Joshua Parker to Thomas Parker, aboard frigate United States, Boston, May 14, 1813

Dearest Brother, I hope there will be a victory to report on the Lakes before this letter reaches you. Certainly we have not been backward in sending everything needed to give Master-Commandant Lawrence a respectable force.

 

Our victory over Africa seems to have begun a chain of events that bodes well for the American cause, by bringing us all together. Before that victory, I would not have sworn that New England would stand with the rest of our noble Republic. But when we entered Boston, flying Africa's ensign under ours, the spectacle was a wonder. Captain Decatur was given the freedom of the city, a subscription for our dead and wounded raised seventeen thousand dollars in two days, and many other signs of public rejoicing were manifest.

 

The British replied to our victory by a close blockade of Boston, hitherto left largely free, and Captain Bainbridge, commanding Constitution, took her out to engage the British. Finding only one frigate, Broke's Shannon, he engaged, and after an intensely warm action, took her, Broke being killed and Bainbridge likely enough crippled for life. He has most certainly redeemed himself for the loss of Philadelphia, being the first American and perhaps the first captain of any nation in a long while to take two British frigates, Java and Shannon.

 

With Rodgers taking Macedonian and Lawrence taking Frolic, we now count six victories in single-ship actions since the war began. This is more than all the rest of the world has won against the British Navy in the last ten years.

Not able to strike back by sea, the British struck by land. General Brock won a smashing victory at Queenston. Afterward he let his Indians and Glengarry Scots, vengeful for their slain chief MacDonnel, swarm across the Niagara River. Which was more ready with the knife and the brand, the Indians or the Scots, there were few survivors to tell for a width of twenty miles inland.

 

This brought about a miracle. Would you believe two staunchly Federalist papers called for the militia to march, and stand shoulder to shoulder on the Canadian border until not a sparrow wearing a red coat can cross? Subscriptions for a frigate, the same plan as Essex, to be named Plymouth, and two sloops of war, Salem and General Scott? Donations of naval supplies? The fitting out as privateers of every fast vessel that can swim and some that I think may prove slow or leaky?

 

Well, I have read as all this and seen some of it with my own eyes. I have not read what I suspect to be the true reasons, that if New England could not profit from a separate peace she would profit from joining the war, and in the process keep the British away from her borders and coasts. (We have heard tales, that the British have a large naval force on the Penobscot, and are encamping troops behind strong earthworks.).

 

Not a tale, though perhaps another miracle, is what happened only two days ago. A French ship of the line and a frigate sailed through the blockading squadron and entered Boston Harbor.

 

It seems that Their Lordships of the Admiralty feared our attacking the convoys that feed Wellington's army in Spain. I believe this has happened, and certainly many New England merchant ships that were once licensed to carry cargoes to Spain have been withdrawn, captured, blockaded, or even turned into privateers to prey on the commerce that they once carried!

However, the French supposed that the British might be weakening the blockade off the French naval ports, and ventured to send out a squadron of ships of the line, to raid the West Indies convoys. The British met and engaged them a week out from Bordeaux, taking two ships of the line and the supply vessels. A frigate was lost at sea.

 

The two French crews we have with us are scurvy-ridden, and not in a good state of discipline. However, the ships themselves are soun

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