quietly through the streets of a city or town; even in the bosom
of their families, or when quietly reposing on their pillows!
Press-gangs, composed of desperate men, headed by resolute and
unscrupulous officers, were constantly on the lookout for men,
and took them, sometimes after hard fighting, and dragged them
away to undergo the horrors of slavery on board a man-of-war!

It is not remarkable that a sailor in those days should have
dreaded a "man-of-war" as the most fearful of evils, and would
resort to desperate means to avoid impressment or escape from
bondage. Those few fortunate men, who, by resolution or cunning,
had succeeded in escaping from their sea-girt prisons, detailed
the treatment they had received with minute and hideous accuracy
to others; and that they could not have exaggerated the
statements is proved by the risks they voluntarily encountered to
gain their freedom. The bullets of the marines on duty, the fear
of the voracious shark in waters where they abounded, the dangers
of a pestilential climate, or the certainty, if retaken, of being
subjected to a more revolting and excruciating punishment than
was every devised by the Spanish Inquisition FLOGGING THROUGH
THE FLEET could not deter British seamen from attempting to
flee from their detested prison-house.

American seamen were sometimes forcibly taken from American
ships, and their protestations against the outrage, and their
repeated declarations, "I am an American citizen!" served only as
amusement to the kidnappers. Letters which they subsequently
wrote to their friends, soliciting their aid, or the intercession
of the government, seldom reached their destination. It was
rarely that the poor fellows were heard of after they were