The treaty which the British and American commissioners negotiated at Ghent and which they signed on December 24, 1814, is as instructive as it is humiliating to an American patriot. There are eleven articles to this treaty. These provided for a cessation of hostilities; for a boundary line; for public and private property and documents captured, or to be captured before the ratification of the treaty; for the red Indians of the frontier; for the negro slaves and the suppression of the black slave trade on the high seas. It provided for everything needful but one. The American Government had been forced to declare war because of a popular sentiment generated by the friends of the American seamen who had been forced into slavery by British press-gangs: the American naval seamen had fought as no naval seaman had ever fought before because they were fighting for “sailors’ rights”; but when the treaty of peace was written there was not one word in it about those rights—not one. The British ministers stubbornly refused to touch upon or even consider the subject of impressment, and the American commissioners, on the plea that the question was now “purely theoretical,”—that, the war in Europe being over, there would be no longer any occasion for impressment—the American commissioners, be it said, consented to omit the point. The real cause of the war was ignored in the treaty of peace.

It is humiliating to a patriot to recall this fact, but it is equally humiliating to remember that the motto on the big burgee flaunted by Yankee cruisers read “Free trade and Sailors’ Rights.” The rights of property were placed ahead of the rights of man. The sneer of the British historian Napier, when he referred to the Americans as “a people who (notwithstanding the curse of black slavery which clings to them, adding the most horrible ferocity to the peculiar baseness of their mercantile spirit, and rendering their republican vanity ridiculous) do, in their general government, uphold civil institutions that have startled the crazy despotisms of Europe”—this sneer was justified in its day, by the treaty of Ghent, as by the treatment accorded the unfortunate colored race.

Nevertheless, because of the qualities displayed by the American seamen, from the battle between the Guerrière and the Constitution to Macdonough’s victory on Lake Champlain, and in all the naval encounters, except possibly one that followed the signing of the treaty—because of the hearty good will that backed the strong and well-trained arm of the republican sailor, what was denied in the promise of peace was granted when peace came. The British politicians quibbled and the British historians have garbled and sneered, but the full significance of the naval battles of the War of 1812 was and is appreciated by the real rulers of the British nation. And that significance, though it brought a treaty—a written document—that is humiliating, brought a lasting state of peace that was and is a matter of pride to all who honor the flag. It did more. The manifest superiority of the American seamen was so great that, by degrees, the British naval authorities were led to abandon their cruel methods of manning and disciplining their ships and to adopt the American system of good pay and good food and just treatment instead. Treating men as men has worked as well, these late years, in the British navy, as it has always worked in the American. Moreover a day was to come when the British Government was to say, in a most emphatic Government document, that the American declaration of war in 1812 was entirely justified.

As said, the treaty of peace was signed on December 24, 1814. But it had to be ratified by both Governments, and the news that peace had been declared had to be promulgated throughout the world before hostilities would cease. There were battles not a few thereafter. The Yankee sailor was to be heard from on the sluggish waters of the Mississippi’s swamps; under the bleak cliffs of Tristan d’Acunha, on the sunlit seas of India, and elsewhere. He did not always triumph, but his flag did not come down save at the behest of greatly superior numbers; and this chapter shall tell how it came down in the first naval contest after the treaty was signed.

It was on the unlucky President when she was commanded by Stephen Decatur. As the reader will recall, Decatur was blockaded with the United States, the Macedonian, and the Hornet at New London by a British squadron, beginning in June, 1813. There the two frigates remained until the end of the war. Late in 1814 Decatur was transferred to the President, then in New York harbor. Rodgers had had the ill luck to make four cruises in her without ever having a battle or even taking enough merchantmen to pay the expense of keeping the ship in commission. A very excellent revision of an old proverb says that “all things come to him who ‘rustles’ while he waits.” It is a fact that the active aggressive men of the navy in that war did not have much bad luck.

Decatur, when in command of the President, was ordered to take the little sloop-of-war Hornet, Captain James Biddle, and the new Yankee corvette Peacock, Captain Lewis Warrington, and go on a cruise to the East Indies, as Captain Bainbridge with the Constitution, the Essex, and the Hornet had started to do. Accordingly, having appointed the island of Tristan d’Acunha as a rendezvous, Decatur sailed out of New York harbor with a substantial northerly gale to help him, on the night of January 14, 1815. The gale had prevailed long enough to blow the blockading squadron clear of Sandy Hook, and all went well until the ship was crossing the bar, when, by a mistake of the pilots, she struck the sand. There was enough of a sea rolling to lift and drop the big ship on the bar and for an hour and a half she lay there pounding. By that time the tide had raised her and over she went, though very much “hogged and twisted.” That is she had literally broken her back, and her fair shape was warped into an irregular one.

