justice, especially if the seaman was a promising one, or the officer’s ship was short-handed.  In nine months, during parts of the years 1796 and 1797, the American minister at the court of London had made application for the discharge of two hundred and seventy-one native born Americans, proved to have been thus impressed.  These outrages against personal independence were regarded among the great masses of Americans with the utmost indignation.  Such injuries exasperated every soul not made sordid by selfish desire for gain.  That an innocent man, peaceably pursuing an honorable vocation, should be forcibly carried on board a British man-of-war, and there be compelled to remain, shut out from all hope of ever seeing his family, seemed, to the robust sense of justice in the popular breast, little better than Algerian bondage.  The rage of the people was increased by tales of horror and aggression that occasionally reached their ears from these prison ships.  Stories were told of impressed Americans escaping the ships, who, on being recaptured, were whipped until they died.  In one instance, a sailor, goaded to madness, seized the captain and, springing overboard, drowned himself and his tormentor.

Every attempt to arrange this difficulty with England had signally failed.  The United States offered that all American seamen should be registered and provided with a certificate of citizenship; that the number of crews should be limited by the tonnage of the ship, and if this number was exceeded, British subjects enlisted should be liable to impressment; that deserters should be given up, and that a prohibition should be issued by each party against clandestinely secreting and carrying off the seamen of the other.  In 1800 and again in 1806, it was attempted to form treaties in reference to this subject; but the pertinacity with which England adhered to her claim frustrated every effort at reconciliation.  In 1803, the difficulty had nearly been adjusted by a convention, Great Britain agreeing to abandon her claim to impressment on the high seas, if allowed to retain it on the narrow seas, or those immediately surrounding her island; but this being rejected as inadmissible by the United States, all subsequent efforts at an arrangement proved unsuccessful.  The impressment of seamen continued and was the source of daily increasing abuse.  Not only Americans, but Danes, Swedes, Germans, Russians, Frenchmen, Spaniards and Portuguese were seized and forcibly carried off by British men-of-war.  There are even well attested instances of Asiatics and Africans being thus impressed.  In short, as the war in Europe approached its climax, seamen became more scarce in the British Navy, and, all decency being thrown aside, crews were filled up under color of this claim, regardless even of the show of justice.  In 1811, it was computed that the number of men impressed from the American marine service amounted to not less than six thousand.