Secretary jumped at you the moment he discovered you were well enough to command. We want such persons as yourself to represent us abroad (and at home, too), and your aid to Gregory will be peculiarly opportune. You are a better man and a better Christian than I am, therefore it would be useless for me to tender you advice. Before you take your crew from the receiving ship, beat up for volunteers to commute the spirit-ration; if you can, get them entirely to relinquish it. Leave the poison behind you; if not, get as many as you can to start fair with, if you must lay in the devil's fuel. Keep up your regular Sunday service, and oftener if convenient; Saturday for mending day, and Sunday for meditation and reading. Each officer and man to have his place and duty. Impose as much responsibility upon the petty officers as they will bear. Your command will be happy, healthy, and efficient in proportion as those under you engage with all their mind in their duties, and are made to feel that reliance is placed in them. Do not spare the lash when the exigency demands it, but throw as many guards around it as will make its use a matter of absolute necessity. As to etiquette, you are as au fait in it as I am. Should you meet a flag-ship at sea, haul up courses, down jib, and salute. When you arrive in port, send a boat to our consul, and offer him a conveyance on board; and salute him when he arrives with seven guns-the consul-general with nine. When a foreign ship sends a boat and offers services, etc., send a boat to acknowledge the compliment, and afterward pay your respects to him in person. The last arrived salutes first (except our own flag-officers) and calls first. Salute the place first, and afterward the flag-officer, if any is in port."

How much good advice in a short space (excepting the "lash," which belonged to the older and more barbarous days of the Navy) is contained in this letter! It is a kind of marine pastoral epistle―rough, indeed, but sound, honest, apostolic. A letter written at this time by his friend Dahlgren is also interesting:

"WASHINGTON, October 30, 1849. “MY DEAR FRIEND,-Your very acceptable letter of the 17th reached me to-day, for which I am much indebted to you.

"The impression remained on my mind that the last letter between us was by myself, and that the condition of your sight forbade your writing. "In two instances I was on the point of visiting you at New Haven (the last time in May of this year), when, being in Boston on duty, Dr.

Letter from 7. A. Dahlgren.

77

Wheeler and myself had arranged to make the trip together, for you were often the subject of our conversation, and we felt sorrowful for the state of your health. By the way, there is no one in whose love and regard your remembrance is more fixed than in that of the doctor.

"I regret to see the desponding tone of your letter. Five or six years passed with me in mental torture that no one can understand save a fellow-sufferer; and yet my eyes now are so unexpectedly changed that last summer I dispensed with glasses for the first time in ten years. They are still weak, and unequal to much exertion; but think how much better. Homœopathy has been the agent of this beyond doubt, and I regret truly that you had not been induced to try this at an early period.

"If the master is inefficient, you had better get him out of the vessel as soon as you can without trouble to yourself. And now let me advise you-whether the master is good or bad-to procure a ship's book of suitable size, and cause the master there to record and work every observation. I do not mean the clean copy of either, but the original figures just as made and corrected-not in pencil, but ink. This, with any memoranda showing the ship's position from other sources, should be presented daily. As the case now stands, a commander takes a result without knowing the data. First the master is to mention the chronometer with the observation rates. Before leaving them he verifies these rates by other observations with the sextant. These are to be recorded; at sea, the time and latitude, the rate and error, and so on. In almost every department of a ship save this the record has been systematized.

"I have little doubt of the action of Congress in respect to flogging, and I am utterly at a loss to imagine a substitute. Last session it would have been brought about, but that a few doubtless, like the Dutch governor, felt alarmed. On one occasion the chairman of the Senate Naval Committee spoke to me about it. I told him that there seemed to be an impression that naval officers were partial to the system for its own sake. This was not so-it was a most unpleasant duty; and the fact that they submitted to the painful necessity of inflicting it proved how strong the necessity was. I told him that demagogues argued as if the Navy were created for the special benefit of officers-not as if it were an institution for the common good. For great as might be the personal interest of any officer, it was slight in comparison to that which the planter, the farmer, and the merchant had in the existence of a force afloat competent to protect national and individual rights.

"I wish I could say something in favor of the force of a vessel like the

Perry. Her battery is perhaps as good as she can carry. Unless the change were radical, I would prefer to arm her with two heavy pivotguns (say 8-inch).

"Your largest pieces are 32-pounders of 33 cwt. If so, they are good guns, and at half a mile would tell effectively ;* even beyond that they would not be comfortable customers for an enemy. Always ricochet the shot when the water is smooth enough; but with the shells keep the gun up about half a degree, so that the shot may not touch first nearer than 500 yards, as the water is apt to extinguish the priming of the fuse. In a second this is accomplished, and then neither water nor wood will put out the fuse.

