And all that the American government did in the matter was to dismiss the unfortunate Phillips from the service--dismiss him as a scapegoat for the scurvy sins of those really responsible for the disgrace that had fallen upon the navy. For Phillips very well knew how the administration had pigeon-holed the complaints of the friends of kidnapped seamen--knew very well that the Navy Department could not be depended on to support him in resenting such aggression. In one respect Phillips deserved his punishment--he had sworn to defend the flag, and he did not fire a gun. Not only should he have cleared his ship for action; it was his duty to fight, Nicholas-Biddle fashion, until the last plank was shot from under his feet. Humiliated as every patriot was when the story of this outrage was spread over the nation, greater and lingering shame was in store. Not only did the outrages on American commerce increase as the years passed on; a still heavier blow was to fall on the face of American manhood. A British ship was to shoot an American ship to pieces in order to recapture four impressed Americans who had succeeded in escaping from the slavery they had endured--the British frigate _Leopard_ was to assault the _Chesapeake_ on the high seas in time of peace. But before that attack another was made that was less aggravating than the one on the _Baltimore_, only because it was the second of its kind--because, being the second, the American people may be supposed to have been somewhat accustomed to their humiliation. This was on June 12, 1805. Lieut. James Lawrence--he had his revenge afterward in the _Hornet_-_Peacock_ fight--was carrying a small gunboat to the Mediterranean to help in the war with the pirates. Off Cadiz he had the misfortune to fall in with the British fleet under Admiral Collingwood, when three of his men were taken from him. That the administration at Washington (it was during Mr. Jefferson’s second term) rested easily under the outrage is plain from the fact that only the briefest mention of it is made in any history. The impressment of Americans was such a common, such an every-day, occurrence that the fact of three taken from a national ship was, to use a newspaper reporter’s expression, worth only a three-line jotting.