PREFACE. 



xxix 



nothing from page to page, but ''painting," dis- 

 guising," " new dressing," and a number of other 

 little artifices, in which the huckster contends wiih 

 the ; or of an interminable series of un- 

 provoked aggression, extortion, and criielty, which 

 convert disgust into horror." 



Such are the charges, and such the comparison 

 instituted between the author and the illustrious 

 names arrayed against him. — It is at all times a 

 painful task to disturb the ashes of the dead, or to 

 strip the grave of the honours bestowed upon it 

 by kindred affection, or national vanity. But the 

 author has been described by the English Re- 

 viewer as a fiend ; painted in the blackest colours, 

 and bitterly and contemptuously opposed to these 

 two men, as affording, in every respect, a complete 

 contrast of profligacy and inhumanity, to their pure 

 and lofty characters. The authorized practices and 

 stratagems of war pursued and adopted by him, 

 have been held up as something inconceivably hor- 

 rible ; and every act of his, whether in the charac- 

 ter of a man or an officer, scrupulously, wantonly, 

 and maliciously represented, as equally unjustifia- 

 ble and unparalleled. If then, in the course of 

 attempting a vindication, not only of his own con- 

 duct, but of the language used towards that of 

 others, it becomes his duty to strip the shroud from 

 the dead, and to paint the deeds of these heroei^, 

 not in the language of reprehension, but in that of 

 friendly eulogy, as they are recorded by them- 

 selves, let not Captain Porter be blamed. The 

 task has been forced upon him ; it is necessary to 

 his own justification — and it shall be performed. 

 The Americans have been too long the dupes of 

 names. 



The reader will find an enumeration of the 

 vessels belonging to the British, taken in the 