Because of the wind Decatur was compelled to go to sea. Skirting the Long Island coast for about fifty miles he concluded he must be clear of the British squadron, and so headed away on his course for Tristan d’Acunha. As it happened, Captain John Hayes, commanding the British blockading squadron, had calculated that any ship leaving New York would try to get to sea by hugging the Long Island coast, on the theory that the British would be blown away down the Jersey beach; so he had kept his squadron “bucking the gale” off the Long Island coast, and thus it happened that when Decatur eased his sheets to run away on his course, he ran right into the British squadron.

The British squadron included the razee Majestic (a cut-down liner); the frigate Endymion, that had been built to meet the big Yankees and was armed as they were, with long twenty-fours; the ordinary (eighteen-pounder) frigate Pomone, and the ordinary frigate Tenedos. There was also a brig, but it had no part in the fight.

It was just before daylight when the enemy were seen. Decatur hauled up to the wind and headed for the east end of Long Island, but the President was seen by the British and the whole squadron went after her. The good judgment of Captain Hayes was going to win him a ship. As the President stood away, the Majestic and the Endymion were directly astern, with the Pomone on the port and the Tenedos on the starboard quarter. The wind still held strong, and the Majestic led the Endymion and gained on the President enough to warrant an occasional shot. Then the wind slackened and the Pomone outsailed all the rest, until Captain Hayes blundered by supposing the Tenedos was also a Yankee and sent the Pomone after her, thus prolonging the chase of the President.

However, in the afternoon the wind became light and baffling, and this was the weather for the Endymion. Decatur had done everything possible to lighten ship except throwing over his guns. Anchors, boats, spare spars, provisions, and water had all been thrown overboard, but in vain, and soon after 4 o’clock the Endymion was firing her bow chasers and the President her stern chasers with some effect. The Endymion, proving the swifter, was able to reach forward until on the President’s quarter. There she could shoot the President to pieces without receiving a shot in return, and for half an hour she held that position, while Decatur held on, hoping the Endymion would range up for a close conflict.

But no such move as that was in the mind of the Englishman. Captain Hope, who commanded her, was not guilty of the “uncircumspect gallantry” of which Sir Howard Douglas wrote so feelingly. So Decatur determined on a desperate move. Calling the crew aft, he addressed them, so it is said, as follows:

“My lads, that ship is coming up with us. As our ship won’t sail we’ll go on board of theirs, every man and boy of us, and carry her into New York. All I ask of you is to follow me. This is a favorite ship of the country. If we allow her to be taken we shall be deserted by our wives and sweethearts. What! let such a ship as this go for nothing! ’Twould break the heart of every pretty girl in New York.”

The crew responded with three cheers and ran to the braces. The President came around on the other tack. But she did not get on board the Endymion, for her prudent captain tacked her as soon as he saw the sails of the President lift. This is not to say that he was a coward; he merely was not “uncircumspect.” He was “wary” enough to hold the advantage his good ship gave him.

By dusk, however, Decatur found the Endymion broad off to starboard, and a fierce cannonade followed at musket-range. The Americans fired rigging-cutting shot as well as round, and one of the chain-shot stripped the entire foresail from the Endymion. And as for the round shot, they played such havoc with masts and guns that the Endymion was well-nigh wrecked, while her fire was entirely stopped. She was, in short, whipped. Decatur might now have exchanged ships with Captain Hope, without material difficulty, but that would now avail nothing because she was too badly crippled to escape the others. So he had to turn once more to fly.

But this was a hopeless effort, because the President had been crippled too badly on the bar to outsail the others. Moreover, he had lost several of his best officers. First Lieutenant Fitz-Henry Babbitt was standing near a hatch when a cannon-ball took off his right leg and he pitched head-first down the hatch. His leg was broken anew and his skull was fractured, yet he lived two hours and dictated messages to his friends before he died.

Lieutenant Archibald Hamilton (son of the former Secretary of the Navy)—he who had carried the Macedonian’s flag to Washington—was cut in two by another round shot as he stepped to speak to Second Lieutenant John Temple Shubrick. And then as the Endymion’s fire slackened, Lieutenant Edward F. Howell was killed. He was leaning over the rail looking away at the dim outline of the Endymion when he said to Midshipman Emmet:

“Well, we’ve whipped that ship, at any rate.”

Just then a single gun flashed from the frigate and he continued:

“No, there she is——” But he never finished the sentence, for a grape-shot crashed through his brain killing him instantly. And that was the last gun fired from the Endymion.

In turning to fly, Decatur squared away before the wind and set studding-sails just as a heavy mass of clouds obscured the moon. In doing so he turned the stern of the President directly toward the Endymion, and he was so close to her that she might have raked him terribly. The fact that she did not fire a shot then proves that she could not. For two hours Decatur ran without seeing the enemy, but when the clouds cleared away (it was then 11 o’clock at night) he found both the Pomone and the Tenedos within point-blank range. “The Pomone opened her fire on the port bow, within musket-shot, the other about two cables’ lengths astern, and the rest, with the exception of the Endymion, within gunshot. Thus situated, with about one-fifth of my crew killed and wounded, my ship crippled, and a more than fourfold force opposed to me, without a chance of escape, I deemed it my duty to surrender.” So wrote Decatur. He hauled down the flag after the first broadside of the Pomone.

