Correspondence, between the late Commodore Stephen Decatur and Commodore James Barron, which led to the unfortunate meeting of the twenty-second of March

Correspondence, between the late Commodore Stephen Decatur and Commodore James Barron, which led to the unfortunate meeting of the twenty-second of March

The friends of the late Commodore Decatur, have learned, with very great regret, that misconceptions injurious to him prevail, and are extending, relative to the difference between him and Commodore Barron. To place the subject in its true light, they have thought it necessary to submit to the public, without comment, the whole correspondence which preceded the meeting.

CORRESPONDENCE, &c

No. 1

HAMPTON, (VA.) JUNE 12,1 1819.

Sir: I have been informed, in Norfolk, that you have said that you could insult me with impunity, or words to that effect. If you have said so, you will no doubt avow it, and I shall expect to hear from you.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,JAMES BARRON.

To Commodore Stephen Decatur,

Washington.

No. 2

WASHINGTON, JUNE 17, 1819.

Sir: I have received your communication of the 13th instant. Before you could have been entitled to the information you have asked of me, you should have given up the name of your informer. That frankness which ought to characterize our profession required it. I shall not, however, refuse to answer you on that account, but shall be as candid in my communication to you as your letter or the case will warrant.

Whatever I may have thought, or said, in the very frequent and free conversation I have had respecting you and your conduct, I feel a thorough conviction that I never could have been guilty of so much egotism as to say that "I could insult you" (or any other man) "with impunity."

I am, sir, your obedient servant,STEPHEN DECATUR.

To Commodore James Barron,

Hampton, Virginia.

No. 3

HAMPTON, (VA.) JUNE 25, 1819.

Sir: Your communication of the 17th instant, in answer to mine of the 13th, I have received.

The circumstances that urged me to call on you for the information requested in my letter, would, I presume, have instigated you, or any other person, to the same conduct that I pursued. Several gentlemen in Norfolk, not your enemies, nor actuated by any malicious motive, told me that such a report was in circulation, but could not now be traced to its origin. I, therefore, concluded to appeal to you, supposing, under such circumstances, that I could not outrage any rule of decorum or candor. This, I trust, will be considered as a just motive for the course I have pursued. Your declaration, if I understand it correctly, relieves my mind from the apprehension that you had so degraded my character, as I had been induced to allege.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,JAMES BARRON.

To Commodore Stephen Decatur,

Washington.

No. 4

WASHINGTON, JUNE 29, 1819.

Sir: I have received your communication of the 25th, in answer to mine of the 17th, and, as you have expressed yourself doubtfully, as to your correct understanding of my letter of the aforesaid date, I have now to state, and I request you to understand distinctly, that I meant no more than to disclaim the specific and particular expression to which your inquiry was directed, to wit: that I had said that I could insult you with impunity. As to the motives of the "several gentlemen in Norfolk," your informants, or the rumors which "cannot be traced to their origin," on which their information was founded, or who they are, is a matter of perfect indifference to me, as is also your motives in making such an inquiry upon such information.

Your obedient servant,STEPHEN DECATUR.

To Commodore James Barron,

Hampton, Virginia.

No. 5

HAMPTON, OCTOBER 23, 1819.

