134 CAPTAIN ZACHARY G. LAMSON 



influence on his relatives and friends. He 

 knew, and probably had suffered from, 

 both France and England; but while not 

 loving the latter, he despised the former. 

 He believed that England, on the whole, 

 was really sustaining the cause of constitu- 

 tional liberty against despotism, and that, 

 being unprepared to fight, our best policy 

 was to temporize. In the reaction in Mas- 

 sachusetts against Jeffersonian democracy, 

 the sailor was an important factor. 



Into the home life of that day the sailor 

 brought the breeziness and freshness of the 

 sea. Books were few and newspapers for- 

 mal, and the advent of the sailor, with his 

 stories of adventure and accounts of strange 

 countries, did much to dispel the monotony 

 of home life. 



Massachusetts had reason to be proud of 

 her sailors. With manufacturing still in its 

 infancy and agriculture barely self-support- 

 ing, Massachusetts owned almost the whole 

 of the whale fishery, six sevenths of the cod- 

 fishery and more than one third of the 



