of a large and well-equipped expedition, the American was
accompanied by a mere handful of men.
In August, 1826, Smith and a small party of his hunters found
themselves in the terrible Painted Desert, that God-forsaken expanse of
sand and lava where the present States of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada
meet. Water there was none, for the streams had run dry, and the horses
and pack-mules were dying of thirst and exhaustion; the game had
entirely disappeared; the supplies were all but finished--and five
hundred miles of the most inhospitable country in the world lay between
them and their camp on Great Salt Lake. The situation was perilous,
indeed, and a decision had to be made quickly if any of them were to get
out alive.
"What few supplies we have left will be used up before we get a quarter
way back to the camp," said Smith. "Our only chance--and I might as well
tell you it's a mighty slim one, boys--is in pushing on to California."
"But California's a good four hundred miles away," expostulated his
companions, "and the Sierras lie between, and no one has ever crossed
them."
"Then I'll be the first man to do it," said Smith. "Besides, I've always
had a hankering to learn what lies on the other side of those ranges.
Now's my chance to find out."
"I reckon there ain't much chance of our ever seeing Salt Lake or
California either," grumbled one of the hunters, "and even if we do
reach the coast the Mexicans 'll clap us into prison."
"Well, so fur's I'm concerned," said Smith decisively, "I'd rather be
alive and in a Greaser prison than to be dead in the desert. I'm going
to California or die on the way."
History chronicles few such marches. Westward pressed the little troop
of pioneers, across the sun-baked lava beds of southwestern Utah, over
the arid deserts and the barren ranges of southern Nevada, and so to the
foot-hills of that great Sierran range which rears itself ten thousand
feet skyward, forming a barrier which had theretofore separated the
fertile lands of the Pacific slope from the rest of the continent more
effectually than an ocean. The lava beds gave way to sand wastes dotted
with clumps of sage-brush and cactus, and the cactus changed to stunted
pines, and the pines ran out in rocks, and the rocks became covered with
snow, and still Smith and his hunters struggled on, emaciated, tattered,
almost barefooted, lamed by the cactus spines on the desert, and the
stones on the mountain slopes, until at last they stood upon the very
summit of the range and, like that other band of pioneers in an earlier
age, looked down on the promised land after their wanderings in the
wilderness. No explorer in the history of the world, not Columbus, nor
Pizarro, nor Champlain, nor De Soto, ever gazed upon a land so fertile
and so full of beauty. The mysterious, the jealously guarded, the
storied land of California lay spread before them like a map in
bas-relief. Then the descent of the western slope began, the transition
from snow-clad mountain peaks to hillsides clothed with subtropical
vegetation amazing the Americans by its suddenness. Imagine how like a
dream come true it must have been to these men, whose lives had been
spent in the less kindly climate and amid the comparatively scanty
vegetation of the Middle West, to suddenly find themselves in this
fairyland of fruit and flowers!
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1906, by P.F. Collier & Son._
Westward pressed the little troop of pioneers, across the sun-baked lava
beds of southwestern Utah.]
"It is, indeed, a white man's country," said Smith prophetically, as,
leaning on his long rifle, he gazed upon the wonderful panorama which
unrolled itself before him. "Though it is Mexican just now, sooner or
later it must and shall be ours."
Heartened by the sight of this wonderful new country, and by the
knowledge that they must be approaching some of the Mexican settlements,
but with bodies sadly weakened from exposure, hunger, and exhaustion,
the Americans slowly made their way down the slope, crossed those
fertile lowlands which are now covered with groves of orange and lemon,
and so, guided by some friendly Indians whom they met, came at last to
the mission station of San Gabriel, one of that remarkable chain of
outposts of the church founded by the indefatigable Franciscan, Father
Junipero Serra. The little company of worn and weary men sighted the
red-tiled roof of the mission just at sunset, and though Smith and his
followers came from stern New England stock which prided itself on
having no truck with Papists, I rather imagine that as the sweet, clear
mission bells chimed out the angelus they lifted their hats and stood
with bowed heads in silent thanksgiving for their preservation.
I doubt if there was a more astonished community between the oceans than
was the monastic one of San Gabriel when this band of ragged strangers
suddenly appeared from nowhere and asked for food and shelter.