Sir: I had supposed that the measure of your ambition was nearly completed, and that your good fortune had rendered your reputation for acts of magnanimity too dear to be risked wantonly on occasions that can never redound to the honor of him that would be great. I had also concluded that your rancor towards me was fully satisfied, by the cruel and unmerited sentence passed upon me by the court of which you were a member; and, after an exile from my country, family, and friends, of nearly seven years, I had concluded that I should now be allowed, at least, to enjoy that solace, with this society, that lacerated feelings like mine required, and that you would have suffered me to remain in quiet possession of those enjoyments; but, scarcely had I set my foot on my native soil, ere I learnt that the same malignant spirit which had before influenced you to endeavor to ruin my reputation was still at work, and that you were ungenerously traducing my character whenever an occasion occurred which suited your views, and, in many instances, not much to your credit as an officer, through the medium of our juniors; such conduct cannot fail to produce an injurious effect on the discipline and subordination of the navy. A report of this sort, sir, coming from the respectable and creditable sources it did, could not fail to arrest my attention, and to excite those feelings which might naturally be expected to arise in the heart of every man who professes to entertain principles of honor, and intends to act in conformity with them. With such feelings I addressed a letter to you under date of the 13th June last, which produced a correspondence between us, which I have since been informed you have endeavored to use to my farther injury, by sending it to Norfolk by a respectable officer of the navy, to be shewn to some of my particular friends, with a view of alienating from me their attachment. I am also informed, that you have tauntingly and boastingly observed, that you would cheerfully meet me in the field, and hoped I would yet act like a man, or that you had used words to that effect: such conduct, sir, on the part of any one, but especially one occupying the influential station under the government which you hold, towards an individual, situated as I am, and oppressed as I have been, and that chiefly by your means, is unbecoming you as an officer and a gentleman; and shews a want of magnanimity which, hostile as I have found you to be towards me, I had hoped for your own reputation you possessed. It calls loudly for redress at your hands: I consider you as having given the invitation, which I accept, and will prepare to meet you at such time and place as our respective friends, hereafter to be named, shall designate. I also, under all the circumstances of the case, consider myself entitled to the choice of weapons, place, and distance; but, should a difference of opinion be entertained by our friends, I flatter myself, from your known personal courage, that you would disdain any unfair advantage, which your superiority in the use of the pistol, and the natural defect in my vision, increased by age, would give you. I will thank you not to put your name on the cover of your answer, as, I presume, you can have no disposition to give unnecessary pain to the females of my family.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,JAMES BARRON.

Commodore Stephen Decatur,

Washington.

No. 6

WASHINGTON, OCTOBER 31, 1819.

Sir: Your letter of the 23d inst. has been duly received. Prior to giving it that reply which I intend, its contents suggest the necessity of referring to our June correspondence.

On the 12th June last, you addressed to me a note, inquiring whether I had said that "I could insult you with impunity." On the 17th June, I wrote you, in reply, as follows: "Whatever I may have thought or said in the very frequent and free conversations I have had respecting you and your conduct, I feel a thorough conviction that I never could have been guilty of so much egotism, as to say that I could insult you, or any other man, with impunity."

On the 25th of June, you again wrote to me, and stated, that the report on which you had grounded your query of 12th June, "could not now be traced to its origin," and your letter is concluded in the following words: "your declaration, if I understand it correctly, relieves my mind from the apprehension that you had so degraded my character, as I had been induced to allege." Immediately on receiving your letter of the 25th of June, I wrote to you, 29th June, as follows: "As you have expressed yourself doubtfully as to your correct understanding of my letter of the 17th June, I have now to state, and I request you to understand, distinctly, that I meant no more than to disclaim the specific and particular expression, to which your inquiry was directed, to wit: "that I had said that I could insult you with impunity." Here ended our June correspondence, and, with it all kind of communication, till the date of your letter of the 23d inst. which I shall now proceed to notice.

Nearly four months having elapsed since the date of our last correspondence, your letter was unexpected to me, particularly as the terms used by you, in the conclusion of your letter to me of 25th June, and your silence since receiving my letter of the 29th June, indicated, as I thought, satisfaction on your part. But, it seems that you consider yourself aggrieved by my sending our June correspondence to Norfolk. I did not send the June correspondence to Norfolk, until three months had expired after your last communication, and not then, until I had been informed by a captain of the navy, that a female of your acquaintance had stated, that such a correspondence had taken place.2 If that correspondence has, in any degree, "alienated your friends from you," such effect is to be attributed to the correspondence itself. I thought the papers would speak for themselves, and sent them without written comment.

With respect to the court martial upon you for the affair of the Chesapeake, to which you have been pleased to refer, I shall not treat the officers, who composed that court, with so much disrespect, as to attempt a vindication of their proceedings. The chief magistrate of our country approved them; the nation approved them; and the sentence has been carried into effect. But, sir, there is a part of my conduct, on that occasion, which it does not appear irrelevant to revive in your recollection. It is this; I was present at the court of inquiry upon you, and heard the evidence then adduced for and against you; thence I drew an opinion altogether unfavorable to you; and, when I was called upon, by the Secretary of the Navy, to act as a member of the court martial ordered for your trial, I begged to be excused the duty, on the ground of my having formed such an opinion. The honorable Secretary was pleased to insist on my serving; still anxious to be relieved from this service, I did, prior to taking my seat as a member of the court, communicate to your able advocate, general Taylor, the opinion I had formed, and my correspondence with the Navy Department upon the subject, in order to afford you an opportunity, should you deem it expedient, to protest against my being a member, on the ground of my not only having formed, but expressed an opinion unfavorable to you. You did not protest against my being a member. Duty constrained me, however unpleasant it was, to take my seat as a member; I did so, and discharged the duty imposed upon me. You, I find, are incapable of estimating the motives which guided my conduct in this transaction.

