Of the work done by the Navy between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, there was no part that was more disagreeable or quite so thankless as that of watching the slavers on the coast of Africa. It is becoming in an American, whatever his personal beliefs may have been in the old days, to speak of the slave-trade with humility. And this is true not alone because human beings were kept in slavery in the United States until a frightful civil war well-nigh destroyed the country, but because Northern capitalists, men who lived where the self-righteous gave thanks because their hands did not hold the slave in bondage—these Northern capitalists were the most ingenious and persistent dealers in slaves, and the most devilish in the treatment of the unfortunates, known to the transatlantic slave-trade.

In the treaty with England that ended the War of 1812 it was agreed that the United States would assist the mother country in putting down the trade in slaves then carried on between the African and the American coasts. There is, perhaps, nothing more humiliating in the history of the American Republic than the true story of what followed in carrying out the American agreement. How could it be otherwise? For the American nation was ruled by men who believed that slavery was “a Divine institution.” However shocking such a belief must appear to the younger generations of Americans, there are old heads at the South who still hold it. The writer hereof has heard a bishop speak with enthusiasm of the influence of the old time “patriarchal” slave-owners in “turning the hearts of the slaves to Christ”—an influence “alas!” that is now gone! If this be possible in 1897, one may believe that in 1827—even in 1847 and 1857—the American slave-owner was not sincere when he professed a desire to stop the exportation of slaves from Africa.

Because slave-owners ruled the nation, it is certain that if there was ever a duty to which the American naval seaman was assigned that was weighed down with difficulties and thankless when performed, it was that of chasing slavers on the African coast.

It is impossible to give here even a brief sketch of the work done during the years after the signing of that treaty, but enough may be told to well illustrate its character.

As already intimated, Americans were the most persistent and ingenious promoters of the trade. This was chiefly due to two causes. The first was that the American flag was prima facie evidence that a vessel was an honest trader and it preserved the ship from search by any other cruiser than an American man-of-war. In the next place, the Yankees could build the swiftest and cheapest ships afloat.

To the honor of the Anglo-Saxon race be it said that the British Government led in the attempts to down the damnable traffic, but in the face of the American flag the British cruiser was powerless. And the American cruisers were quite as anxious to see that the American flag was respected, even when displayed on a most suspicious craft, as they were to capture slavers. No one can find fault with this keen desire to protect the honor of the flag, but if the American Government had been in the hands of men who were not slave-owners, a way would have been found by which the honor of the flag could have been preserved and yet permit a British captain to search all suspicious vessels within certain limits along the African coast.

The Yankee slavers built their vessels, at the last, especially for the traffic. In the usual course, they fitted out the craft as an honest trader. They took on as passengers certain Portuguese, Italian, or Brazilian men. They sailed to the coast of Africa, and there the American crew went ashore and the passengers took possession.

It was recorded that the appearance of a British cruiser stopped such a transaction midway. The Yankee crew, while en route ashore, saw the cruiser and hastened back on board to hoist the Stars and Stripes and resume the guise of honest traders. To ferret out these rascals was the task of the American naval officers.

But in many cases the slavers depended on eluding the cruisers altogether. The vessels were built with leaner models than even the Yankee privateers had boasted, and they were sparred to carry a tremendous spread of canvas. In the later years of the traffic the hunt was so close that a resort was had to smaller craft—vessels that could even take down both sails and spars when the royals of a cruiser were seen, and then, by the use of oars, crawl away out of the cruiser’s course. The lateen rig of the Mediterranean usually served these little slavers. It was easily hidden, and on occasion would give good speed to a small boat. They were most picturesque boats, especially when seen under full chase running from a cruiser. But other small boats were used, and there was one case on record where a common long-boat from an old-fashioned merchant-ship was seen in mid-Atlantic with a single lug sail set and thirty slaves on board.

It was in the torrid zone. The coast was full of malaria. Sleepless vigilance was required. Boat expeditions into such streams as the Congo in search of concealed slavers of the smaller kind were frequently required. In the language of Lieutenant (afterward Admiral) Andrew Hull Foote, “the matured villainy of the world” gathered on the coast of Africa, and no labor or vigilance could be spared in pursuing it.

