As another example, the following passage from The War for All the Oceans demonstrates the parallel between exposing oneself in a duel and gentlemen in a gun battle at sea: “[The master] in an encounter between Amphion and French Flore, ordered gun crews to lie down ‘as by standing they were uselessly exposed, it being impossible to bring a gun to bear on the enemy at the moment. With the young gentlemen [midshipmen] or officers I left it optional to act as they pleased, and they remained erect with me, and I lament to say suffered in consequence of their gallantry, for Messrs. Barnard and Farewell, two promising young men, were immediately knocked down and taken to the cockpit, badly, though not mortally wounded.’”7
The sources cited in the Adkinses’ study of the War of 1812 as well as many other works are replete with examples of terminology and rhetoric that consciously or unconsciously reflected the honor code.8
Honor, the Flag, and Policy
With the (perceived) victorious end of the War of 1812, there was a change in the tone of editorialists, politicians, and public assemblies regarding the issue of the flag and honor. The first generation of those who had fought in the Revolution had begun to die off. Having survived a second war with Britain, journalists, politicians, and probably most of the American public no longer seemed quite as sensitive to affronts to honor.9
Americans now had reason to believe that the republic would survive; recognition by foreign powers had increased, and it was clear that the U.S. Navy had proved itself a match for the world’s strongest maritime power, Great Britain. With attention turning to issues such as the suppression of piracy, the removal of Indians from the Old Southwest and newly acquired Florida, the expansion of the cotton frontier, and the settlement of the trans-Mississippi West, the tone of insecurity and chip-on-the-shoulder defensiveness in editorials declined to an extent.
Nevertheless, the honor code persisted and shaped not only personal values but national attitudes and policies as well. Duels were still fought, scoundrels and poltroons were publicly thrashed by self-defined gentlemen, and the general informed public still expected that the United States and its honor would be respected abroad. As will be seen, the code of honor persisted to shape the logic of encounters at sea, while on land a code of behavior based on honor still not only shaped the conduct of personal affairs and polite discourse but also cropped up in public discussion of military action and international relations.
Joanne Freeman argues in Affairs of Honor, “The resulting style of politics—self-conscious, anxious, and inter-twined with the rites and rituals of the honor code—fell to the wayside with the acceptance of political parties.”10 The research and findings in the present work show that the honor code and its associated rhetoric continued to shape much of political discourse far longer, particularly when it came to the role of U.S. merchant shipping on the world’s oceans.
Presidents, secretaries of state, members of Congress, and other public figures judged their own actions and those of domestic and foreign opponents by the standards of the unwritten, but understood, code of honor. Accordingly, when the maritime flag, as the symbol of the nation, was disrespected, affronted, or dishonored, the outrage became a cause for editorial outbursts from journalists, public dismay, and sometimes executive action leading to military engagement. This pattern was at work through the maritime disputes of the antebellum period, during the Civil War, into the late nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth century.
The Merchant Flag, 1815–60
In the four decades following the War of 1812, a variety of events and developments shaped the standing of the American merchant marine. The division between the interests of seaboard states and territories and those of interior states and territories became clear in congressional debates over tariffs and internal improvements. As new western states were admitted to the union, representatives in the coastal states had increased incentive to portray the maritime issue as one of national pride and status in order to enlist (or shame) representatives of the interior into supporting a navy and other policies beneficial to the seaport cities.
Steam propulsion of ships began with Robert Fulton’s river steamers on the Hudson in 1807, and soon the extensive U.S. river system was busy with dozens, then hundreds, of paddlewheel-driven steamboats. The seemingly inexhaustible supply of firewood along the riverbanks allowed fueling. In seaports, steam tugs and local excursion boats and ferries soon clogged the harbors; some began using coal as fuel. However, America’s foreign trade was conducted across oceans, and steam propulsion was not practical for most transoceanic travel, simply because the tons of fuel required for such a trip left little space for cargo. Engines and propulsion improved rapidly, but even by the 1850s, U.S.-owned transoceanic cargo ships remained either sailing vessels or combined sail-and-steam vessels.
So, despite the development of a new technology that would revolutionize ocean travel and maritime warfare in later decades, the oceangoing trade of the United States before the Civil War was almost entirely conducted in wind-powered brigs, schooners, barks, and clipper ships, with some conducted on board the hybrid sail-and-steam ships. The clippers were particularly used in runs around Cape Horn to and from China and to California, following the gold rush of 1849, while sail-and-steam ships ran packet services between East and Gulf Coast cities, Havana, and Panama.
As steam railroads and river steamboats facilitated westward expansion, the dominating influence of the seaboard maritime states slowly diminished. Between 1791 and 1837, thirteen new states were admitted to the Union to join the original thirteen. Of the thirteen new states, only Maine, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama had seacoasts. This basic geopolitical reality meant that by 1837 coastal states had a somewhat diminished power in the Senate. Whereas in 1789 all twenty-six senators were from coastal states, by 1837 the tally was thirty-four seacoast senators and eighteen inland senators. An ever slimmer majority in the House of Representatives represented seaport constituencies.11 The balance between slave states and nonslave states was carefully maintained in the Senate, but the Senate had gone from 100 percent representation of seaboard states to 73 percent seaboard, and the number was declining.
Of course, there was no effort to maintain a balance of maritime states with interior states similar to the effort to maintain the slave-holding-nonslaveholding balance. The trend for the gradual increase of inland representation would continue. Although many inland states, particularly in the Ohio and Mississippi River basins, shipped products by river to New Orleans for transshipment by sea to overseas destinations, the country’s ocean or maritime focus had begun to diminish somewhat by the 1850s. Nevertheless, the rhetoric of honor, with its focus on the flag at sea, still had considerable power to evoke political support and remained a staple of both journalistic and historical writing throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.
The Flag as a National Emblem
In the years between the War of 1812 and the Civil War, editorialists, politicians, and others made it clear that the flag itself had come to symbolize the nation and had become even more deeply revered. Arctic and Antarctic explorers proudly reported that they had “carried the flag” to these previously unexplored regions. U.S. ambassador to Mexico Joel Roberts Poinsett offered sanctuary to Spanish civilians when they were attacked by a mob; he claimed to have awed the mob into submission by waving the U.S. flag from the balcony