The vessel that was despatched to England to take home the British sailors wounded in this action, was not permitted to carry a single letter from anybody. Indeed, not only this affair, says Cobbett in his "Letters," but the loss of the _Avon_, the battle of Plattsburg, and other actions not creditable to the English arms, were carefully concealed from the English public. At the demand of Portugal, the British Government apologized for the violation of neutrality; but the owners of the _Armstrong_ never obtained any indemnity. This was the last naval action before the declaration of peace; but as that declaration did not imme{325}diately reach the cruisers at sea, three others were fought. On the 15th of January, 1815, Commodore Decatur, in the _President_, had a prolonged battle with the frigate _Endymion_, off Long Island, and reduced her to a wreck. But two other British cruisers came up, and he was compelled to surrender. He had lost eighty men killed or wounded. On the 20th of February, the _Constitution_, Captain Charles Stewart, off the coast of Portugal, captured both the _Cyane_, of thirty-four guns, and the _Levant_, of twenty-one, after a battle of forty minutes, in which he lost fifteen men, and inflicted a loss of about forty. The _Levant_ was subsequently recaptured by three English cruisers, while she was in Port Praya, another neutral harbor. On the 23d of March, the American brig _Hornet_, Captain James Biddle, and the British brig _Penguin_, Captain Dickenson, being almost exactly matched in men and metal, fought a battle of twenty-two minutes' duration, off the island of Tristan d'Acunha, at the close of which the _Penguin_, having lost forty-two men and been badly crippled, surrendered. Her commander was killed. The _Hornet_ had one man killed and ten wounded. This was the last of what the London _Times_ had fallen into the habit of calling "the painful events at sea." CHAPTER XIX. THE HARTFORD CONVENTION. {326} _Attitude of the Federalists, Real and Imputed--The Convention at Hartford--Its Popular Reputation--What General Scott did not say at Chippewa._