Money talks

From the excellent Perilous Fight by Stephen Budiansky, an account of the naval aspects of the War of 1812. Page 220.

Secretary Jones complained bitterly about the “palpable and criminal intercourse held with the enemy’s forces blockading and invading the waters of the United States,” noting that both neutral foreign-flagged vessels leaving American ports and American coasting vessels “with great subtlety and treachery” were conveying “provisions, water, and succours of all kinds … direct to the fleets and stations of the enemy, with constant intelligence of our naval and military force.” Block Island, at the end of Long Island Sound, and Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, became virtual British ports, where ships of the blockading squadron regularly put in for water or other supplies. At Provincetown the squadron received fish, vegetables, and water, and the British captains furnished passes to several local owners of schooners allowing them to sail across Massachusetts Bay, through the British squadron to Cape Ann, to procure loads of firewood for them.

Even many stalwart Republicans winked at the illicit commerce when they were the beneficiaries. One prominent Maryland Republican from the Eastern Shore, Jacob Gibson, engaged in a pugnacious public correspondence defending himself after selling cattle, sheep, and hogs to the British. It did not help his case when it also became known that he had personally entertained Admiral Warren to dinner at his plantation on Sharps Island in the Chesapeake, and had received in return a protection from the admiral safeguarding his property and slaves and allowing safe conduct of his wheat crop to the mainland. But Maryland congressman Robert Wright, the same who had demanded “hemp and confiscation” for traitors, loudly offered his support for Gibson’s patriotism and assured him that “the enemies of your country” had signaled him out for attack only because of the conspicuous figure he cut in the Republican ranks. Other local Republicans acknowledged, however, that if Gibson had been a Federalist, “he would have been tarred and feathered and his house pulled down.