Foote was stationed on the coast two years, and his experience will serve to illustrate that of all others. He reached Porto Praya on December 21, 1849, in the brig Perry, and was sent by the Commodore south along the coast to examine such slave-stations as Salinas, Benguela, Loanda, Ambriz, and so on. He reached Benguela after a passage of forty-one days, and found there a brig which the British had captured with eight hundred slaves on board. The brig had come from Rio Janeiro under the American flag, and so had easily passed the British cruiser. But when she tried to get away, the cruiser found in some way that she really had slaves on board and took her.

Foote was cordially welcomed by the British officers, and there is no doubt of his sincere desire to stop the slave traffic. Certainly no American did more than he in this work. But his first task was to look after the rights of an American brigantine, the Louisa Beaton. She had been overhauled by the British cruiser Dolphin and detained, for a time, seventy miles off land. She had the papers of an honest trader, and after a prolonged correspondence Foote secured a disavowal from the British commander together with an offer of indemnity to the brigantine. And yet that brigantine was a slaver, and her adroit captain got away at last with a full cargo of blacks.

However, Foote made up somewhat for the failure to capture this vessel flagrante delictu by taking the Martha. She was overhauled on June 7, 1850, between Ambriz and Loanda. She was a big ship, and as the American cruiser came near, the Martha hoisted the American flag and hove to. Foote’s first lieutenant put off to examine her. As he rounded her stern he saw her name painted there and that her home port was New York. Nevertheless, as soon as her crew recognized the uniform of the lieutenant as of the American Navy, they hauled down the American flag and raised that of Brazil. When the lieutenant reached her deck her captain claimed that she could not be lawfully searched when under the Brazilian flag, and denied having papers of any kind. This gave the lieutenant a hold on the ship, for he declared that if she had no papers she must be a pirate.

Meantime, the captain had thrown overboard his writing-desk, but it failed to sink. It was picked up and papers were found in it showing the captain was an American citizen and that three-fifths of the ship belonged to an American merchant in Rio.

On seizing and searching her, the lieutenant found one hundred and seventy-six casks of water holding one hundred and fifty gallons each, and one hundred and fifty barrels of farina for food. A slave-deck was laid. There were big iron boilers for cooking the farina; there were irons for securing the slaves; there were wooden spoons for feeding them. The captain then admitted that he was after slaves, and said that but for the arrival of the Perry he would have got away that night with 1,800 of them. He was playing for a great stake. The Martha, with her crew in irons, was sent to New York and there condemned.

After this, Foote captured the American brigantine Chatsworth. There was sufficient evidence to convince Foote of her character but not enough for a court, and she was let go. Later she was again overhauled, and this time it appeared that she had two complete sets of papers to cover the assorted cargo of an honest trader, and she was sent home and condemned.

Foote, in writing about this capture to a friend, under date of September 25, 1850, said:

“Our orders are so stringent that no commander will capture a slaver unless he assume great responsibility. I took the Chatsworth in the face of a protest of $22,000 from her captain and supercargo; and still she and the Martha must be condemned.”

Under the law the officers, and even the crews, of condemned slavers were guilty of piracy. That they justly merited the penalty of death will not now be questioned. We are forgetting the tales of the horrors of the passage across the Atlantic—the tortures of those who were “kennelled in a picaroon,” the “slaves that men threw overboard;” but we remember enough to know that the slaver crews deserved the death the law prescribed. But how was a nation that coddled the slave-owner to hang a slave-dealer? It could not and it never did do so.

In short, the American naval officers cruised to and fro under the tropical sun until the pitch melted from the deck-seams. They occasionally met another cruiser, and, on the theory that misery loves company, they found some relief in exchanging visits. They saw some strange scenes on the African shore. They learned something of tornadoes and other freaks of the weather. They occasionally found a slaver with the slaves on board, and, in the face of protests, they took ships that posed as honest traders but were really slavers.

On some cruises they took the fever and died. On the Perry not a man was lost in two years. Foote was the original prohibitionist of the Navy. It was he who, as the sailors used to sing,

By caring for the sanitary conditions of the ship he saved his crew, and it was to this rather than to the efficiency of his work against slavers, that he owed the favor with which his cruise was regarded by the officials of the Navy Department.