"You come from the South--from Mexico?" queried the father superior,
staring, half-awed, at these gaunt, fierce-faced, bearded men who spoke
in a strange tongue.
"No, padre," answered Smith, calling to his aid the broken Spanish he
had picked up in his trading expeditions to Santa Fe, "we come from the
East, from the country beyond the great mountains, from the United
States. We are Americans," he added a little proudly.
"They say they come from the East," the brown-robed monks whispered to
each other. "It is impossible. No one has ever come from that direction.
Have not the Indians told us many times that there is no food, no water
in that direction, and that, moreover, there is no way to cross the
mountains? It is, indeed, a strange and incredible tale that these men
tell. But we will offer them our hospitality in the name of the blessed
St. Francis, for that we withhold from no man; but it is the part of
wisdom to despatch a messenger to San Diego to acquaint the governor of
their coming, for it may well be that they mean no good to the people of
this land."
Had the good monks been able to look forward a few-score years, perhaps
they would not have been so ready to offer Smith and his companions the
shelter of the mission roof. But how were they to know that these ragged
strangers, begging for food at their mission door, were the skirmishers
for a mighty host which would one day pour over those mountain ranges to
the eastward as the water pours over the falls at Niagara; that within
rifle-shot of where their mission stood a city of half a million souls
would spread itself across the hills; that down the dusty Camino Real,
which the founder of their mission had trudged so often in his sandals
and woollen robe, would whirl strange horseless, panting vehicles,
putting a mile a minute behind their flying wheels; that twin lines of
steel would bring their southernmost station at San Diego within twenty
hours, instead of twenty days, of their northernmost outpost at Sonoma;
and that over this new land would fly, not the red-white-and-green
standard of Mexico, but an alien banner of stripes and stars?
The four years which intervened between the collapse of Spanish rule in
Mexico and the arrival of Jedediah Smith at San Gabriel were marked by
political chaos in the Californias. When a governor of Alta California
rose in the morning he did not know whether he was the representative of
an emperor, a king, a president, or a dictator. As a result of these
perennial disorders, the Mexican officials ascribed sinister motives to
the most innocent episodes. No sooner, therefore, did Governor Echeandia
learn of the arrival in his province of a mysterious party of Americans
than he ordered them brought under escort to San Diego for examination.
Though those present probably did not appreciate it, the meeting of
Smith and Echeandia in the palace at San Diego was a peculiarly
significant one. There sat at his ease in his great chair of state the
saturnine Mexican governor, arrogant and haughty, beruffled and
gold-laced, his high-crowned sombrero and his velvet jacket heavy with
bullion, while in front of him stood the American frontiersman, gaunt,
unshaven, and ragged, but as cool and self-possessed as though he was at
the head of a conquering army instead of a forlorn hope. The one was as
truly the representative of a passing as the other was of a coming race.
Small wonder that Echeandia, as he observed the hardy figures and
determined faces of the Americans, thought to himself how small would be
Mexico's chance of holding California if others of their countrymen
began to follow in their footsteps. He and his officials cross-examined
Smith as closely as though the frontiersman was a prisoner on trial for
his life, as, in a sense, he was, for almost any fate might befall him
and his companions in that remote corner of the continent without any
one being called to account for it. Smith described the series of
misfortunes which had led him to cross the ranges; he asserted that he
desired nothing so much as to get back into American territory again,
and he earnestly begged the governor to provide him with the necessary
provisions and permit him to depart. His story was so frank and
plausible that Echeandia, with characteristic Spanish suspicion,
promptly disbelieved every word of it, for why, he argued, should any
sane man make so hazardous a journey unless he were a spy and well paid
to risk his life? For even in those early days, remember, the Mexicans
had begun to fear the ambitions of the young republic to the eastward.
So, despite their protests, he ordered the Americans to be
imprisoned--and no one knew better than they did that, once within the
walls of a Mexican prison, there was small chance of their seeing the
outside world again. Fortunately for the explorers, however, it so
happened that there were three American trading-schooners lying in San
Diego harbor at the time, and their captains, determined to see the
rights of their fellow countrymen respected, joined in a vigorous and
energetic protest to the governor against this high-handed and
unjustified action. This seems to have frightened Echeandia, for he
reluctantly gave orders for the release of Smith and his companions, but
ordered them to leave the country at once, and by the same route by
which they had come.
