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

You say that "the proceedings of the Court have been approved by the Chief Magistrate of our country, that the nation approved of them, and that the sentence has been carried into effect." It is true the President of the United States did approve of that sentence, and that it was carried into effect – full and complete effect, which I should have supposed ought to have glutted the envious and vengeful disposition of your heart; but I deny that the nation has approved of that sentence, and as an appeal appears likely to be made to them, I am willing to submit the question. The part you took on that occasion, it was totally unnecessary, I assure you, "to revive in my recollection;" it is indelibly imprinted on my mind, and can never, while I have life, be erased. You acknowledge you were present at the Court of Inquiry in my case, "heard the evidence for and against me, and had, therefore, formed and expressed an opinion unfavorable to me," and yet, your conscience was made of such pliable materials, that, because the then "honorable Secretary of the Navy was pleased to insist on your serving as a member of the Court Martial, and because I did not protest against it," you conceive that "duty constrained you, however unpleasant, to take your seat as a member," although you were to act under the solemn sanction of an oath, to render me impartial justice upon the very testimony which had been delivered in your hearing before the Court of Inquiry, and from which you "drew an opinion, altogether unfavorable to me." How such conduct can be reconciled with the principles of common honor and justice, is to me inexplicable. Under such circumstances, no consideration, no power or authority on earth, could, or ought to, have forced any liberal high minded man to sit in a case which he had prejudged, and, to retort upon you your own expressions, you must have been "incapable of seeing the glaring impropriety of your conduct, for which, although you do not conceive yourself in any way accountable to me," I hope you will be able to account for it with your God, and your conscience.

You say, between you and myself, there never has been a personal difference, "and you disclaim all personal enmity towards me." If every step you have taken – every word you have uttered, and every line you have written, in relation to me – if your own admission of the very frequent and free conversations you have had respecting me, and my conduct, "since the affair of the Chesapeake," bear not the plainest stamp of personal hostility, I know not the meaning of such terms; were you not under the influence of feelings of this sort, why not, in your official capacity, call me, or have me brought, before a proper tribunal, to answer the charges you have preferred against me, and thereby giving me a chance of defending myself? Why speak injuriously of me to junior officers, "which you do not deny?" Why the "many frequent and free conversations respecting me and my conduct," which you have taken so much pains to underscore? Why use the insulting expression, that you "entertained, and still do entertain, the opinion that my conduct, as an officer, since that 'affair' has been such as ought forever to bar my readmission into the service," and that, in endeavoring to prevent it, "you conceive you were performing a duty you owe to the service, and were contributing to its respectability?" Why the threat, that if I continued the "efforts" you say I have been making, to be "re-employed" you "certainly should be constrained to continue the expression of those opinions?"

Does not all this, together with the whole tenor and tendency of your letter, manifest the most marked personal animosity against me, which an honorable man, acting under a sense of public duty by which you profess to "have been hitherto actuated," would disdain even to shew, much more to feel?

I shall now, sir, take up the specific charges you have alleged against me, and shall notice them in the order in which they stand. The first is one of a very heinous character. It is, that "I proceeded in a merchant brig to Pernambuco." Could I, sir, during the period of my suspension, have gone any where in a national vessel? Could I, with what was due to my family, have remained idle? The sentence of the Court deprived them of the principal means of subsistence. I was therefore compelled to resort to that description of employment with which I was best acquainted; and on this subject you should have been silent. But you add, that the late Captain Lewis, of the Navy, who had it from a Mr. Goodwin, who heard it from Mr. Lyon, the British Consul at Pernambuco, with whom you undertake to say I lived, represented me as stating, "that, if the Chesapeake had been prepared for action, I would not have resisted the attack of the Leopard; assigning, as a reason, that I knew, as also did our government, that there were deserters on board the Chesapeake; and that I said to Mr. Lyon, further, that the President of the United States knew there were deserters on board, and of the intention of the British ship to take them, and that the ship was ordered out under these circumstances, with a view to bring about a contest which might embroil the two nations in a war."