For my conduct as a member of that court martial, I do not consider myself as, in any way, accountable to you. But, sir, you have thought fit to deduce, from your impressions of my conduct as a member of that court martial, inferences of personal hostility towards you. Influenced by feelings thence arising, you commenced the June correspondence, a correspondence which I had hoped would have terminated our communications.

Between you and myself there never has been a personal difference; but I have entertained, and do still entertain the opinion, that your conduct as an officer, since the affair of the Chesapeake, has been such as ought to forever bar your readmission into the service.

In my letter to you, of the 17th June, although I disavowed the particular expressions to which you invited my attention, candor required that I should apprise you of my not having been silent respecting you. I informed you that I had had very frequent and free conversations respecting you and your conduct; and the words were underscored, that they might not fail to attract your particular attention. Had you have asked what those frequent and free conversations were, I should, with the same frankness, have told you; but, instead of making a demand of this kind, you reply to my letter of 17th June, "That my declaration, if correctly understood by you, relieved your mind," &c. That you might correctly understand what I did mean, I addressed you as before observed, on the 29th June, and endeavored, by underscoring certain precise terms, to convey to you my precise meaning. To this last letter I never received a reply.

Under these circumstances, I have judged it expedient at this time, to state, as distinctly as may be in my power, the facts upon which I ground the unfavourable opinion which I entertain, and have expressed, of your conduct as an officer, since the court martial upon you; while I disclaim all personal enmity towards you.

Some time after you had been suspended from the service, for your conduct in the affair of the Chesapeake, you proceeded, in a merchant brig, from Norfolk to Pernambuco; and by a communication from the late Captain Lewis, whose honor and veracity were never yet questioned, it appears – that you stated to Mr. Lyon, the British consul at Pernambuco, with whom you lived, "That if the Chesapeake had been prepared for action, you would not have resisted the attack of the Leopard; assigning, as a reason, that you knew, (as did also our government,) there were deserters on board your ship; that the President of the United States knew there were deserters on board, and of the intention of the British to take them; and that the President caused you to go out in a defenceless state, for the express purpose of having your ship attacked and disgraced, and thus attain his favorite object of involving the United States in a war with Great Britain." For confirmation of this information, Captain Lewis refers to Mr. Thomas Goodwin, of Baltimore, the brother of Captain Ridgely of the Navy, who received it from Mr. Lyon himself. Reference was made to Mr. Goodwin, who, in an official communication, confirmed all that Captain Lewis had said. The veracity and respectability of Mr. Goodwin are also beyond question. You will be enabled to judge of the impression made upon Captain Lewis' mind, by the following strong remarks he made on the subject:

"I am now convinced that Barron is a traitor, for I can call by no other name a man who would talk in this way to an Englishman, and an Englishman in office."

These communications are now in the archives of the Navy Department.

If, sir, the affair of the Chesapeake excited the indignant feelings of the nation towards Great Britain; and was, as every one admits, one of the principal causes which produced the late war, did it not behove you to take an active part in the war, for your own sake? – Patriotism out of the question! But, sir, instead of finding you in the foremost ranks, on an occasion which so emphatically demanded your best exertions, it is said, and is credited, that you were, after the commencement of the war, to be found in the command of a vessel sailing under British license! Though urged, by your friends, to avail yourself of some one of the opportunities which were every day occurring in privateers, or other fast sailing merchant vessels, sailing from France, and other places, to return to your country during the war; it is not known that you manifested a disposition to do so, excepting in the single instance by the cartel John Adams, in which vessel, you must have known, you could not be permitted to return, without violating her character as a cartel.

You say you have been oppressed. You know, sir, that, by absenting yourself, as you did for years, from the country, without leave from the government, you subjected yourself to be stricken from the rolls. You know, also, that, by the 10th article of the act for the better government of the Navy, all persons in the Navy holding intercourse with an enemy, become subject to the severest punishment known to our laws. You have not, for the offences before stated, to my knowledge, received even a reprimand; and I do know, that your pay, even during your absence, has been continued to you.

