"Impressment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the narrow majority of six. The vote was nineteen voices in the affirmative and thirteen in the negative. Mr. Jefferson assented to the bill on the 18th of June. The grounds of war were set forth in a message of the President to Congress, on the 1st of June. The impressment of American seamen by British naval officers; the blockade of the ports of the enemies of Great Britain, supported by no adequate force, in consequence of which American commerce had been plundered in every sea, and the great staples of the country cut off from their legitimate markets; and ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... remonstrance or resistance were vain. He as well as others were aware of the law which had just been passed, giving magistrates the power of impressing soldiers for the service, and he felt, therefore, that although his impressment had no doubt been dictated by the private desire of the mayor to get him out of the way, it was yet strictly legal, and that it would be useless his making any protest against it. He resolved, therefore, to ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... than ever before, but within the waters of the United States. No doubt these seamen were often British subjects and their seizure was justifiable, provided England could rightfully extend to all parts of the globe and to the ships of all nations the merciless system of impressment to which her own people were compelled to submit at home. Monroe, in a note to Madison, said that the British minister had informed him that "great abuses were committed in granting protections" in America, and acknowledged that "he gave me some examples ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... preparing to crush the rebellion. On December 22, an Act became law which, if enforced, would have been a sentence of death to all colonial economic life. It superseded the Boston Port Act and the restraining Acts, absolutely prohibited all commerce with the revolted colonies, and authorized the impressment into the navy of all seamen found on vessels ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... He planned in 1831 an uprising of the slaves. He circulated among them a document written in blood, with cabalistic figures, and pictures of the sun and a crucifix. One night he and a group of companions set out on their revolt. Others joined them voluntarily or by impressment till they numbered forty. They began by killing Turner's master and his family; then they killed a lady and her ten children; they attacked a girls' boarding-school and killed all the inmates. Houses stood open and unguarded, and most ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Representatives, objecting to the treaty as a surrender of previous engagements with France, and as a failure to secure the rights of individuals against Great Britain, particularly in the matter of impressment, raised the point that the House was not bound to vote money for carrying into effect a treaty with which it was seriously dissatisfied. The speech of Gallatin has been selected to represent the republican ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... terrific mutinies, together with the then prevailing insubordination of the men in the navy, were almost universally attributed to the exasperating system of flogging. And the necessity for flogging was generally believed to be directly referable to the impressment of such crowds of dissatisfied men. And in high quarters it was held that if, by any mode, the English fleet could be manned without resource to coercive measures, then the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... ships held back until the latter part of 1812, the country would have been supplied with twenty sail of the line, fifty frigates, and thirty sloops-of-war,—a force which would have employed at least threefold its number of English ships, upon our coast, upon the passage, and in the dock-yards. Impressment, orders in council, paper blockades, would have gone down before such a force of American ships ere one-tenth of it had left our harbors; for England, distressed for men and at war with the Continent, could not have spared ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... never practised, and resigned a place in the Ordnance Office because he could not conscientiously approve of the American War. He lived a bachelor life in the Temple, doing good continually. Sharp opposed the impressment of sailors and the system of duelling; encouraged the distribution of the Bible, and advocated parliamentary reform. But it was as an enemy to slavery, and the first practical opposer of its injustice and its cruelties, that Granville ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury |
