On one occasion we were at our quarters, exercising in the various evolutions of war; now at our guns, and then going through the forms of boarding an enemy; now running aloft, as if in the act of cutting down our enemy’s rigging, and then rushing below, as if to board her, firing our pistols, stabbing with our boarding-pikes, and cutting on all sides with our cutlasses. In the midst of this excitement, the movements of one of the men not happening to please the captain, he seized a cutlass and struck him a tremendous blow with its flat side; heated with passion, he let it glance as he struck, and the edge, entering the man’s back, made a deep flesh wound, which was very sore a long time. Some of our men swore that if they had been the sufferer, they would have shot the captain dead on the spot! Are men of such brutal tempers fit to command a man of war? Is it not wonderful that mutiny is so rare under such a discipline? Such an officer might do to command a crew of pirates, but not of freemen, such as Americans feel proud to entrust with the keeping of their national honor on the deep. On reaching New Orleans, our ship was overhauled and repaired. We were sent on board the _Louisiana_, an old guard-ship, but had to cross the river every morning to assist in working on the brig. Several of our men, and myself among them, were quite sick here, owing to the free use of river water. The _Louisiana_ had a number of men confined on board, for some crime; they wore chains round their legs, which were fastened to a large ball: the nature of their offence I did not ascertain. The effects of Captain Porter’s severity were seen here in the loss of two of the crew. They belonged to the gig, and ran away while he was on shore. He made a strict, but unsuccessful, search after them. To deter others from a like attempt, or because he wanted an object on which to wreak his vengeance, he gave one poor fellow a cruel flogging for what, in sober fact, was no offence at all. The man was on shore, with some others, fixing the rigging, and, for some purpose or other, had walked a short distance from the rest, without the slightest intention to run away. But the captain wanted a victim, and this served for an excuse. Our brig being finished, we returned on board, and were soon back at our old station off Ship Island, where we found several other small naval craft. While here I saw a man flogged through the fleet, or, as this might more properly be called, the squadron. His was the only instance of the kind I saw while in the American navy, and, although his back was most brutally mangled, yet I do not think he suffered equal to those who are flogged through an English fleet. Still, the indignity and brutality are the same in _kind_, though differing in degree: a MAN should never be made to endure it.