As to my having spoken of you injuriously to "junior officers," I have to remark, that such is the state of our service that we have but few seniors. If I speak with officers at all, the probability is, it will be with a junior.

On your return to this country, your efforts to re-establish yourself in the service were known, and became a subject of conversation with officers as well as others. In the many and free conversations I have had respecting you and your conduct, I have said, for the causes above enumerated, that, in my opinion, you ought not to be received again into the naval service; that there was not employment for all the officers who had faithfully discharged their duty to their country in the hour of trial; and that it would be doing an act of injustice to employ you, to the exclusion of any one of them. In speaking thus, and endeavoring to prevent your re-admission, I conceive that I was performing a duty I owe to the service; that I was contributing to the preservation of its respectability. Had you have made no effort to be re-employed, after the war, it is more than probable I might not have spoken of you. If you continue your efforts, I shall certainly, from the same feelings of public duty by which I have hitherto been actuated, be constrained to continue the expression of my opinions; and I can assure you, that, in the interchange of opinions with other officers respecting you, I have never met with more than one who did not entirely concur with me.

The objects of your communication of the 23d, as expressed by you, now claim my notice. You profess to consider me as having given you "an invitation." You say that you have been told, that I have "tauntingly and boastingly observed, that I would cheerfully meet you in the field, and hoped you would yet act like a man."

One would naturally have supposed, that, after having been so recently led into an error by "rumors" which could not be traced, you would have received, with some caution, subsequent rumors; at all events that you would have endeavored to have traced them, before again venturing to act upon them as if they were true. Had you have pursued this course, you would have discovered, that the latter rumors were equally unfounded as the former.

I never invited you to the field; nor have I expressed a hope that you would call me out. I was informed by a gentleman with whom you had conferred upon the subject, that you left Norfolk for this place, somtime before our June correspondence, with the intention of calling me out. I then stated to that gentleman, as I have to all others with whom I have conversed upon the subject, that, if you made the call, I would meet you; but that, on all scores, I should be much better pleased, to have nothing to do with you. I do not think that fighting duels, under any circumstances, can raise the reputation of any man, and have long since discovered, that it is not even an unerring criterion of personal courage. I should regret the necessity of fighting with any man; but, in my opinion, the man who makes arms his profession, is not at liberty to decline an invitation from any person, who is not so far degraded, as to be beneath his notice. Having incautiously said I would meet you, I will not now consider this to be your case, although many think so; and if I had not pledged myself, I might reconsider the case.

As to "weapons, place, and distance," if we are to meet, those points will, as is usual, be committed to the friend I may select on the occasion. As far, however, as it may be left to me, not having any particular prejudice in favor of any particular arm, distance, or mode, (but, on the contrary, disliking them all,) I should not be found fastidious on those points, but should be rather disposed to yield you any little advantage of this kind. As to my skill in the use of the pistol, it exists more in your imagination than in reality; for the last twenty years I have had but little practice; and the disparity in our ages, to which you have been pleased to refer, is, I believe, not more than five or six years. It would have been out of the common course of nature, if the vision of either of us had been improved by years.

From your manner of proceeding, it appears to me, that you have come to the determination to fight some one, and that you have selected me for that purpose; and I must take leave to observe, that your object would have been better attained, had you have made this decision during our late war, when your fighting might have benefitted your country as well as yourself. The style of your communication, and the matter, did not deserve so dispassionate and historical a notice as I have given it; and had I believed it would receive no other inspection than yours, I should have spared myself the trouble. The course I adopted with our former correspondence, I shall pursue with this, if I shall deem it expedient.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,STEPHEN DECATUR.

To Commodore James Barron,

Hampton, Virginia.

[EXTRACT.]

NORFOLK, AUGUST 24, 1819.

My Dear Commodore: Nothing had transpired here previous to my arrival, on the subject of the correspondence; but a Lady, a Miss – , I think her name is, from Hampton, has stated, that a correspondence had taken place between you and B. which she feared would end in a meeting. The fears of this lady are at direct variance with the opinion of your friends here, who think that he does not purpose saying more on the subject.

As it seems that it was known at Hampton, and even here, that letters had passed between you and B. may I venture to ask you to send a copy of them to Mr. Tazewell, who I have just left. He will, with great pleasure, he says, attend to your wishes.

