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For a long time this interference was confined by the British Ministry to methods which they thought themselves able to defend as they did the practice of impressment upon the ground of rights, prescriptive and established, natural or belligerent; although the American Government contended that in several specific measures no such right existed, that the action was illegal as well as oppressive.
The American commissioners were instructed to insist upon three concessions in the treaty which they were to negotiate: restoration of trade with enemies' colonies, indemnity for captures made since the Essex decision, and express repudiation of the right of impressment. In return for these concessions, they might hold out the possible repeal of the Non-Importation Act!
How many of the 1340 were not really impressed, but were what in the navy are called 'stragglers, i.e. men over-staying their leave of absence, is not indicated. TheTimes of the 11th March 1803, and 9th May 1803, also contained reports of the impressment operations.
Great as was the wrong to a merchant vessel, it has not the status of a ship of war, which carries even into foreign ports a territorial immunity resembling that of an ambassador, representing peculiarly the sovereignty of its nation. Further, the men taken from the "Chesapeake" were not seized as liable to impressment, but arrested as deserters; the case was distinct.
And then, without further formalities, Goulburn stated in blunt and business-like fashion the matters on which they had been instructed: impressment, fisheries, boundaries, the pacification of the Indians, and the demarkation of an Indian territory. The last was to be regarded as a sine qua non for the conclusion of any treaty.
Although our good natured captain laughed at this joke, I confess I could not; all the horrors of impressment rushed on my mind. This mechanic may have left a wife and children, suffering and starving, from having her husband and their father kidnapped, like a negro on the coast of Guinea, and held in worse than negro slavery.
Impressment and the want of officers at the early part of the war, gave him an opportunity of becoming a lieutenant; he took the weak side of the admiral to obtain his next step, and obtained the command of a sloop, from repeated solicitation at the Admiralty, and by urging his claims of long servitude.
Only by the most extreme measures, by impressment and the release of criminals willing to accompany the expedition in order to get out of jail, were crews finally provided.
About this time an excitement prevailed among the web-footed gentry in St. Bartholomew in relation to the impressment of seamen by British authorities. The cruisers on the West India station were deficient in men; and all kinds of stratagems were regarded as justifiable which would be likely to supply the deficiency. British ships and brigs of war were often seen cruising off the harbor of St.
The impressment of men for the sea service was constantly practised, and, besides the press-gangs, there were regular bands of kidnappers employed in London and all the large towns of the kingdom, to seize men for the East India Company's service. And when the men were not wanted for India, they were shipped off to the planters in the American colonies.
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