A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison : $b Interspersed with observations, anecdotes and remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct engraving of Dartmoor prison, representing the massacre ofWaterhouse, Benjamin
History
A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison : $b Interspersed with observations, anecdotes and remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct engraving of Dartmoor prison, representing the massacre of
Waterhouse, Benjamin
Dartmoor Prison; United States -- History -- War of 1812 -- Prisoners and prisons
Our orator, considering where he was, and that he had an hundred
British hearers, used pretty harsh language. He apostrophised the
English thus: "Haughty nation! with one hand thou art deluding and
dividing thy victims in New England, and with the other, thou bearest
the weapon of vengeance; and while employing the ruthful savage, with
his tomahawk and scalping knife, thou art boasting of thy humanity,
thy magnanimity, and thy religion! Bloody villains! detestable
associates! linked together by _fear_, and leagued with savages by
_necessity_, to murder a Christian people, for the alledged crime of
fighting over again the battle of independence. Beware, bloody nations
of Britons and savage Indians, of the recoiling vengeance of a brave
people. For shame--talk no more of your Christianity, of your bible
and missionary societies, when your only aim is to direct the scalping
knife, and give force to the arm of the savage. No longer express the
smile of pleasure, on hearing a stupid Governor proclaim you to be
'_The Bulwark of our Religion!_' You have filled India with blood and
ashes; you have murdered the Irish for contending for liberty of
conscience; you continue the scourge of war in Spain; you pay Russia,
Sweden, Germany, and Holland, the price of blood; and to crown all,
decorate your colors, and your seats of legislation, with scalps, torn
from Americans, male and female; and you are sowing discord, and
diffusing a jacobinical spirit through a protestant country, which you
cannot conquer by force. But," continued the orator, waving his sinewy
arm, and hard and heavy hand, "the time is not far distant, when your
guilty nation will be duly appreciated, and justly punished;" and
saying this, he drove his iron fist into the palm of his left hand,
and stamped with his foot on the capstan, where he stood, while his
admiring countrymen rewarded the herculean orator with three cheers.
There is no disguising it--these Englishmen not only respect us, but
_fear_ us. They perceive a mighty difference between us, and the
cringing, gambling Frenchmen. If they are tolerably well informed, and
think at all, they must conclude that we Yankees, are filled with, and
keep up that bold and daring spirit of liberty, which made England
what she is; and the loss of which is now perceived by their
surrendered ships, and beaten armies in America. All these things will
hereafter be detailed by some future Gibbon, in _the History of the
Decline and Fall of the BRITISH EMPIRE_.
We closed the day, on this memorable _Fourth of July_, pretty much as
we began it; we struck our flag at sun-set, and saluted the other
ships with three hearty cheers.--Throughout the whole, the prisoners,
even to the boys, behaved with becoming decorum; and the whole was
concluded without any disagreeable accident, or any thing like a
quarrel; and in saying this, we desire to acknowledge the
extraordinary good behaviour of all the British officers and men on
board the Crown Prince.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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