When the year 1827 was but a few days old, therefore, the Americans
turned their faces northward, but instead of retracing their steps in
accordance with Echeandia's orders, they crossed the coast range,
probably through the Tejon Pass, and kept on through the fertile region
now known as the San Joaquin Valley, in the hope that by crossing the
Sierra farther to the northward they would escape the terrible rigors of
the Colorado desert. When some three hundred miles north of San Gabriel
they attempted to recross the ranges, but a feat that had been hazardous
in midsummer was impossible in midwinter, and the entire expedition
nearly perished in the attempt. Several of the men and all the horses
died of cold and hunger, and it was only by incredible exertions that
Smith and his few remaining companions, terribly frozen and totally
exhausted, managed to reach the Santa Clara Valley and Mission San Jose.
So slow was their progress that the news of their approach preceded them
and caused considerable disquietude to the monks. Learning from the
Indians that he and his tatterdemalion followers were objects of
suspicion, Smith sent a letter to the father superior, in which he gave
an account of his arrival at San Gabriel, of his interview with the
governor, of his disaster in the Sierras, and of his present pitiable
condition. "I am a long way from home," this pathetic missive
concludes, "and am anxious to get there as soon as the nature of the
case will permit. Our situation is quite unpleasant, being destitute of
clothing and most of the necessaries of life, wild meat being our
principal subsistence. I am, reverend father, your strange but real
friend and Christian brother, Jedediah Smith." As a result of this
appeal, the hospitality of the mission was somewhat grudgingly extended
to the Americans, who were by this time in the most desperate condition.
Hardships that would kill ordinary men were but unpleasant incidents in
the lives of the pioneers, however, and in a few weeks they were as fit
as ever to resume their journey. But, upon thinking the matter over,
Smith decided that he would never be content if he went back without
having found out what lay still farther to the northward, for in him was
the insatiable curiosity and the indomitable spirit of the born
explorer. But as his force, as well as his resources, had become sadly
depleted, he felt it imperative that he should first return to Salt Lake
and bring on the men, horses, and provisions he had left there.
Accordingly, leaving most of his party in camp at San Jose, he set out
with only two companions, recrossed the Sierra at one of its highest
points (the place he crossed is where the railway comes through to-day)
and after several uncomfortably narrow escapes from landslides and from
Indians, eventually reached the camp on Great Salt Lake, where he found
that his people had long since given him and his companions up for dead.
Breaking camp on a July morning, in 1827, Smith, with eighteen men and
two women, turned his face once more toward California. To avoid the
snows of the high Sierras, he chose the route he had taken on his first
journey, reaching the desert country to the north of the Colorado River
in early August. It was not until the party had penetrated too far into
the desert to retreat that they found that the whole country was burnt
up. For several days they pushed on in the hope of finding water. Across
the yellow sand wastes they would sight the sparkle of a crystal lake,
and would hasten toward it as fast as their jaded animals could carry
them, only to find that it was a mirage. Then the horrors preliminary to
death by thirst began: the animals, their blackened tongues protruding
from their mouths, staggered and fell, and rose no more; the women grew
delirious and babbled incoherent nothings; even the hardiest of the men
stumbled as they marched, or tried to frighten away by shouts and
gestures the fantastic shapes which danced before them. At last there
came a morning when they could go no farther. Such of them as still
retained their faculties felt that it was the end--that is, all but
Jedediah Smith. He was of the breed which does not know the meaning of
defeat, because they are never defeated until they are dead. Loading
himself with the empty water-bottles, he set out alone into the desert,
determined to follow one of the numerous buffalo trails, for he knew
that sooner or later it must lead him to water of some sort, even if to
nothing more than a buffalo-wallow. Racked with the fever of thirst, his
legs shaking from exhaustion, he plodded on, under the pitiless sun,
mile after mile, hour after hour, until, struggling to the summit of a
low divide, he saw the channel of a stream in the valley beneath him.
