Part 2

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No. 7.

WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER, 1819.

SIR: Since my communication to you of the 31st ult. I have been informed by a gentleman entitled to the fullest credit, that you were not afloat till after the peace; consequently, the report which I noticed of your having sailed under British license must be unfounded.

I am, sir, your obedient servant, STEPHEN DECATUR.

Commodore JAS. BARRON.

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No. 8.

HAMPTON, NOVEMBER 20, 1819.

SIR: Unavoidable interruption has prevented my answering your two last communications as early as it was my wish to have done, but in a few days you shall have my reply.

I am, sir, your obedient servant, JAS. BARRON.

Commodore STEPHEN DECATUR.

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No. 9.

HAMPTON, NOVEMBER 30, 1819.

SIR: I did not receive, until Tuesday, the 9th inst. your very lengthy, elaborate, and historical reply, without date, to my letter to you of the 23d ultimo; which, from its nature and _object_, did not, I conceive, require that you should have entered so much into detail, in defence of the hostile and unmanly course you have pursued towards me, since the "affair of the Chesapeake," as you term it. A much more laconic answer would have served my purpose, which, for the present, is nothing more than to obtain at your hands honorable redress for the accumulated insults which you, sir, in particular, above all my enemies, have attempted to heap upon me, in every shape in which they could be offered. Your last voluminous letter is _alone_ sufficient proof, if none other existed, of the rancorous disposition you entertain towards me, and the extent to which you have carried it. That letter I should no otherwise notice, than merely to inform you it had reached me, and that I am prepared to meet you in the field upon _any thing_ like fair and equal grounds; but, inasmuch as you have intimated that our correspondence is to go before the public, I feel it a duty I owe to myself, and to the world, to reply particularly to the many calumnious charges and aspersions with which your "_dispassionate_ and historical notice" of my communication so abundantly teems; wishing you, sir, at the same time, "distinctly to understand" that it is not for _you_ alone, or to justify myself in your estimation, that I take this course. You have dwelt much upon our "June correspondence," as you stile it, and have made many quotations from it. I deem it unnecessary, however, to advert to it, further than to remark, that, although "nearly four months" did intervene between that correspondence and my letter of the 23d ultimo, my silence arose not from any misapprehension of the purport of your contumacious "_underscored_" remarks, nor from the malicious designs they indicated, nor from a tame disposition to yield quietly to the operation which either might have against me; but, from a tedious and painful indisposition, which confined me to my bed, the chief part of that period, as is well known to almost every person here. I anticipated, however, from what I had found you capable of doing to my injury, the use to which you would endeavour to pervert that correspondence; and have not at all been disappointed. So soon as I was well enough, and heard of your machinations against me, I lost no time in addressing to you my letter of the 23d ultimo; your reply to which I have now more particularly to notice. I have not said, nor did I mean to convey such an idea, nor will my letter bear the interpretation, that your forwarding to Norfolk, our "June correspondence," had, "in any degree, alienated my friends from me;" but, that it was sent down there with _that view_. It is a source of great consolation to me, sir, to know, that I have more friends, both in and out of the navy, than you are aware of; and that it is not in your power, great as you may imagine your official influence to be, to deprive me of their good opinion and affection. As to the reason which seems to have prompted you to send that correspondence to Norfolk, "that a female of my acquaintance had stated that such an one had taken place," I will only remark, that she did not derive her information from me: that it has always been, and ever will be, with me, a principle, to touch as delicately as possible, upon reports said to come from _females_, _intended_ to affect injuriously the character of any one; and that, in a correspondence like the _present_, highly as I estimate the sex, I should never think of introducing _them_ as authority. Females, sir, have nothing, or ought to have nothing to do in controversies of this kind. In speaking of the court martial which sat upon my trial, I have cast no imputation or reflection upon the members individually who composed it (saving yourself,) which required that you should attempt a vindication of their proceedings; champion as you are, and hostile as some of them may have been to me: nor does the language of my letter warrant any such inference. I merely meant to point out to you, sir, what you appear to have been incapable of perceiving: the indelicacy of your conduct, (to say the least of it) in hunting me out as an object for malignant persecution, after having acted as one of my judges, and giving your voice in favour of a sentence against me, which I cannot avoid repeating, was "cruel and unmerited." It is the privilege, sir, of a man, deeply injured as I have been by that decision, and conscious of his not deserving it, as I feel myself, to remonstrate against it; and I have taken the liberty to exercise that privilege.