The whole of this, Sir, I pronounce to be a falsehood, a ridiculous, malicious, absurd, improbable falsehood, which can never be credited by any man that does not feel a disposition to impress on the opinion of the public that I am an idiot. That I should two years after the affair of the Chesapeake, make such a declaration, when every proof that could be required of a contrary disposition on the part of the Chief Magistrate had been given, cannot receive credit from any one, but those that are disposed to consider me such a character as you would represent me to be. I did not live with Mr. Lyon, nor did I ever hold a conversation with him so indelicate as the one stated in captain Lewis' letter would have been. And with what object could I have made such a communication? Mr. Lyon would naturally have felt a contempt for a man that would have suffered himself to have been made a tool of in so disgraceful an affair. I found Mr. Lyon transacting business in Pernambuco: he produced to me a letter from Mr. Hill, the American consul in that country, recommending him as entitled to the confidence of his countrymen, every one of whom, in that port, put their business into his hands. I did the same, and thus commenced our acquaintance; he was kind and friendly to me, but never in any respect indelicate, as would have been, in a high degree, such conversation between us. Of Mr. Goodwin I know nothing. I have never seen him in all my life, nor do I conceive that his hearsay evidence can ever be of any kind of consequence against me; I was the first that informed the President, and the Secretary of the Navy, that such a letter was in the Department, even before I had seen it; and, again, if the mere oral testimony of a British agent was to be considered as evidence sufficient to arraign an American officer, I think the navy would quickly be in such a state, as it might be desirable for their nation to place it in. As to the impressions made upon the mind of captain Lewis, from this information, and the "strong remarks" he made upon the subject, which you have thought proper to quote, they by no means establish the correctness of that information; but only go to shew the effect it produced upon the mind of an individual, who seems to have imbibed a prejudice against me, no otherwise to be accounted for, except your acquaintance with him. He is now in his grave, and I am perfectly disposed there to let him rest; you must, however, have been hard pressed indeed, to be compelled to resort to such flimsy grounds as those, a degree weaker than even second handed testimony, to support your charges against me. These communications, you observe, are now in the archives of the Navy Department. Of this fact, Sir, I had long been apprized; and had you, when searching the records of that Department for documents to injure my character, looked a little further back, you would perhaps have found others calculated to produce a very different effect. Of my desire to return to the United States, during the late war, there are certificates in the Navy Department of the first respectability, which, if you had been disposed to find and quote, are perhaps laying on the same shelf from whence you took those, that you appear so anxious to bring to public view; I mean my letter applying for service, as soon as an opportunity offered, after the term of my suspension expired; and one letter, above all, you should not have passed over unnoticed, that which you received from my hand of May, 1803, addressed to the Secretary of the Navy, which was one of the principal causes of your obtaining the first command that you were ever honored with, and as you may have forgotten it, I will remind you, on this occasion, that, but little more than one month previous to the date of that letter, I by my advice and arguments, saved you from resigning the service of your country in a pet, because you were removed from the first lieutenancy of the New York, to that of second of the Chesapeake; but all this and much more is now forgotten by you, yet there are others that recollect those circumstances, and the history of your conduct to me will outlive you, let my fate be what it may. The affair of the Chesapeake did certainly "excite," and ought to have excited, the indignant feeling of the nation towards Great Britain; but, however it may have justified a declaration of war against that power, it was not, as you assert "every one admits," one of the principal causes of the late war. That it did not take place, sir, until five years after, when that affair had been amicably and of course honourably adjusted between the two nations. I mention this fact, not on account of its importance, but because you have laid so much stress on that "affair," as a reason why I ought to have returned home during the late war, and to shew that, although it did happen to be your fortunate lot to have an opportunity of being in the foremost rank, on that occasion, of which you seem inclined to vaunt, you are ignorant even of the causes which led to it. Having, in your letter of the 5th inst. abandoned the charge of my having sailed under "British license," after the commencement of the late war, in consequence of information received by you from a gentleman entitled to the fullest credit, that I was not afloat, until after the peace, consequently the report which you noticed of my having sailed under British license, must be unfounded. I have only to remark, on this head, that in advancing a charge against me of so serious a nature, and designed and so well calculated, as it was, to affect, materially, my reputation, not only as an officer of the navy, but as a citizen of the United States, you should first have ascertained that it was founded on fact, and not on rumour, which you so much harp upon; and that upon a proper investigation you would have discovered your other accusations to be equally groundless. For my not returning home during the late war, I do not hold myself, to use your own expressions, "in any way accountable to you," Sir. It would be for the government, I should suppose, to take notice of my absence, if they deemed it reprehensible; and they no doubt would have done so, had not the circumstances of the case, in their estimation, justified it. That they are perfectly satisfied upon this point, I have good reason to believe, and trust I shall be able to satisfy my country also. The President's personal conduct to me, and the memorial of the Virginia Delegation in Congress, to him, prove how I stand with those high characters, your opinion, notwithstanding, to the contrary. I deny, Sir, that I ever was "urged" by my friends, as you in mockery term them, to return home during the late war, nor could it have been requisite for me to have been "urged" to do so by any one. Laying patriotism out of the question, as you observe, as well as the reasons why you think "it behoved me" to adopt that course, there were other incentives strong enough, God knows, to excite a desire on my part to return; and I should have returned, Sir, but for circumstances beyond my control, which is not incumbent on me to explain to you.