The expedition was saved. Stumbling and sliding down the slope in his
haste to quench his intolerable thirst, he came to a sudden halt on the
river-bank. It was nothing but an empty watercourse into which he was
staring--the river had run dry! The shock of such a disappointment would
have driven most men stark, staring mad. Only for a moment, however, was
the veteran frontiersman staggered; he knew the character of many
streams in the West--that often their waters run underground a few feet
below the surface, and in a moment he was on his knees digging
frantically in the soft sand. Soon the sand began to grow moist, and
then the coveted water slowly began to filter upward into the little
excavation he had hollowed. Throwing himself flat on the ground, he
buried his burning face in the muddy water--and as he did so a shower of
arrows whistled about him. A war-party of Comanches, unobserved, had
followed and surrounded him. He had but exchanged the danger of death by
thirst for the far more dreadful fate of death by torture. Though struck
by several of the arrows, he held the Indians off until he had filled
his water-bottles; then, retreating slowly, taking advantage of every
particle of cover, as only a veteran plainsman can, blazing away with
his unerring rifle whenever an Indian was incautious enough to show a
portion of his figure, Smith succeeded in getting back to his companions
with the precious water. With their dead animals for breastworks, the
pioneers succeeded in holding the Indians at bay for six-and-thirty
hours, but on the second night the redskins, heavily reinforced, rushed
them in the night, ten of the men and the two women being killed in the
hand-to-hand fight which ensued, and the few horses which remained alive
being stampeded. I rather imagine that the women were shot by their own
husbands, for the women of the frontier always preferred death to
capture by these fiends in paint and feathers.
How Smith, calling all his craft and experience as a plainsman to his
assistance, managed to lead his eight surviving companions through the
encircling Indians by night, and how, wounded, horseless, and
provisionless as they were, he succeeded in guiding them across the
ranges to San Bernardino, is but another example of this forgotten
hero's courage and resource. Having lost everything that he possessed,
for the whole of his scanty savings had been invested in the ill-fated
expedition, Smith, with such of his men as were strong enough to
accompany him, set out to rejoin the party he had left some months
previously at Mission San Jose. Scarcely had he set foot within that
settlement, however, before he was arrested and taken under escort to
Monterey, where he was taken before the governor, who, he found to his
surprise and dismay, was no other than his old enemy of San Diego, Don
Jose Echeandia. This time nothing would convince Echeandia that Smith
was not the leader of an expedition which had territorial designs on
California, and he promptly ordered him to be taken to prison and kept
in solitary confinement as a dangerous conspirator. Thereupon Smith
resorted to the same expedient he had used so successfully, and begged
the captains of the American vessels in the harbor of Monterey for
protection. So forcible were their representations that Echeandia
finally agreed to release Smith on his swearing to leave California for
good and all. To this proposal Smith willingly agreed and took the oath
required of him, but, upon being released from prison, was astounded to
learn that the governor had given orders that he must set out
alone--that his hunters would not be permitted to accompany him. His and
their protestations were disregarded. Smith must start at once and
unaccompanied. He was given a horse and saddle, provisions, blankets, a
rifle--and nothing more. It was a sentence of death which Echeandia had
had pronounced on this American frontiersman, and both he and Smith knew
it. Without having committed any crime--unless it was a crime to be an
American--Jedediah Smith was driven out of the territory of a supposedly
friendly nation, and told that he was at perfect liberty to make his way
across two thousand miles of wilderness to the nearest American
outpost--if he could.
Striking back into that range of the Sierras which lies southeast of
Fresno, Smith succeeded in crossing them for a fourth time, evidently
intending to make his way back to his old stamping-ground on the Great
Salt Lake. Our knowledge of what occurred after he had crossed the
ranges for the last time is confined to tales told to the settlers in
later years by the Indians. While emerging from the terrible Death
Valley, where hundreds of emigrants were to lose their lives during the
rush to the gold-fields a quarter of a century later, he was attacked at
a water-hole by a band of Indians. For many years afterward the
Comanches were wont to tell with admiration how this lone pale-face,
coming from out of the setting sun, had knelt behind his dead horse and
held them off with his deadly rifle all through one scorching summer's
day. But when nightfall came they crept up very silently under cover of
the darkness and rushed him. His scalp was very highly valued, for it
had cost the lives of twelve Comanche braves.
