[Illustration: A Frigate with her Sails Loose to Dry. _From a wood-cut in the “Kedge Anchor.”_] A body of Massachusetts Tory merchants strove wickedly and falsely to make the world believe that Massachusetts homes had not been invaded by the press-gangs; a member of Congress stood in his place to say that in spite of restrictions the nation had “profitably exported” goods worth forty-five millions of dollars during one year, and asked if all that trade was to be sacrificed in order to strike a blow for mere sentiment; the faint-hearted pointed to the exhausted condition of the national treasury, to the utter lack of trained soldiers, and to the feebleness of the navy when it was compared with that of the nation whose “naval supremacy was become a part of the law of nations.” But all these were at last brushed aside by the indignant host that arose to strike another blow for liberty--they were brushed aside so rudely, that, in one place, at least, a mob violently assaulted the toady element as represented by a Tory newspaper. It happened that actual fighting occurred before war was declared, and most significant was one feature of the first battle of the war of 1812. The British frigate _Guerrière_, of thirty-eight guns, commanded then by Captain Samuel John Pechell, was one of the great host of war-ships that hovered about the American coast in 1811, picking able-bodied sailors from American ships, and in other ways annoying American commerce. Captain Pechell’s contempt for the young republic and his personal vanity were so great that he caused the name of his ship to be painted in huge letters across his foretopsail. Like a mine-camp bad man, he wanted every one to know who it was that tore open the water and split the air off the American coast. He was looking for trouble and his ship found enough of it, later on, although under another commander. Pechell himself found it, also, but he did not stay long to face it. In fact he fled from a very inferior force the moment he smelled the burning powder. On May 1, 1811, the American merchant brig, _Spitfire_, while en route from Portland (formerly Falmouth), Maine, to New York, passed the _Guerrière_, that was lying-to at Sandy Hook, and but eighteen miles from New York City. The _Guerrière_, finding the brig bound in, deliberately stopped her there within the waters of New York and took off John Deguyo, an American citizen, who was a passenger.