You say that "the proceedings of the Court have been approved by the Chief Magistrate of our country, that the nation approved of them, and that the sentence has been carried into effect." It is true the President of the United States _did_ approve of that sentence, and that it was carried into effect--full and complete effect, which I should have supposed ought to have glutted the envious and vengeful disposition of your heart; but I deny that the nation has approved of that sentence, and as an appeal appears likely to be made to _them_, I am willing to submit the question. The part you took on that occasion, it was totally unnecessary, I assure you, "to revive in my recollection;" it is indelibly imprinted on my mind, and can never, while I have life, be erased. You acknowledge you were present at the Court of Inquiry in my case, "heard the evidence for and against me, and had, therefore, formed and expressed an opinion unfavorable to me," and yet, your conscience was made of such pliable materials, that, _because_ the then "honorable Secretary of the Navy was _pleased to insist_ on your serving as a member of the Court Martial, and because _I_ did not protest against it," you conceive that "_duty constrained_ you, however unpleasant, to take your seat as a member," although you were to act under the solemn sanction of an oath, to render me impartial justice upon the very testimony which had been delivered in your hearing before the Court of Inquiry, and from which you "drew an opinion, _altogether unfavorable to me_." How such conduct can be reconciled with the principles of common honor and justice, is to me inexplicable. Under such circumstances, _no_ consideration, no power or authority on earth, could, or ought to, have forced any liberal high minded man to sit in a case which he had prejudged, and, to retort upon you your own expressions, you must have been "incapable of seeing the glaring impropriety of your conduct, for which, although you do not conceive yourself in any way accountable to _me_," I hope you will be able to account for it with your God, and your conscience.

You say, between you and myself, there never has been a personal difference, "and you disclaim all personal enmity towards me." If every step you have taken--every word you have uttered, and every line you have written, in relation to me--if your own admission of the very frequent and free conversations you have had respecting me, and my conduct, "since the affair of the Chesapeake," bear not the plainest stamp of _personal hostility_, I know not the meaning of such terms; were you not under the influence of feelings of this sort, why not, in your official capacity, call me, or have me brought, before a proper tribunal, to answer the charges you have preferred against me, and thereby giving me a chance of defending myself? Why speak injuriously of me to _junior_ officers, "which you do not deny?" Why the "many frequent and free conversations respecting me and my conduct," which you have taken so much pains to underscore? Why use the insulting expression, that you "entertained, and still do entertain, the opinion that my conduct, as an officer, since that 'affair' has been such as ought forever to bar my readmission into the service," and that, in endeavoring to prevent it, "you conceive you were performing a duty you owe to the service, and were contributing to its respectability?" Why the _threat_, that if I continued the "efforts" _you_ say I have been making, to be "re-employed" you "certainly should be constrained to continue the expression of those opinions?"

Does not all this, together with the whole tenor and tendency of your letter, manifest the most marked _personal_ animosity against me, which an honorable man, acting under a sense of public duty by which you profess to "have been hitherto actuated," would disdain even to shew, much more to feel?

I shall now, sir, take up the specific charges you have alleged against me, and shall notice them in the order in which they stand. The first is one of a very _heinous_ character. It is, that "I proceeded in a merchant brig to Pernambuco." Could I, sir, during the period of my suspension, have gone any where in a national vessel? Could I, with what was due to my family, have remained idle? The sentence of the Court deprived them of the principal means of subsistence. I was therefore compelled to resort to that description of employment with which I was best acquainted; and on this subject _you_ should have been silent. But you add, that the late Captain Lewis, of the Navy, _who had_ it from a Mr. Goodwin, who heard it from Mr. Lyon, the British Consul at Pernambuco, with whom you undertake to say I lived, represented me as stating, "that, if the Chesapeake had been prepared for action, I would not have resisted the attack of the Leopard; assigning, as a reason, that I knew, as also did our government, that there were deserters on board the Chesapeake; and that I said to Mr. Lyon, further, that the President of the United States knew there were deserters on board, and of the intention of the British ship to take them, and that the ship was ordered out under these circumstances, with a view to bring about a contest which might embroil the two nations in a war."