But Jedediah Smith did not die in vain. Tales of the rich and virgin
country which he had found beyond the ranges flew as though with wings
across the land; soon other pioneers made their way over the mountains
by the trails which he had blazed; long wagon-trains crawled westward
by the routes which he had taken; strange bands of horsemen pitched
their tents in the valleys where he had camped. The mission bells grew
silent; the monk in his woollen robe and the _caballero_ in his
gold-laced jacket passed away; settlements of hardy, energetic,
nasal-voiced folk from beyond the Sierras sprang up everywhere. Then one
day a new flag floated over the presidio in Monterey--a flag that was
not to be pulled down. The American republic had reached the western
ocean, and thus was fulfilled the dream of Jedediah Smith, the man who
showed the way.
THE FLAG OF THE BEAR
Because the battles which marked its establishment were really only
skirmishes, in which but an insignificant number of lives were lost, and
because it boasted less than a thousand citizens all told, certain of
our historians have been so undiscerning as to assert that the Bear Flag
Republic was nothing but a travesty and a farce. Therein they are wrong.
Though it is doubtless true that the handful of frontiersmen who raised
their home-made flag, with its emblem of a grizzly bear, over the
Californian presidio of Sonoma on that July morning in 1846 took
themselves much more seriously than the circumstances warranted, it is
equally true that their action averted the seizure of California by
England, and by forcing the hand of the administration at Washington was
primarily responsible for adding what is now California, Nevada,
Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and more than half of Wyoming and Colorado to
the Union. The series of intrigues and affrays and insurrections which
resulted in the Pacific coast becoming American instead of European
form a picturesque, exciting, and virtually unwritten chapter in our
national history, a chapter in which furtive secret agents and haughty
_caballeros_, pioneers in fringed buckskin, and naval officers in
gold-laced uniforms all played their greater or their lesser parts.
To fully understand the conditions which led up to the "Bear Flag War,"
as it has been called, it is necessary to go back for a moment to the
first quarter of the last century, when the territory of the United
States ended at the Rocky Mountains and the red-white-and-green flag of
Mexico floated over the whole of that vast, rich region which lay
beyond. Under the Mexican regime the territory lying west of the Sierra
Nevadas was divided into the provinces of Alta (or Upper) and Baja (or
Lower) California, the population of the two provinces about 1845
totalling not more than fifteen thousand souls, nine-tenths of whom were
Mexicans, Spaniards, and Indians, the rest American and European
settlers. The foreigners, among whom Americans greatly predominated,
soon became influential out of all proportion to their numbers. This was
particularly true of the Americans, who, solidified by common interests,
common dangers, and common ambitions, obtained large grants of land,
built houses which in certain cases were little short of forts,
frequently married into the most aristocratic of the Californian
families, and before long practically controlled the commerce of the
entire territory.
It was only to be expected, therefore, that the Mexicans should become
more and more apprehensive of American ambitions. Nor did President
Jackson's offer, in 1835, to buy Southern California--an offer which was
promptly refused--serve to do other than strengthen these apprehensions.
And to make matters worse, if such a thing were possible, Commodore T.
ApCatesby Jones, having heard a rumor that war had broken out between
the United States and Mexico, and having reason to believe that a
British force was preparing to seize California, landed a force of
bluejackets and marines, and on October 21, 1842, raised the American
flag over the presidio at Monterey. Although Commodore Jones, finding he
had acted upon misinformation, lowered the flag next day and tendered an
apology to the provincial officials, the incident did not tend to
relieve the tension which existed between the Mexicans and the
Americans, for it emphasized the ease with which the country could be
seized, and hinted with unmistakable plainness at the ultimate
intentions of the United States. That our government intended to annex
the Californias at the first opportunity that offered the Mexicans were
perfectly aware, for, aroused by the descriptions of the unbelievable
beauty and fertility of the country as sent back by those daring souls
who had made their way across the ranges, the hearts of our people were
set upon its acquisition. The great Bay of San Francisco, large enough
to shelter the navies of the world and the gateway to the Orient, the
fruitful, sun-kissed land beyond the Sierras, the political domination
of America, and the commercial domination of the Pacific--such were the
visions which inspired our people and the motives which animated our
leaders, and which were intensified by the fear of England's designs
upon this western land.
As the numbers of the American settlers gradually increased, the
jealousy and suspicion of the Mexican officials became more pronounced.
