Posted on 02/27/2005 9:32:37 AM PST by yankeedame
(Note: You the one calling the shots. Which side? British? American? Choose whatever you want--or both! You can be the President or the Prime Minister, or his closest advisor. It's up to you.)
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Forrest McDonald writes:
"In April of 1806, after Congress had adjourned but before Jefferson headed homeward for Monticello, a three-ship British squadron was patrolling the American coast off New York, searching merchantmen for contraband.
"One of the British men-of-war, H.M.S. Leander, fired a warning shot across the bows of a merchant ship, that being the conventional way of announcing to the merchant vessel that he was to be searched, but the projectile far overshot its mark.
"Such inaccururacy was commonplace with the British navy; which like the American, specialized in heavy and rapid fire rather than (as the French navy) in precision; but this particular blasted landed amidships an innocent American sloop, killing a crewman named John Pierce, brother of the small vessel's captain.
"Captain Henry Whitby of Leander, inured to death in time of war, regarded the incident as only an incident, albeit an unfortunate one.
"Captain Pierce regarded it as murder; and he returned to port, where he walked the length of Broadway, carrying in his arms the body of his dead brother. The citizenry of New York, normally rather crass in its attitude towards the perils of seeking profits from the fortunes of war, rose en masse to demand retribution, vengeance, and, in the harshest sense of the term, justice.
"A grand jury indicted Whitby for murder..."
McDonald ping.
I was just looking at an out-of-print copy of Dr. McDonald's The Boys Were Men: The American Navy in the Age of Fighting Sail. Ironically, I had the Jefferson presidency bio in my hand last night as well.
I don't understand what a foreign commander was doing searching our commerce. The US was by that time the United States of America, sovereign and autonomous.
Call in the ICC?
At this time though, the American's have very little leverage over any European power. With six year, we will be at war with them anyway.
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