The officers of the Pomone did not see that the flag was down and fired again, when Decatur shouted:

“She means to sink us. To your quarters, my lads, and renew your fire!”

But before they got their guns cast loose the Tenedos ranged up on the other side and hailed:

“What ship is that?”

Decatur replied:

“The American frigate President. We have surrendered.”

The Tenedos sent a boat and took possession, but Decatur gave his sword to Captain John Hayes, of the Majestic, that was soon alongside. Hayes, of course, returned it with the usual complimentary speech.

Although the facts of the movements in battle here given appear in the British histories—although it is admitted that both the Pomone and the Tenedos were beside the President before Decatur surrendered—the British historians treat the battle as a victory won by the Endymion, and print a table showing the relative forces of the two ships! And Allen, in his table, prints the number of the crew of the Endymion as three hundred and nineteen, although he says in the body of his story that her crew numbered “three hundred and nineteen men and twenty-seven boys.” The number of officers carried in addition to these is not given. And the British Government, to perpetuate the idea that the Endymion captured the President, gave her captain a gold medal and promoted her executive officer.

However, Rear-Admiral H. Hotham, in reporting her capture to Vice-Admiral Cochrane, said: “I have the honor to acquaint you with the capture of the United States ship President by the following force, viz.: the Majestic, Captain Hayes; the Tenedos, Captain Hyde Parker; the Endymion, Captain Hope; the Pomone, Captain Lumley.” Further than that, all these ships shared in the prize-money. To this may be added the words of Admiral Cochrane, at a public dinner, some years later, when some younger British officers were felicitating themselves on the victory, as they called it, of the Endymion.

“The President was completely mobbed,” he said.

But when all this is said—when it is proved by the enemy’s reports that a squadron captured the President—it is perfectly clear to an impartial mind, as Roosevelt says, that Decatur “acted rather tamely, certainly not heroically, in striking to the Pomone.”

Because the American Navy was insignificant in the number of its ships when compared with the enemy—because it always will be comparatively small in numbers—it is the duty of every American officer to fight as long as he can float and fire a gun.

Jeremiah O’Brien, with his Machias haymakers on a merchant-sloop, points his finger at Stephen Decatur with a well-disciplined crew on the man-of-war.

As the President did all of her fighting with the Endymion and surrendered as soon as the other two frigates were upon her, the losses on both are interesting. The President lost twenty-four killed and fifty-five wounded. The Endymion lost eleven killed and fourteen wounded. Since the President threw 765 pounds of shot to the Endymion’s 680, the difference in casualties seems remarkable until it is noted that the President fired chiefly at the Endymion’s rigging—it was a fight to escape on the part of the President after it was found the Endymion could not be boarded. Decatur crippled the Endymion until she was thrown out of the battle absolutely. He could have chosen his position and shot her to pieces had she been alone. He “incidentally killed eleven men.” The Endymion’s gunners aimed lower, and killed more. The battle lasted two hours and a half.

The President was carried to the Bermudas. There a newspaper called the Gazette printed an article so scandalous that the British officers compelled the editor to publish a retraction, and a pugnacious midshipman, R. B. Randolph, of the President, publicly thrashed him. But the articles in this newspaper are used by the historian James in writing the story of the capture.

On the way to the Bermudas a gale came on, when the President was dismasted. The Endymion was not only dismasted but had to throw over all the guns (short thirty-twos) on her forecastle and quarter-deck. The President was so badly strained when on the bar at Sandy Hook that she was never commissioned in the British Navy. But, although she had been derisively called “the waggon” while she carried the American flag, her lines were followed by her captors in building new ships after she was taken, and so, too, was her style of armament.

It is interesting, in view of the changes in British naval ideas which the two American frigates they captured wrought, to note that in Peake’s “Rudiments of Naval Architecture,” a British work, formerly a text-book in all English-speaking navies, the ideal frigate there described has a gun-deck length of one hundred and seventy-six feet, a breadth of fifty-two feet, and a depth of hold of only seventeen feet—which, if slang be permitted, is “seeing” the American model and “going several better.” The President was one hundred and seventy-five feet long by forty-five broad and twenty deep. And as for guns, while the Yankees of 1812 used long twenty-fours for the main-deck battery, to the infinite amusement as well as the scorn of the British, Peake’s ideal frigate carried six long eight-inch guns (sixty-eight-pounders!) and twenty-two long thirty-twos, besides twenty-two thirty-twos on the upper deck that were only a foot shorter-than those below. Thus they had, with experience, added to the weight of the broadside they found on the President one hundred and forty-three pounds, and by the use of long upper-deck guns they had vastly increased the effectiveness of a broadside.