LETTERS OF A CITIZEN. 461 



Smith deemed necessary? that they could not conveniently be 

 effected, and that he was, therefore, relieved from all farther sus- 

 pense ? Who can fail to perceive in this, though in a different 

 form, the same species of official action which had been just ap- 

 plied to Captain Kearney ? The public part which your coadjutor, 

 the governor, took at this time was singularly amusing. He told 

 everybody that Captain Smith would not go without Wilkes, and 

 that Commodore Jones would not go with him ; neither of which 

 statements was true. The former, had he been sustained by the 

 department, would have been quite ready to go without him, and 

 the latter never refused to take him in the squadron, in whatever 

 station his rank or his acquirements might place him. 



Sir, you dare not say that you were driven by necessity into ma- 

 king your final appointment. You d are not deny because you know 

 that many others know the fact that older and better qualified of- 

 ficers stood ready to accept the command. Could you look Cap- 

 tains Kearney, Smith, Gregory, Kennon, Aulick, and Armstrong in 

 the face while giving utterance to such statements, which the 

 whole service would laugh at and pronounce untrue 1 When you 

 had resolved to travel down the list from the grade of post captain 

 (to say nothing farther in this place about the qualifications of oth- 

 ers), was there nothing which brought the claims of Captain James 

 Armstrong before your notice ? He had been ordered to the com- 

 mand of the Macedonian, under Commodore Jones, as early as 

 1836, and had immediately thereupon proceeded from Boston to 

 Norfolk to join the frigate. 



From that period to May, 1839, he had been continually attach- 

 ed to his vessel, amid scenes of delay and discouragement more 

 trying to an ardent spirit than the navigation of the Polar Seas. 

 To the substantial requisites for the command of such an expedition 

 he had unquestionable and high claims. At any rate, was it not 

 your duty to look into those claims before you ventured to trample 

 upon his feelings and rights as an officer ? Did not the records 

 of the Navy Department show that he had entered the service in 

 1809, near thirty years ago ? and that he had borne himself gal- 

 lantly at New-Orleans on board the bomb-ketch Etna, and after- 

 ward, while commander of one of the gunboats (though he was then 

 quite a young midshipman), in fighting and subduing the Barrataria 

 pirates ? 