Another kind of naval work that is never pleasant, that always involves danger, and yet never gives the men a chance to earn fame, is that of chastising the more or less wild coast tribes in out-of-the-way parts of the world for carrying, to an extreme, the greed and aggression they have observed in white traders. Although there are always two sides to every affray, the story of the white trader is the one that gets printed; what the aborigines might have said is never learned. No matter—a Yankee ship is assaulted and some of her crew killed, so it is necessary to teach the natives that they must not do such things. No inquiry is made into the provocation offered by the Yankee crew, but on the ex parte statement of the probable aggressor a man-of-war is ordered to visit the scene of bloodshed and take such vengeance as is possible on the tribe. And the man-of-war must go and do as bid, whether the naval officers like the task or not. So it comes to pass that all maritime governments when avenging injuries done to their merchantmen are not so very different from those tribes of American red men who, on failing to find the individual who had killed one of their number, took revenge by killing the first member of the aggressor’s race they happened to find.

The story of the trouble with the people of Sumatra, growing out of an assault on the ship Friendship, Captain Endicott, of Salem, in 1831; and again for an assault on the American ship Eclipse, Captain Wilkins, in 1838, will show what kind of work the navy had to do in such cases.

The Friendship was at anchor off Quallah Battoo, on the northwest coast of Sumatra, buying pepper of the natives, on February 7, 1831. The pepper was brought off through the surf in small boats that were moored, when loading, in a stream that enters the ocean there. Captain Endicott, Second Mate John Barry, and four seamen were on shore superintending the packing of the pepper. When the first boat was loaded and manned it headed down the stream, but instead of putting out to sea it stopped at the beach, and Mr. Endicott noticed that more men got into her. However, he was only a little suspicious of trouble, for he supposed the surf was worse than usual and more men were needed, so he merely detailed two seamen to watch the boat, and went on packing pepper as before.

After a little the seamen on watch saw a commotion on the ship, men were running to and fro, and in a moment four sailors were seen to jump over the rail into the sea. Captain Endicott was warned, and, jumping into a second boat he had brought ashore, he and his men pulled down stream for life.

In their haste they left their arms behind, and that was unfortunate, for the natives swarmed to catch them. Worse yet, they were not accustomed to taking a boat through the surf, and several native canoes, full of armed men, gathered outside ready to kill the whites when their boat should be overturned by the surf.

At this critical moment a neighboring chief, known to the whites as Po Adam, came to their rescue. He not only guided the boat through the surf, but by brandishing his sabre overawed the waiting natives in the canoes, and Captain Endicott got safely out to sea. There he picked up the four sailors who were swimming from the Friendship, and then all went to a settlement some distance away, called Muckie.

The sailors said that no less than twenty natives had come off to the ship in the first boat. At first they had scattered over the deck with no arms in sight and acting as if full of curiosity. The mate, who had at first been alarmed by the numbers, was deceived by their apparent innocence, and began taking the pepper on board. At that two or three natives sauntered carelessly to his side and, as he leaned over the rail to get hold of a package of pepper, they drove their daggers into his back. Five of the ship’s crew ran to aid the mate, but the natives killed two of these and made prisoners of the other three, whom they reserved, as alleged, for torture. The remainder of the crew, four in number, jumped overboard.

At Muckie were three American ships, and these volunteered to go to Quallah Battoo and demand the return of the Friendship. The chief of the settlement told them to “come and take her,” when the demand was made, and with the aid of the guns that their ships carried, they did it. But the ship had been looted, the natives getting among other things $12,000 in coin. The total loss to the owners was placed at $40,000. So runs the story as told by the white traders.

A year later (February 6, 1832), the American frigate Potomac, Captain John Downes, anchored off Quallah Battoo. She was disguised as a merchantman, but when a boat went toward the shore taking soundings, the natives assumed a threatening attitude, in spite of the slovenly dress of the crew. Accordingly a midnight attack was planned and carried out. The natives had forts and cannon, and citadels within the forts, to which they retired when the outer fort-walls were carried, and where they fought with the desperation of men who preferred death to surrender. By daylight two of the forts were carried in spite of the fierce resistance. Even the women fought bravely. The wife of a chief was particularly mentioned for her courage and her skill with the sabre. They were “fighting with that undaunted firmness which is characteristic of bold and determined spirits, and displaying such an utter carelessness of life as would have honored a better cause,” as an officer of the Potomac wrote, but they could not stand against the superior tactics of the civilized race.

From one fort the Americans turned to another, and from this to three armed schooners, and from that to the main fort of all. Po Adam, who had rescued Captain Endicott, came with a body of his followers to aid the Americans, and at the last the whole settlement was overpowered and the chief fort blown up with its own magazine. The Americans had lost two killed and eleven wounded, and “of the Malays over one hundred were killed and two hundred wounded.”