Had the many opportunities really presented themselves which you allege were "every day occurring," of which I might have availed myself to return to my country, in privateers or other fast sailing merchant vessels, from France and other places, but of which you produce no other proof than random assertion, on which most of your other charges rest? There were no such opportunities, as you say were "every day occurring;" no, not one within my reach, and for some considerable time after the news of the war arrived in Denmark, it was not believed that it would continue six months; but, if I had received the slightest intimation from the department that I should have been employed on my return, I should have considered no sacrifice too great, no exertion within my power should have been omitted to obtain so desirable an object, as any mark of my country's confidence would have been to me in such a moment; a gun boat, under my own orders, would not have been refused; but what hope had I, when my letter of application for service was not even honored by an answer. In regard to the John Adams, I do not deem it proper on this occasion to explain my reasons for making the attempt to return in that ship; but whenever I am called on by any person properly authorized to make the enquiry, I am confident that I shall convince them, that I had good reason to believe that I should obtain a passage in her, notwithstanding your great knowledge on the occasion.

You say, by absenting myself, for years, from the country, without leave from the government, I "subjected myself to be stricken from the rolls." I knew also, by the 10th article of the act for the better government of the navy, that all persons in the navy holding intercourse with an enemy, became subject to the severest punishment known to the law; and that, for these offences, as you are pleased to term them, "I have not received, to your knowledge, even a reprimand;" but I presume if I have not it is not your fault. What kind and humane forbearance this, after what I have already endured! But, sir, as you seem to be so very intelligent upon other points, pray tell me where was the necessity of my asking for a furlough until the period of my suspension expired, or even after having reported myself for duty without being noticed. As to the charge of my holding intercourse with the enemy, I am at a loss to conceive to what you allude, and should degrade myself by giving it any other reply than to pronounce it – if you mean to insinuate there was any unlawful or improper communication on my part with the government, or any individual of Great Britain, as a false and foul aspersion on my character, which no conduct or circumstance of my life, however it might be tortured by your malice or ingenuity, can, in any manner, justify or support. You say, also, that you do know "that my pay, even during my absence, was continued to me." It is not the fact, sir; I never, and until very recently since my return, received but half pay. This part of your letter I should not have regarded, were it not to shew with what boldness, facility, and sang froid, you can make assertions unsustained even by the shadow of truth; but, if you had made yourself acquainted with the circumstances relative to my half pay, you would have found that not one cent of it was received by me. The government was so good as to pay the amount to my unfortunate female family, whose kindest entertainment you have frequently enjoyed. Poor unfortunate children! whose ancestors, every man of them, did contribute every disposable shilling of their property, many of them their lives, and all of them their best exertions, to establish the independence of their country, should now be told that the small amount of my half pay was considered, by an officer of high rank, too much for them! You have been good enough to inform me that, on my return to this country, my "efforts," as you have been pleased to call them, "to re-instate myself in the service were known, and became a subject of conversation with officers, as well as others;" and, but for those "efforts," it is more than probable you would not have spoken of me. This would indeed have displayed a wonderful degree of lenity and courtesy on your part, of which I could not have failed to be duly sensible. But, sir, I beg leave to ask how, and where, did you get your information, that such "efforts" were made by me; and even admit they were, why should you alone, disclaiming, as you pretend to do, all "personal enmity" against me, have made yourself so particularly busy on the occasion? Was it because your inflated pride led you to believe that the weight of your influence was greater than that of any other officer of the navy, or that you were more tenacious of its honor and "respectability," than the rest of the officers were? You assure me, however, 'that, in the interchange of opinion with other officers respecting me, you have never met with more than one who did not entirely concur with you in the opinion you have expressed of me.' Indeed! and what is the reason? It is because I suppose you are most commonly attended by a train of dependents, who, to enjoy the sunshine of your favour, act as caterers for your vanity; and, revolving around you like satellites, borrow their chief consequence from the countenance you may condescend to bestow upon them. You, at length, arrive at the main point; the "object" of my letter of the 23d ultimo, which you might have reached by a much shorter route, and have saved me the fatigue of being compelled, in self defence, to travel with you so far as you have gone. The language of defiance, represented to have been used by you, 'that you would cheerfully meet me in the field, and hoped I would yet act like a man,' are disavowed by you. And you further deny having ever invited me to the field, or expressed a hope that I would call you out; but you observe that, 'being informed by a gentleman with whom I had conferred upon the subject, that I left Norfolk, for the seat of government, some time before our June correspondence, with the intention of calling you out, you stated to that gentleman, as you have to all others with whom you have conversed upon the subject, that, if I made the call, you would meet me; but that, upon all scores, you would be much better pleased to have nothing to do with me.' I certainly do not exactly know who that intermeddling gentleman was, with whom you say I "conferred;" but, if I may be allowed a conjecture, I think I can recognize in him the self same officious gentleman, who, I am creditably informed, originated the report of your having made use of the gasconading expressions you have disowned: – In this respect I may be mistaken. Be this, however, as it may, I never gave him, or any other person, to understand that my visit to Washington last spring, was for the purpose of "calling you out," nor did I go there with any such view.

