at some pains to impress us with the impropriety of Jefferson’s scarcely concealed liking for France; but the fact is that no violation of the neutrality law which Genet sought was more glaring than those continually committed by Great Britain, and which our Government failed to resent.  In time France, moved partly by pique because of our refusal to aid her, and partly by contempt for a nation that failed to protect its ships against British aggression, began itself to prey upon our commerce.  Then the state of our maritime trade was a dismal one.  Our ships were the prey of both France and England; but since we were neutral, the right of fitting out privateers of our own was denied our shipping interests.  We were ground between the upper and nether millstones.

But, as so often happens, persecution bred the spirit and created the weapons for its correction.  When it was found that every American vessel was the possible spoil of any French or English cruiser or privateer that she might encounter; that our Government was impotent to protect its seamen; that neither our neutrality rights nor the neutrality of ports in which our vessels lay commanded the respect of the two great belligerents, the Yankee shipping merchants set about meeting the situation as best they might.  They did not give up their effort to secure the world’s trade—­that was never an American method of procedure.  But they built their ships so as to be able to run away from anything they might meet; and they manned and armed them so as to fight if fighting became necessary.  So the American merchantman became a long, sharp, clipper-built craft that could show her heels to almost anything afloat; moderate of draft, so that she could run into lagoons and bays where no warship could follow.  They mounted from four to twelve guns, and carried an armory of rifles and cutlasses which their men were well trained to handle.  Accordingly, when the depredations of foreign nations became such as could not longer be borne, and after President Jefferson’s plan of punishing Europe for interfering with our commerce by laying an embargo which kept our ships at home had failed, war was declared with England; and from every port on the Atlantic seaboard privateers—­ships as fit for their purpose as though specially built for it—­swarmed forth seeking revenge and spoils.  Their very names told of the reasons of the American merchantmen for complaint—­the reasons why they rejoiced that they were now to have their turn.  There were the “Orders-in-Council,” the “Right-of-Search,” the “Fair-trader,” the “Revenge.”  Some were mere pilot-boats, with a Long Tom amidships and a crew of sixty men; others were vessels of 300 tons, with an armament and crew like a man-of-war.  Before the middle of July, 1812, sixty-five such privateers had sailed, and the British merchantmen were scudding for cover like a covey of frightened quail.