Receive the best wishes of your friend,W. CARTER.

Commodore Decatur.

No. 7

WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER, 1819.

Sir: Since my communication to you of the 31st ult. I have been informed by a gentleman entitled to the fullest credit, that you were not afloat till after the peace; consequently, the report which I noticed of your having sailed under British license must be unfounded.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,STEPHEN DECATUR.

Commodore Jas. Barron.

No. 8

HAMPTON, NOVEMBER 20, 1819.

Sir: Unavoidable interruption has prevented my answering your two last communications as early as it was my wish to have done, but in a few days you shall have my reply.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,JAS. BARRON.

Commodore Stephen Decatur.

No. 9

HAMPTON, NOVEMBER 30, 1819.

Sir: I did not receive, until Tuesday, the 9th inst. your very lengthy, elaborate, and historical reply, without date, to my letter to you of the 23d ultimo; which, from its nature and object, did not, I conceive, require that you should have entered so much into detail, in defence of the hostile and unmanly course you have pursued towards me, since the "affair of the Chesapeake," as you term it. A much more laconic answer would have served my purpose, which, for the present, is nothing more than to obtain at your hands honorable redress for the accumulated insults which you, sir, in particular, above all my enemies, have attempted to heap upon me, in every shape in which they could be offered. Your last voluminous letter is alone sufficient proof, if none other existed, of the rancorous disposition you entertain towards me, and the extent to which you have carried it. That letter I should no otherwise notice, than merely to inform you it had reached me, and that I am prepared to meet you in the field upon any thing like fair and equal grounds; but, inasmuch as you have intimated that our correspondence is to go before the public, I feel it a duty I owe to myself, and to the world, to reply particularly to the many calumnious charges and aspersions with which your "dispassionate and historical notice" of my communication so abundantly teems; wishing you, sir, at the same time, "distinctly to understand" that it is not for you alone, or to justify myself in your estimation, that I take this course. You have dwelt much upon our "June correspondence," as you stile it, and have made many quotations from it. I deem it unnecessary, however, to advert to it, further than to remark, that, although "nearly four months" did intervene between that correspondence and my letter of the 23d ultimo, my silence arose not from any misapprehension of the purport of your contumacious "underscored" remarks, nor from the malicious designs they indicated, nor from a tame disposition to yield quietly to the operation which either might have against me; but, from a tedious and painful indisposition, which confined me to my bed, the chief part of that period, as is well known to almost every person here. I anticipated, however, from what I had found you capable of doing to my injury, the use to which you would endeavour to pervert that correspondence; and have not at all been disappointed. So soon as I was well enough, and heard of your machinations against me, I lost no time in addressing to you my letter of the 23d ultimo; your reply to which I have now more particularly to notice. I have not said, nor did I mean to convey such an idea, nor will my letter bear the interpretation, that your forwarding to Norfolk, our "June correspondence," had, "in any degree, alienated my friends from me;" but, that it was sent down there with that view. It is a source of great consolation to me, sir, to know, that I have more friends, both in and out of the navy, than you are aware of; and that it is not in your power, great as you may imagine your official influence to be, to deprive me of their good opinion and affection. As to the reason which seems to have prompted you to send that correspondence to Norfolk, "that a female of my acquaintance had stated that such an one had taken place," I will only remark, that she did not derive her information from me: that it has always been, and ever will be, with me, a principle, to touch as delicately as possible, upon reports said to come from females, intended to affect injuriously the character of any one; and that, in a correspondence like the present, highly as I estimate the sex, I should never think of introducing them as authority. Females, sir, have nothing, or ought to have nothing to do in controversies of this kind. In speaking of the court martial which sat upon my trial, I have cast no imputation or reflection upon the members individually who composed it (saving yourself,) which required that you should attempt a vindication of their proceedings; champion as you are, and hostile as some of them may have been to me: nor does the language of my letter warrant any such inference. I merely meant to point out to you, sir, what you appear to have been incapable of perceiving: the indelicacy of your conduct, (to say the least of it) in hunting me out as an object for malignant persecution, after having acted as one of my judges, and giving your voice in favour of a sentence against me, which I cannot avoid repeating, was "cruel and unmerited." It is the privilege, sir, of a man, deeply injured as I have been by that decision, and conscious of his not deserving it, as I feel myself, to remonstrate against it; and I have taken the liberty to exercise that privilege.