As early as 1826 they had driven Captain Jedediah Smith, the first
American to make his way to California by the overland route, back into
the mountains, in the midst of winter, without companions and without
provisions, to be killed by the Indians. In 1840 more than one hundred
American settlers were suddenly arrested by the Mexican authorities on
a trumped-up charge of having plotted against the government, marched
under military guard to Monterey, and confined in the prison there under
circumstances of the most barbarous cruelty, some fifty of them being
eventually deported to Mexico in chains. Thomas O. Larkin, the American
consul at Monterey, upon visiting the prisoners in the local jail where
they were confined, found that the cells had no floors, and that the
poor fellows stood in mud and water to their ankles. Sixty of the
prisoners he found crowded into a single room, twenty feet long and
eighteen wide, in which they were so tightly packed that they could not
all sit at the same time, much less lie down. The room being without
windows or other means of ventilation, the air quickly became so fetid
that they were able to live only by dividing themselves into platoons
which took turns in standing at the door and getting a few breaths of
air through the bars. These men, whose only crime was that they were
Americans, were confined in this hell-hole, without food except such as
their friends were able to smuggle in to them by bribing the sentries,
for eight days. And this treatment was accorded them, remember, not
because they were conspirators--for no one knew better than the Mexican
authorities that they were not--but because it seemed the easiest means
of driving them out of the country. Throughout the half-dozen years that
ensued American settlers were subjected to a systematic campaign of
annoyance, persecution, and imprisonment on innumerable frivolous
pretexts, being released only on their promise to leave California
immediately. By 1845, therefore, the harassed Americans, in sheer
desperation, were ready to grasp the first opportunity which presented
itself to end this intolerable tyranny for good and all.
It was not only the outrageous treatment to which they were subjected,
however, nor the weakness and instability of the government under which
they were living, nor even the insecurity of their lives and property
and the discouragements to industry, which led the American settlers to
decide to end Mexican rule in the Californias. Texas had recently been
annexed by the United States against the protests of Mexico, an American
army of invasion was massed along the Rio Grande, and war was certain.
It required no extraordinary degree of intelligence, then, to foresee
that the coming hostilities would almost inevitably result in Mexico
losing her Californian provinces. Now it was a matter of common
knowledge that the Mexican Government was seriously considering the
advisability of ceding the Californias to Great Britain, and thus
accomplishing the threefold purpose of wiping out the large Mexican debt
due to British bankers, of winning the friendship and possibly the
active assistance of England in the approaching war with the United
States, and of preventing the Californias from falling into American
hands. The danger was, therefore, that England would step in before us.
Nor was the danger any imaginary one. Her ships were watching our ships
on the Mexican coast, and her secret agents who infested the country
were keeping their fingers constantly on the pulse of public opinion.
Though it remains to this day a matter of conjecture as to just how far
England was prepared to go to obtain this territory, there is little
doubt that she had laid her plans for its acquisition in one way or
another. If California was to be added to the Union, therefore, it must
be by a sudden and daring stroke.
Meanwhile the authorities at Washington had not been idle. Though Larkin
was ostensibly the American consul at Monterey and nothing more, in
reality he was clothed with far greater powers, having been hurried from
Washington to California for the express purpose of secretly encouraging
an insurrectionary movement among the American settlers, and of keeping
our government informed of the plans of the Mexicans and British.
Receiving information that a powerful British fleet--the largest, in
fact, which had ever been seen in Pacific waters--was about to sail for
the coast of California, the administration promptly issued orders for a
squadron of war-ships under Commodore John Drake Sloat to proceed at
full speed to the Pacific coast, the commander being given secret
instructions to back up Consul Larkin in any action which he might take,
and upon receiving word that the United States had declared war against
Mexico to immediately occupy the Californian ports. Then ensued one of
the most momentous races in history, over a course extending half-way
round the world, the contestants being the war-fleets of the two most
powerful maritime nations, and the prize seven hundred thousand square
miles of immensely rich territory and the mastery of the Pacific.
Commodore Sloat laid his course around the Horn, while the English
commander, Admiral Trowbridge, chose the route through the Indian Ocean.
The first thing he saw as he entered the Bay of Monterey was the
American squadron lying at anchor in the harbor.
