Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [13]
One feature of London life angered Finley: the general contempt for America. It had found brutal expression after Napoleon declared a blockade of the British Isles, intending to cripple England by destroying its commerce. The British government replied with Orders in Council declaring a blockade on France. Under the Orders, England freely seized American vessels supposedly trading with the French or their allies. In four and a half years, 390 American ships were taken. American merchantmen were impressed and forced to serve in the Royal Navy. Officials such as Lord Castlereagh, the foreign secretary, assured the public that America was compelled to submit because too weak to resist.
Born in the shadow of Bunker’s Hill, Finley shared with the gentry of the Revolutionary generation a deep concern for personal and national honor. It galled him to read in London newspapers the names of American vessels detained or captured for trading with France. Invited to dine one evening at the home of John Thornton, a noted English philanthropist, he heard his host argue that only the British navy protected America’s shores against Napoleon’s obsession with conquest, that Britain was fighting for the liberties of the world, “that America was in a great degree interested in the decision of the contest, and that she ought to be content to suffer a little.”
No admirer of Napoleon, Finley, too, considered British arms the best hope of preserving liberty in Europe. But this did not excuse legalized British sea robbery against America. If England did not repeal the Orders in Council, he believed, the United States should declare war, “or we cease to be an independent nation.” Across the water, many Americans north and south believed the same. The New Hampshire Patriot called on the government to take spirited action, “or the United States will become proverbial for servility and debasement.” The nation’s failure to resist attacks on its commerce already called into question the vitality of its republican ideals. “Our government is despised for its want of energy,” the Richmond Enquirer wrote, “and our people are held up to scorn for their unmanly sacrifice of rights.”
Over the first half of 1812, as Finley turned twenty-one, Parliament and the British press vigorously debated the question of repeal. On May 11 an ardent supporter of the Orders, Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, was shot through the heart as he entered the House of Commons. Finley joined an immense crowd that gathered to view the scene. The following week he went to see Perceval’s assassin mount the scaffold—a man genteelly dressed, who bowed to the crowd, cried out “God bless you,” and drew the cap of execution over his face. The country now seemed to Finley dangerously volatile, “in a very alarming state…. London must soon be the scene of dreadful events.”
One month later, Congress voted by narrow margins to declare war on England. As had happened to Benjamin West at the time of the American Revolution, Finley found himself living in the land of the enemy. As he sat at some coffeehouse or dinner party, he heard English gentlemen discuss sending twenty thousand troops to take New York City and deride the American navy as “below the Chinese.” In naval terms the conflict was wildly unequal: the U.S. force consisted of sixteen ships, Britain’s of over six hundred. Given the odds, Finley exulted in reports of American victories at sea: “the Essex frigate has taken the Sloop of War Alert; bravo!—the privateer Yankee in