The damage which American commerce sustained at the hands of French privateers is rendered appreciable when the following circumstances are taken into account. Within the year following the publication of the extraordinary decrees against the commerce of neutral nations, which the French Directory promulgated, beginning with June, 1796, something over three hundred American vessels had been captured. The crippling blow to American commerce was by no means the sole consideration in the case. In numerous instances the crews of captured vessels were treated in such an outrageous and brutal manner as to inflame and gall the American spirit beyond endurance. On account of abuses which American shipping and commerce had suffered previously, by virtue of methods adopted by England and France to gain control of the seas, the strain imposed upon the nation had been severe; but now that a sweeping and utterly ruthless policy of commerce-destruction had been inaugurated by the French, forbearance was no longer possible. In his maiden speech in the national congress, Harrison Gray Otis, Massachusetts’ gifted young representative, put the case with dramatic eloquence: If any man doubted of the pernicious measures of the French nation, and of the actual state of our commerce, let him inquire of the ruined and unfortunate merchant, harassed with prosecutions on account of revenue, which he so long and patiently toiled to support. If any doubted of its effects upon agriculture, let him inquire of the farmer whose produce is falling and will be exposed to perish in his barns. Where ... are your sailors? Listen to the passing gale of the ocean, and you will hear their groans issuing from French prison-ships.[272] It was not to be expected that a deeply injured people, to whose just sense of wrong and indignation the youthful Federalist orator had given such exact expression, could long be restrained from acts of reprisal and war.