The whole of this, Sir, I pronounce to be a falsehood, a ridiculous, malicious, absurd, improbable falsehood, which can never be credited by any man that does not feel a disposition to impress on the opinion of the public that I am an idiot. That I should two years after the affair of the Chesapeake, make such a declaration, when every proof that could be required of a contrary disposition on the part of the Chief Magistrate had been given, cannot receive credit from any one, but those that are disposed to consider me such a character as you would represent me to be. I did not live with Mr. Lyon, nor did I ever hold a conversation with him so indelicate as the one stated in captain Lewis' letter would have been. And with what object could I have made such a communication? Mr. Lyon would naturally have felt a contempt for a man that would have suffered himself to have been made a tool of in so disgraceful an affair. I found Mr. Lyon transacting business in Pernambuco: he produced to me a letter from Mr. Hill, the American consul in that country, recommending him as entitled to the confidence of his countrymen, every one of whom, in that port, put their business into his hands. I did the same, and thus commenced our acquaintance; he was kind and friendly to me, but never in any respect indelicate, as would have been, in a high degree, such conversation between us. Of Mr. Goodwin I know nothing. I have never seen him in all my life, nor do I conceive that his hearsay evidence can ever be of any kind of consequence against me; I was the first that informed the President, and the Secretary of the Navy, that such a letter was in the Department, even before I had seen it; and, again, if the mere oral testimony of a British agent was to be considered as evidence sufficient to arraign an American officer, I think the navy would quickly be in such a state, as it might be desirable for their nation to place it in. As to the _impressions_ made upon the mind of captain Lewis, from this _information_, and the "strong remarks" he made upon the subject, which you have thought proper to quote, they by no means establish the _correctness_ of that information; but only go to shew the effect it produced upon the mind of an individual, who seems to have imbibed a prejudice against me, no otherwise to be accounted for, except your acquaintance with him. He is now in his grave, and I am perfectly disposed _there_ to let him rest; you must, however, have been hard pressed indeed, to be compelled to resort to such flimsy grounds as those, a degree weaker than even second handed testimony, to support your charges against me. These communications, you observe, are now in the archives of the Navy Department. Of this fact, Sir, I had long been apprized; and had you, when searching the records of that Department for documents to injure my character, looked a little further back, you would perhaps have found others calculated to produce a very different effect. Of my desire to return to the United States, during the late war, there are certificates in the Navy Department of the first respectability, which, if you had been disposed to find and quote, are perhaps laying on the same shelf from whence you took those, that you appear so anxious to bring to public view; I mean my letter applying for service, as soon as an opportunity offered, after the term of my suspension expired; and one letter, above all, _you_ should not have passed over unnoticed, that which you received from my hand of May, 1803, addressed to the Secretary of the Navy, which was one of the principal causes of your obtaining the first command that you were ever honored with, and as you may have forgotten it, I will remind you, on this occasion, that, but little more than one month previous to the date of that letter, I by my advice and arguments, saved you from resigning the service of your country in a pet, because you were removed from the first lieutenancy of the New York, to that of second of the Chesapeake; but all this and much more is now forgotten by _you_, yet there are others that recollect those circumstances, and the history of your conduct to me will outlive you, let my fate be what it may. The affair of the Chesapeake did certainly "excite," and ought to have excited, the indignant feeling of the nation towards Great Britain; but, however it may have justified a declaration of war against that power, it was not, as you assert "every one admits," one of the principal causes of the late war. That it did not take place, sir, until _five years_ after, when that affair had been amicably and of course honourably adjusted between the two nations. I mention this fact, not on account of its importance, but because you have laid so much stress on that "affair," as a reason why I ought to have returned home during the late war, and to shew that, although it _did_ happen to be your fortunate lot to have an opportunity of being in the foremost rank, on that occasion, of which you seem inclined to vaunt, you are ignorant even of the causes which led to it. Having, in your letter of the 5th inst. abandoned the charge of my having sailed under "British license," after the commencement of the late war, in consequence of information received by you from a gentleman entitled to the fullest credit, that I was not afloat, until after the peace, consequently the report which you noticed of my having sailed under British license, must be unfounded. I have only to remark, on this head, that in advancing a charge against me of so serious a nature, and designed and so well calculated, as it was, to affect, materially, my reputation, not only as an officer of the navy, but as a citizen of the United States, you should first have ascertained that it was founded on _fact_, and not on rumour, which you so much _harp_ upon; and that upon a proper investigation you would have discovered your other accusations to be equally groundless. For my not returning home during the late war, I do not hold myself, to use your own expressions, "in any way accountable to you," Sir. It would be for the government, I should suppose, to take notice of my absence, if they deemed it reprehensible; and they no doubt would have done so, had not the circumstances of the case, in their estimation, justified it. That they are perfectly satisfied upon this point, I have good reason to believe, and trust I shall be able to satisfy my country also. The President's personal conduct to me, and the memorial of the Virginia Delegation in Congress, to him, prove how I stand with those high characters, your opinion, notwithstanding, to the contrary. I deny, Sir, that I ever was "urged" by my friends, as you in mockery term them, to return home during the late war, nor could it have been requisite for me to have been "urged" to do so by any one. Laying patriotism out of the question, as you observe, as well as the reasons why you think "it behoved me" to adopt that course, there were other incentives strong enough, God knows, to excite a desire on my part to return; and I should have returned, Sir, but for circumstances beyond my control, which is not incumbent on me to explain to _you_.

Had the many opportunities really presented themselves which you allege were "every day occurring," of which I might have availed myself to return to my country, in privateers or other fast sailing merchant vessels, from France and other places, but of which you produce no other proof than random assertion, on which most of your other charges rest? There were no such opportunities, as you say were "every day occurring;" no, not one within my reach, and for some considerable time after the news of the war arrived in Denmark, it was not believed that it would continue six months; but, if I had received the slightest intimation from the department that I should have been employed on my return, I should have considered no sacrifice too great, no exertion within my power should have been omitted to obtain so desirable an object, as any mark of my country's confidence would have been to me in such a moment; a gun boat, under my own orders, would not have been refused; but what hope had I, when my letter of application for service was not even honored by an answer. In regard to the John Adams, I do not deem it proper on this occasion to explain my reasons for making the attempt to return in that ship; but whenever I am called on by any person properly authorized to make the enquiry, I am confident that I shall convince them, that I had good reason to believe that I should obtain a passage in her, notwithstanding your great knowledge on the occasion.