How you can reconcile your affecting indifference towards me, in the remark "that, on all scores, you would be much better pleased to have nothing to do with me," with the very active part which, it is generally known, and which your own letter clearly evinces, you have taken against me, I am at a loss to conceive. No, sir, you feel not so much unconcern as you pretend and wish it to be believed you do, in regard to the course of conduct my honor and my injuries may, in my judgment, require me to pursue. You have a motive, not to be concealed from the world, for all you have done or said, or for any future endeavors you may make, to bar my "re-admission" into the service. It is true, you have never given me a direct, formal and written invitation, to meet you in the field, such as one gentleman of honor ought to send to another. But, if your own admissions, that you had "incautiously said you would meet me if I wished it," and "that if you had not pledged yourself, you might re-consider the subject," and all this too without any provocation on my part, or the most distant intimation from me that I had a desire to meet you, do not amount to a challenge, I cannot comprehend the object or import of such declarations – made as they were in the face of the world; and to those in particular, whom you knew would not only communicate them to me, but give them circulation; under all the circumstances of the case, I consider you as having thrown down the gauntlet, and I have no hesitation in accepting it. This is, however, a point which it will not be for you or me to decide, nor do I view it as of any other importance than as respects the privilege allowed to the challenged party in relation to the choice of weapons, distance, &c. about which I feel not more "fastidious," I assure you, sir, than you do; nor do I claim any advantage whatever, which I have no right to insist upon; could I stoop so low as to solicit any. I know you too well to believe you would have any inclination to concede them. All I demand is to be placed upon equal grounds with you; such as two honorable men may decide upon, as just and proper. Upon the subject of duelling, I perfectly coincide with the opinions you have expressed. I consider it as a barbarous practice which ought to be exploded from civilized society; but, sir, there may be causes of such extraordinary and aggravated insult and injury, received by an individual, as to render an appeal to arms, on his part, absolutely necessary; mine I conceive to be a case of that description, and I feel myself constrained, by every tie that binds me to society, by all that can make life desirable to me, to resort to this mode of obtaining that redress due to me, at your hands, as the only alternative which now seems to present itself for the preservation of my honor.

To conclude: you say, "from my manner of proceeding, it appears to you that I have come to the determination to fight some one, and that I have selected you for that purpose." To say nothing of the vanity you display, and the importance you seem to attach to yourself, in thus intimating, that, being resolved to fight myself into favor, I could no otherwise do so than by fixing upon you, the very reverse of which you infer is the fact; I never wished to fight in this way, and, had you permitted me to remain at rest, I should not have disturbed you; I should have pursued the "even tenor of my way," without regarding you at all. But all this would not have suited your ambitious views. You have hunted me out, have persecuted me with all the power and influence of your office, and have declared your determination to attempt to drive me from the navy, if I should make any "efforts" to be employed, and for what purpose, or from what other motive than to obtain my rank, I know not: if my life will give it to you, you shall have an opportunity of obtaining it. And now, sir, I have only to add, that, if you will make known your determination, and the name of your friend, I will give that of mine, in order to complete the necessary arrangements to a final close of this affair. I can make no other apology for the apparent tardiness of this communication, than merely to state, that, being on very familiar terms with my family, out of tenderness to their feelings, I have written under great restraint.

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

No. 10

Washington, 29th December, 1819.

Sir: Your communication of the 30th ultimo reached me as I was on the eve of my departure for the north; whence I did not return till the 22d inst. It was my determination, on the receipt of your letter, not to notice it; but upon mature reflection, I conceive, that as I have suffered myself to be drawn into this unprofitable discussion, I ought not to leave the false colouring and calumnies, which you have introduced into your letter, unanswered. You state, that a much more laconic reply to your letter of 23d October would have served your purpose. Of this I have no doubt; and to have insured such an answer, you had only to make a laconic call. I had already informed you of the course I had felt myself bound to pursue respecting you, and of the reasons which induced my conduct, and that, if you required it, I would overcome my own disinclination and fight you. Instead of calling me out for injuries which you chose to insist that I have heaped upon you, you have thought fit to enter into this war of words.