A number of the natives having rallied after the Americans went afloat, the Potomac stood in and opened fire with her long thirty-twos. Overawed as much by the sound as by the projectiles (so it is said) the natives sued for peace.

In spite of this display of the vengeful power of the United States, the American ship Eclipse, while loading at a settlement called Trabangan, twelve miles from Muckie, was captured by the natives. It was on the night of August 26, 1838. Two native canoes came along with a small quantity of pepper, arriving after dark. The second mate, who had the watch on deck, recognized the leader of the party as an old acquaintance who had helped in loading the ship in former voyages, and allowed the natives to come on deck with their pepper. However, according to the ship’s custom, he took their weapons and locked them up.

The captain at this time was asleep, but at about ten o’clock he came on deck. The work of weighing the pepper began. The leader of the natives, whose name was Lebbey Ousso, complained of the second mate’s “distrust of an old friend,” in taking away the weapons, and the captain foolishly ordered the daggers returned. A few minutes later, as they were pouring pepper into the scales, the captain cried: “I am stabbed.” He died at once. An apprentice was killed at the same moment, while the second mate got a severe wound in the loins. Part of the crew plunged overboard and some took to the rigging. The cook, who was in irons for insubordination, begged for his life, and as the price of it showed where a lot of opium and coin to the amount of $18,000 were concealed. With this plunder the whole party, with the cook, fled.

As it happened, the American frigate Columbia, with the corvette John Adams, was making a tour of the world at that time, under Commodore George C. Reid. Having heard of this assault the commodore went to investigate, arriving off Quallah Battoo on December 20, 1838. Here Po Adam made haste to board the flagship, and thereafter served as interpreter. It was said that the chief of Quallah Battoo had received $2,000 of the coin stolen from the Eclipse, and that one of the murderers of Captain Wilkins lived there. But after some days of palaver the chief failed to deliver up either the coin or the criminal, and the town was bombarded. From Quallah Battoo the squadron went to Muckie, whose chief had received some of the coin, as charged by native informers, and Muckie was first bombarded, and then burned by a landing party. No attack was made on Trabangan.

It appears from Taylor’s account of this affair that one of the informers confessed that he was anxious to have Quallah Battoo destroyed in order that he might become chief of the region, while those who promoted the destruction of Muckie were sure to benefit by a transfer of Muckie’s trade to their settlements. For it was a coast of small settlements ruled by jealous and quarrelling chiefs who lived by levying duty on pepper brought from the interior.

From Muckie the squadron returned to Quallah Battoo. The chief, known as Po Chute Abdullah, gave his note for $2,000, the sum that he confessed had been distributed among his people, after the assault on the Eclipse, and so escaped the ravages of a landing party.

“The women,” said Po Adam, “cry, and the men, too, when the big ships come again.”

The whole town had been bombarded for the misdeed of one man. The women and children had to face the cannon as well as the men. It was necessary, very likely, to teach the natives to respect the lives and property under the American flag. But there was no guarantee that the wily Yankee skipper would deal honestly with the natives. And there was no count of the women and children killed and mangled when the cannon were used to enforce the American demand.

Treaties were afterward made with a number of the chiefs who pledged themselves to protect Americans from all robbery and assault.

There is little doubt that the naval officers regarded it as a very sorry piece of duty that had to be attended to.

Much more stirring were the adventures of the Yankee seamen in the Chinese waters during the time that England was compelling the unfortunate orientals to buy British-India opium. The Chinese did not make the distinction between the two English-speaking nations which circumstances required, and in consequence they received some severe punishment from the Americans. The most interesting event was in 1856. Captain Andrew Hull Foote of the Portsmouth, who, under Commodore Armstrong, was engaged in the work of protecting the Americans in Canton, established a number of fortified posts in the city, but beyond this did everything possible to keep the Americans clear of the “English and Chinese imbroglio.” But there was fighting a-plenty all around the Americans, both afloat and ashore; and it happened, on November 15, 1856, while Foote was rowing past one of the forts of the city, that the Chinese fired on him. The American flag was waved vigorously toward the fort, and Foote fired his revolver toward it by way of protest, but the firing continued until Foote was out of bearing of the guns. Another fort had still to be passed, and this one opened with grape-shot at a range of two hundred yards.

