Gentlemen Rovers, The Road to Glory and History of Company K of the 140th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers (1862-65)
9781465506474
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
This is the story of some forgotten fights and fighters in a forgotten war. The governments of the two nations which did the fighting—France and the United States—refused, indeed, to admit that there was any war at all, and, in a sense, they were right, for there was never any declaration of hostilities, and there was never signed a treaty of peace. But it was a very real war, nevertheless, with some of the fiercest battles ever fought on deep water, and when it was over we had laid the foundations of a navy, we had won the respect of the European powers, and we had humbled the pride of Napoleon as it had been humbled only once before, when Nelson annihilated the French fleet in the battle of the Nile. At the time that this narrative opens Bonaparte had just finished his wonderful campaign in northern Italy, and the French nation, flushed with confidence by his remarkable series of victories, was swaggering about with a chip on its shoulder, and defying the nations of the world to knock it off. In fact, the leaders of the Reign of Terror, drunk with unaccustomed power, had lost their heads as completely as the victims whom they had guillotined on the Place de la Révolution. Thoroughly typical of this insolent and arrogant attitude was the French Directory's peremptory demand that we instantly abrogate the treaty which John Jay, our minister to England, had just concluded with that country, basing its unwarrantable interference with our affairs on the ground that the terms of the treaty were injurious to the commercial interests of France. Upon our curt refusal to accede to this preposterous demand, Charles C. Pinckney, our minister at Paris, was notified by the French Government that it would hold no further intercourse with him, and the very next mail-packet brought the news that he had been expelled from France. Not content with this extraordinary and uncalled-for affront to a friendly nation, French cruisers began seizing our ships under a decree of their government authorizing the capture of neutral vessels having on board any of the products of Great Britain or her colonies, for at this time, remember, France and England were at war, as they were, indeed, throughout nearly the whole of Napoleon's reign. As the bulk of our trade at this period was with the British colonies in the West Indies, it was evident that this decree was aimed directly at us. Every packet that came from West Indian waters brought news of American ships overhauled and plundered, of sailors beaten and kidnapped, and of cargoes seized and confiscated by the French, the authenticated despatches to the State Department naming nearly a thousand vessels which had been captured. So bold did the French become that one of their privateers actually had the audacity to sail into Charleston Roads and, almost under the guns of the batteries, to burn to the water's edge a British vessel which was lying in the harbor. Though it was evident that nothing short of a miracle could avert war, President Adams, appreciating the ill-preparedness of the United States, which had only recently emerged from the Revolution in a weakened and impoverished condition, determined to make one more try for peace by despatching to France a special mission composed of Minister Pinckney, Elbridge Gerry, and John Marshall, the last-named later Chief Justice of the United States. Though in all our diplomatic history we have sent abroad no more able or distinguished embassy, the reception its members received at the hands of the French Government was as disgraceful as it was ludicrous.