Never was there a better example of that form of territorial expansion
which has come to be known as "pacific penetration" than the American
conquest of California; never were the real designs of a nation and the
schemes of its secret agents more successfully hidden. Consul Larkin, as
I have already said, was quietly working, under confidential
instructions from the State Department, to bring about a revolution in
California without overt aid from the United States; the Californian
coast towns lay under the guns of American war-ships, whose commanders
likewise had secret instructions to land marines and take possession of
the country at the first opportunity that presented itself; and, as
though to complete the chain of American emissaries, early in 1846 there
came riding down from the Sierran passes, at the head of what pretended
to be an exploring and scientific expedition, the man who was to set the
machinery of conquest actually in motion.
The commander of the expedition was a young captain of engineers, named
John Charles Fremont, who, as the result of two former journeys of
exploration into the wilderness beyond the Rockies, had already won the
sobriquet of "The Pathfinder." Born in Savannah, of a French father and
a Virginian mother, he was a strange combination of aristocrat and
frontiersman. Dashing, debonair, fearless, reckless, a magnificent
horseman, a dead-shot, a hardy and intrepid explorer, equally at home
at a White House ball or at an Indian powwow, he was probably the most
picturesque and romantic figure in the United States. These
characteristics, combined with extreme good looks, a gallant manner, and
the great public reputation he had won by the vivid and interesting
accounts he had published of his two earlier journeys, had completely
captured the popular imagination, so that the young explorer had become
a national idol. In the spring of 1845 he was despatched by the National
Government on a third expedition, which had as its ostensible object the
discovery of a practicable route from the Rocky Mountains to the mouth
of the Columbia River, but which was really to lend encouragement to the
American settlers in California in any secession movement which they
might be planning and to afford them active assistance should war be
declared. Just how far the government had instructed Fremont to go in
fomenting a revolution will probably never be known, but there is every
reason to believe that his father-in-law, United States Senator Benton,
had advised him to seize California if an opportunity presented itself,
and to trust to luck (and the senator's influence) that the government
would approve rather than repudiate his action.
[Illustration: The Sacramento Valley in 1845.
From a steel engraving of the period.]
All told, Fremont's expedition numbered barely threescore men--no
great force, surely, with which to overthrow a government and win an
empire. In advance of the little column rode the four Delaware braves
whom Fremont had brought with him from the East to act as scouts and
trackers, and whose cunning and woodcraft he was willing to match
against that of the Indians of the plains. Close on their heels rode the
Pathfinder himself, clad from neck to heel in fringed buckskin, at his
belt a heavy army revolver and one of those vicious, double-bladed
knives to which Colonel Bowie, of Texas, had already given his name, and
on his head a jaunty, broad-brimmed hat, from beneath which his long,
yellow hair fell down upon his shoulders. At his bridle arm rode Kit
Carson, the most famous of the plainsmen, whose exploits against the
Indians were even then familiar stories in every American household.
Behind these two stretched out the rank and file of the
expedition--bronze-faced, bearded, resolute men, well mounted, heavily
armed, and all wearing the serviceable dress of the frontier.
Fremont found the American settlers scattered through the interior in a
state of considerable alarm, for rumors had reached them that the
Mexican Government had decided to drive them out of the country, and
that orders had been issued to the provincial authorities to incite the
Indians against them. As they dwelt for the most part in small, isolated
communities, scattered over a great extent of country, it was obvious
that, if these rumors were true, their lives were in imminent peril.
They had every reason to expect, moreover, that the news of war between
Mexico and the United States would bring down on them those forms of
punishment and retaliation for which the Mexicans were notorious. They
were confronted, therefore, with the alternative of abandoning the homes
they had built and the fields they had tilled and seeking refuge in
flight across the mountains, or of remaining to face those perils
inseparable from border warfare. Nor did it take them long to decide
upon resistance, for they were not of the breed which runs away.