"I wish much that I had known earlier of your appointment to the Perry, as I should have liked a boat howitzer to go with you on trial. Now I have none suitable, and there is not time to cast and finish one.

"The kind which I have proposed is now intended by the Bureau to be essayed in such vessels as have boats to carry them. They consist of 12-pounders of two sizes, 400 lbs. and 800 lbs., and 24-pounders of 1300 lbs., for launches of sloops, frigates, and liners respectively. The model is after my own notion, and I am allowed to make them. The ammunition is spherical case (that is, a thin iron shell charged with musket-balls, and burst near the boats or men fired at by a fuse and bursting charge). The English term is shrapnel. They were used at Buena Vista and Palo Alto, and alone saved our forces. I have so arranged the carriage that no breaching is required, and this facilitates the use, so that a howitzer can be fired seven times in a minute. This has been done often in the presence of the Secretary of the Navy, Dupont, Buchanan," and others; though it would not be practicable in a boat for want of

room.

"I have now a very important proposition on hand, which, in my view, will work great changes. I shall soon be furnished with pieces of the right character required to prove it, and at some future time you will hear of it.

"And now, my valued friend, you have in these two sheets some evidence of my pleasure in hearing from you. While you are absent you shall continue to have some remembrance from me. Let me entreat you to take good care of your health, and be cheerful and hopeful. When you get wet, have the circulation assisted by a good rubbing, and never

* That is, will strike almost every shot.

The "Louisa Beaton."

79

lay aside flannel-change it often. Use no more meat than is absolutely necessary when the breathing organs are tender. With you goes every wish that a friend can offer. Ever affectionately,

"JOHN A. DAHLGREN."

On the 21st of December, 1849, the Perry arrived at Porto Praya, Cape de Verde Islands, the rendezvous of the American squadron. She was immediately ordered on a cruise south of the equator; and after the vessel had reached the southern point of destination, she was to cruise along the coast, examining the principal points or slave-stations, such as the Salinas, Benguela, Loanda, Ambriz, River Congo, and intermediate places, back toward Monrovia. She reached St. Philip de Benguela after a passage of forty-one days, and none too soon, since but five days previous an English cruiser had captured near this place a brig with eight hundred slaves on board. This vessel came from Rio de Janeiro, under American colors and papers, with an American captain and crew, and had been transferred, when on the coast, to a Brazilian captain and crew. Still other captures were announced of similar character.

Lieutenant Foote, who was heartily welcomed to the station by the English commanders, set about at once to right matters, and began active cruising off Ambriz, a noted slave-mart, in company with the English war-steamer Cyclops. He instituted prompt inquiries in relation to those slavers captured under American colors and adjudicated upon in English courts. In the case of the Louisa Beaton he acted with independence and energy. This was an American brigantine, which had been boarded and examined by the Perry, and proved to be a legal trader. She afterward ran out of Ambriz under American colors, having awakened suspicion that she had stealthily shipped a cargo of slaves. Two boats from the Perry were immediately dispatched in pursuit. They did not succeed in overhauling the vessel. Thereupon Lieutenant Foote request

F

ed the commander of the Cyclops to take his (Foote's) second lieutenant on board and steam after her. The proposal was readily complied with; but after running out forty miles without obtaining sight of the Beaton, she returned. The commander of the Cyclops addressed a letter to Lieutenant Foote, saying that he had noticed the sailing of the Louisa Beaton; that he had suspected her of being a disguised slaver; and had there been no American man-of-war present, he should have considered it his duty to have overhauled her and satisfied himself that her nationality had not been changed by sale at Ambriz-not taking it for granted that the flag displayed by any vessel was a sufficient evidence of her nationality. Lieutenant Foote replied, stating that he had in the mean time found the Louisa Beaton at St. Paul de Loanda, and ascertained her legal character; and that the principle assumed by the British commander could not for a moment be allowed, but that, in words which have been already quoted, the flag which a vessel wears is prima facie though not conclusive proof of her nationality; that those who lawfully displayed the flag of the United States should have all the protection it supplies; and when a cruiser boarded a vessel under this flag, she did it upon her own responsibility. Again, a few months afterward, in the case of the same Louisa Beaton, the commander of the Perry insisted upon the principle in respect to the inviolability of the flag in an instance of palpable outrage, when the British cruiser Dolphin boarded and detained the Louisa Beaton, seventy miles off land, sailing under American colors, and having a proper national register and all her papers good, with the exception of the absence of a sea-letter, usually given by consular officers to legal traders after transfer of masters.

The protracted correspondence of nearly a year which ensued between Lieutenant Foote and the British commander of the southern division, Hon. Captain Ilastings, was published