The next day the forts were bombarded by the Portsmouth. On the 20th the San Jacinto, the Portsmouth, and the Levant bombarded the fort that had been first guilty of assault, and then Foote with four howitzers and a force of two hundred and eighty-seven men, all told, landed. Crossing the rice-fields and wading a creek waist-deep, they attacked the fort in the rear, when the Chinese fled, although the fort was a massive stone structure with walls several feet thick, and contained fifty-three cannon. The marines killed more than forty of the Celestial soldiers who fled, and so completed the rout.

The guns of the captured fort were turned on the fort that was next in line, and that was soon silenced. Meantime a Chinese force estimated at more than 3,000 came from Canton to whelm the Americans, but a single howitzer with its sailor crew, aided by the muskets of the marines, drove them away with great slaughter. It was not glorious work but it was absolutely necessary to the preservation of American citizens and their property.

During the two or three days that followed other forts were taken, until the American flag had been planted on four of the forts. Admiral Belknap, who was then a master, is mentioned for his gallantry while in charge of one of the launches. The Americans in the course of the work lost seven killed and twenty wounded. The Chinese said they lost five hundred in all, but Foote estimated their loss at about two hundred and fifty. At any rate, the Chinese of Canton have not yet forgotten either the Portsmouth or her captain.

Three years later an American naval officer gave the English-speaking nation a catch-phrase that is likely to live in the literature of both England and the United States after the deed of the man who used it is long forgotten. It was in 1859, when the English and French were bombarding the Chinese forts in the Peiho River. On July 25th, while some English gun-boats were removing obstructions from the river, the Chinese opened a severe fire on them. Captain Josiah Tattnall, whose bravery before Vera Cruz is mentioned elsewhere, was a witness of the attack in the chartered steamer Toey-wan. Tattnall could not look on such an affray without taking part in it, even if he were of a neutral nation. Turning to a junior officer he said, “Blood is thicker than water,” and ordered his boat manned. Getting into it he rowed to the flagship of the British flotilla. His boat was struck by a shot that killed the coxswain and wounded Lieutenant Stephen Decatur Trenchard, but he boarded the British gun-boat and with his crew helped to fight the Chinese. He afterward used the Toey-wan in towing up the British reserves. It is certain that no action contrary to the law of nations ever did more to promote good feeling between the rival English-speaking nations.

What is known as the Koszta incident in the Mediterranean shall serve to close this chapter on the fighting work of the American navy, in time of peace, previous to the civil war. It is particularly worth the attention of the American people, for the reason that in these later days some such an example seems to be needed. American citizens who now travel in foreign countries have not infrequently had occasion to wonder whether their Government had an arm that was strong enough to protect them when beyond the borders of the nation.

One Martin Koszta, an Austrian by birth, after having, in legal form, taken out his first papers as a citizen of the United States, was found in Smyrna by the Austrian authorities, and carried on board the Austrian war-ship Hussar, because he had, in some way, offended the Austrian Government. The American sloop-of-war St. Louis was at that time at anchor in Smyrna harbor, and an appeal was made through the American consul to Captain Duncan Nathaniel Ingraham, commanding her, in behalf of Koszta. Captain Ingraham applied to the captain of the Hussar for the man, but the Austrian, having a heavier ship, declined to deliver him up. As Ingraham understood his duty he was compelled by it to get the man first and attend to the necessary diplomatic correspondence and consideration of the facts of the matter afterward. Clearing his ship for action he laid her alongside the Hussar, and setting a time-limit, said he would have the man or a fight. He got the man.

It is admitted that ill-disposed people have become citizens of the United States in order to use the American flag as a cover for nefarious deeds. So the American Government has a delicate and difficult task to perform whenever its power is invoked for the protection of an American citizen who is in trouble with the authorities of another nation. But because naturalized Americans have not infrequently received harsh treatment when in their native countries, and especially because American law presumes that every accused person is innocent of wrong-doing until proven guilty to the satisfaction of a jury of his peers, it is absolutely essential to the preservation of American rights that every American naval officer hold to Captain Ingraham’s understanding of duty. First get the man and then let the State Department settle the diplomatic matters.

The Congress, by a joint resolution on August 4, 1854, requested the President to give Captain Ingraham a medal in token of the nation’s appreciation of this defence of American rights.