hem; there was not an American war vessel, perhaps, whose crew, in
part, was not made up of negroes, as the accounts of various sea fights
prove. And they are entitled to no small share of the meed of praise
given the American seamen, who fought and won victory over the British.
Not only in the Navy, but on board the privateers,[9] the American negro
did service, as the following extract will show:

"_Extract of a Letter from Nathaniel Shaler, Commander of
the private-armed Schooner Gov. Tompkins, to his Agent in
New York._

AT SEA, Jan. 1, 1813.

"Before I could get our light sails on, and almost before I
could turn round, I was under the guns, not of a transport,
but of a large _frigate_! and not more than a quarter of a
mile from her. * * Her first broadside killed two men and
wounded six others * * My officers conducted themselves in a
way that would have done honor to a more permanent service *
* * The name of one of my poor fellows who was killed ought
to be registered in the book of fame, and remembered with
reverence as long as bravery is considered a virtue. He was
a black man by the name of John Johnson. A twenty-four pound
shot struck him in the hip, and took away all the lower part
of his body. In this state, the poor brave fellow lay on the
deck, and several times exclaimed to his shipmates, '_Fire
away, my boy: no haul a color down_' The other was a black
man, by the name of John Davis, and was struck in much the
same way. He fell near me, and several times requested to be
thrown overboard, saying he was only in the way of others.

"When America has such tars, she has little to fear from the
tyrants of the ocean."--_Nile's Weekly Register, Saturday,
Feb. 26, 1814._

As in the late war of the rebellion, the negroes offered their services
at the outset when volunteers were called for, and the true patriots at
the North sought to have their services accepted; but the government
being in the control of the opponents of universal freedom and the
extension of the rights of citizenship to the negro, the effort to admit
him into the ranks of the army, even in separate organizations, was
futile. At the same time American whites would not enlist to any great
extent, and but for the tide of immigration, which before the war had
set in from Ireland, the fighting on shore would p