Then the search was
made, and four men, claimed as deserters, were taken; after which the
Leopard continued her course, and the crippled Chesapeake returned to
Hampton Roads. The American commander was sentenced by a court-martial
to five years' suspension for going to sea in such a condition. The
English government recalled the admiral who ordered, and deprived of
his ship the captain who committed, this unparalleled outrage, but
made no other reparation.
No words of ours could convey any adequate idea of the rage which this
event excited in the people of the United States. For a time, the
Federalists themselves were ready for war. There were meetings
everywhere to denounce it, and especially in the Southern States,
always more disposed than the Northern to begin the shedding of blood,
and already the main reliance of the Republican party. Remote and
rustic Abbeville, a very Republican district, was not silent on this
occasion; and who so proper to draw and support the denunciatory
resolutions as young Calhoun, the son of valiant Patrick, fresh from
college, though now in his twenty-sixth year? The student performed
this duty, as requested, and spoke so well that his neighbors at once
concluded that he was the very man, lawyer as he was, to represent
them in the Legislature, where for nearly thirty years his father had
served them.
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