Leaving most of his men encamped in the foot-hills, Fremont pushed on to
Monterey, then the most important settlement in Upper California, and
the seat of the provincial government, where he called upon Don Jose
Castro, the Mexican commandant, explained the purposes of his
expedition, and requested permission for his party to proceed northward
to the Columbia through the San Joaquin valley. This permission Castro
grudgingly gave, but scarcely had Fremont broken camp before the
Mexican, who had hastily gathered an overwhelming force of soldiers and
vaqueros, set out upon the trail of the Americans with the avowed
purpose of surprising and exterminating them. Fortunately for the
Americans, Consul Larkin, getting wind of Castro's intended treachery,
succeeded in warning Fremont, who instead of taking his chances in a
battle on the plains against a greatly superior force, suddenly occupied
the precipitous hill lying back of and commanding Monterey, known as the
Hawk's Peak, intrenched himself there, and then sent word to Castro to
come and take him. Although the Mexican commander made a military
demonstration before the American intrenchments, he was wise enough to
refrain from attempting to carry a position of such great natural
strength and defended by such unerring shots as were Fremont's
frontiersmen. Four days later Fremont, feeling that there was nothing to
be gained by holding the position longer, and confident that the
Mexicans would be only too glad to see his back, quietly broke camp one
night and resumed his march toward Oregon.
Scarcely had he crossed the Oregon line, however, before he was
overtaken by a messenger on a reeking horse, who had been despatched by
Consul Larkin to inform him that an officer with urgent despatches from
Washington had arrived at Monterey and was hastening northward to
overtake him. Fremont immediately turned back, and on the shores of the
Greater Klamath Lake met Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie, who had
travelled from New York to Vera Cruz by steamer, had crossed Mexico to
Mazatlan on horseback, and had been brought up the Pacific coast to
Monterey in an American war-ship. The exact contents of the despatches
with which Gillespie had been intrusted will probably never be known,
for having reason to believe that his mission was suspected by the
Mexicans, and being fearful of arrest, he had destroyed the despatches
after committing their contents to memory. These contents he
communicated to Fremont, and the fact that the latter immediately turned
his horse's head Californiawards is the best proof that they contained
definite instructions for him to stir up the American settlers to revolt
and so gain California for the Union by what some one has aptly
described as "neutral conquest."
The news of Fremont's return spread among the scattered settlers as
though by wireless, and from all parts of the country hardy, determined
men came pouring into camp to offer him their services. But his hands
were tied. His instructions from Washington, while ordering him to lend
his encouragement to an insurrectionary movement, expressly forbade him
to take the initiative in any hostilities until he received word that
war with Mexico had been declared--and that word had not yet come. These
facts he communicated to the settlers. Fremont's assurance that the
American Government sympathized with their aspirations for independence,
and could be counted upon to back up any action they might take to
secure it, was all that the settlers needed. On the evening of June 13,
1846, some fifty Americans living along the Sacramento River met at the
ranch of an old Indian-fighter and bear-hunter named Captain Meredith,
and under his leadership rode across the country in a northwesterly
direction through the night. Dawn found them close to the presidio of
Sonoma, which was the residence of the Mexican general Vallejo and the
most important military post north of San Francisco. Leaving their
horses in the shelter of the forest, the Americans stole silently
forward in the dimness of the early morning, overpowered the sentries,
burst in the gates, and had taken possession of the town and surrounded
the barracks before the garrison was fairly awake. General Vallejo and
his officers were captured in their beds, and were sent under guard to
a fortified ranch known as Sutter's fort, which was situated some
distance in the interior. In addition to the prisoners, nine field-guns,
several hundred stands of arms, and a considerable supply of ammunition
fell into the hands of the Americans. The first blow had been struck in
the conquest of California.
The question now arose as to what they should do with the town they had
captured, for Fremont had no authority to take it over for the United
States, or to muster the men who took it into the American service. The
embattled settlers found themselves, in fact, to be in the embarrassing
position of being men without a country. After a council of war they
decided to organize a _pro-tem_. government of their own to administer
the territory until such time as it should be formally annexed to the
United States. I doubt if a government was ever established so quickly
and under such rough-and-ready circumstances. After an informal ballot
it was announced that William B. Ide, a leading spirit among the
settlers, had been unanimously elected governor and commander-in-chief
"of the independent forces"; John H. Nash, who had been a justice of the
peace in the East before he had emigrated to California, being named
chief justice of the new republic.
For a full-fledged nation not to have a flag of its own was, of course,
unthinkable; so, as most of its citizens were hunters and adventurers,
when some one suggested that the grizzly bear, because of its
indomitable courage and tenacity and its ferocity when aroused, would
make a peculiarly appropriate emblem for the new banner, the suggestion
was adop
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