ant could tell whether the stout ship he had sent out was even then
discharging her cargo at her destination, or tied up as a prize in some
British port. We Americans are apt to regard with some pride Washington's
stout adherence to the most rigid letter of the law of neutrality in those
troublous times, and our historians have been at some pains to impress us
with the impropriety of Jefferson's scarcely concealed liking for France;
but the fact is that no violation of the neutrality law which Genet sought
was more glaring than those continually committed by Great Britain, and
which our Government failed to resent. In time France, moved partly by
pique because of our refusal to aid her, and partly by contempt for a
nation that failed to protect its ships against British aggression, began
itself to prey upon our commerce. Then the state of our maritime trade was
a dismal one. Our ships were the prey of both France and England; but
since we were neutral, the right of fitting out privateers of our own was
denied our shipping interests. We were ground between the upper and nether
millstones.

But, as so often happens, persecution bred the spirit and created the
weapons for its correction. When it was found that every American vessel
was the possible spoil of any French or English cruiser or privateer that
she might encounter; that our Government was impotent to protect its
seamen; that neither our neutrality rights nor the neutrality of ports in
which our vessels lay commanded the respect of the two great belligerents,
the Yankee shipping merchants set about meeting the situation as best they
might. They did not give up their effort to secure the world's trade--that
was never an American method of procedure. But they built their ships so
as to be able to run away from anything they might meet; and they manned
and armed them so as to fight if fighting became necessary. So the
American merchantman became a long, sharp, clipper-built craft that could
show her heels to almost anything afloat; moderate of draft, so that she
could run into lagoons and bays where no warship could follow. They
mounted from four to twelve guns, and carried an armory of rifles and
cutlasses which their men were well trained to handle. Accordingly, when
the depredations of foreign nations became such as could not longer be
borne, and after President Jefferson's plan of punishing Europe for
interfering with our commerce by laying an embargo which kept ou