"Impressment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Merchant Service, first appeared in the Metropolitan Magazine, 1832. It is one of the novels which specially suggests a comparison between Marryat and Smollett, both authors having described acts of impressment with vigour ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... although, as soon as the services of seamen are no longer wanted, you find that there are demagogues on shore who exclaim against impressment, they are quiet enough on the point when they know that their lives and ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... Rights!" was the American war cry. It expressed the two grievances which outweighed all others—the interference with American shipping and the ruthless impressment of seamen from beneath the Stars and Stripes. No less high-handed than Great Britain's were Napoleon's offenses against American commerce, and there was just cause for war with France. Yet Americans felt the greater enmity toward England, partly as ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... but impaired the respect which personal merit alone can in the long run maintain. On the other hand, the scarcity of seamen in proportion to the heavy demands of the war, and the irregular methods of impressment and recruiting then prevailing, swept into the service a vast number of men not merely unfit, but of extremely bad character,—"miscreants," to use Collingwood's word,—to be ruled only by fear of the law and of their officers, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... articulate law and methods of it, is one of the impossiblest entities. The captain is appointed not by preeminent merit in sailorship, but by parliamentary connection; the men [this was spoken some years ago] are got by impressment; a press-gang goes out, knocks men down on the streets of sea-towns, and drags them on board,—if the ship were to be stranded, I have heard they would nearly all run ashore and desert. Can anything be more unreasonable than a Seventy-four? Articulately ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... still greater numbers had been carried off by exposure and fatigue, and by the thousand other casualties incident to such a service as that in which they were engaged. Their places had been supplied, from time to time, by new enlistments, or by impressment and conscription. Of course, these new recruits were not bound to their commander by any ties of attachment or regard. They were mostly mercenaries—that is, men hired to fight, and willing to fight, in any cause or for any ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... downfall of falsehood from the beginning; the success of wrong being ever temporary, while the triumph of the right is eternal. To apply these consoling considerations to the matter more immediately before us: The practice of impressment, in its day, raised a feeling among the seamen of other nations, as well as, in fact, among those of Great Britain herself, that probably has had as much effect in destroying the prestige of her nautical invincibility, supported, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... invasion was threatened, the Queen ordered a body of troops to be raised instantly. In a single day 1,000 men, fully equipped, were marched off to camp. Afterwards 10,000 men were sent off, and thirty-eight ships were supplied. Both men and sailors were raised by impressment. A constant danger to the peace of the City was the turbulence of the prentices, these lads were always ready to rush into the streets, shouting, ready to attack or destroy whatever was unpopular ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... resolution of the House of Representatives of the 20th of May last, I transmit herewith a report from the Secretary of State, touching the impressment of seamen from on board American vessels on the high seas or elsewhere by the commanders of British or other foreign vessels or ships of war since 18th of February, 1815, together with such correspondence on the subject as comes within the ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson
... treaty, and it was constitutionally complete. The democratic majority in the House of 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 view. It is a strong reflection of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... monstrous pretention, Americans have shown little willingness to allow for the desperate struggle in which Great Britain was involved, and the injury which she suffered from the number of her seamen who, to escape impressment in their home ports and the confinement of ships of war, sought service in neutral merchant ships. Her salvation depended upon her navy; and seamen were so scarce as seriously to injure its efficiency and threaten paralysis. This was naturally no concern of the ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... of those violations of international law which not only marked but degraded the maritime history of that period, by the gross sacrifice of public law and private liberty. This was the seizure and impressment of men employed on board neutral vessels, and compelling them to enter the navy of a foreign country. The crew, being mustered on the deck, Captain Cochrane selected the ablest hands from among them—taking them on a service in which they not only had no interest, ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... alike. He is said to have forced a British schooner, probably a privateer, which attacked him when on his way from Bordeaux to St Thomas, to strike, but he did not take possession. On another occasion he is said to have taken a man out of a British ship in retaliation for the impressment of an American seaman by H.M.S. "Indefatigable," then commanded by Sir Edward Pellew. When the United States navy was organized in 1798 he was included in the corps of naval officers, and appointed to the schooner "Retaliation." She was on one occasion seized by the French ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... tie of kinship was not recognized, that it was even despised; and that if he made friends, it must be in spite of his country, and not because of it. His connection with the navy had also led him to be keenly sensitive to the injustice and indignities connected with the impressment of seamen. In his first voyage in a merchant ship he had seen two native Americans taken from the vessel and forced into the British service. His own captain even had on one occasion been seized, though speedily liberated. There had also been an attempt to press a Swede belonging ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury |
