Lessons from history (4 of series)

Today I want to focus on teaching those of you who have not heard about it another form of oppression/slavery that many of you may not have learned about in school. It had a crucial input into the birth of the United States and much of our psyche regarding freedom. "Back when I was in school" this was a huge topic in history and social studies class. One cannot really understand the foundation of the United States, nor can one truly be informed on the subject of slavery, if one does not understand being "pressed" or impressment.

To put it simply, being pressed means being grabbed off of the street or out of your home, place of business, farm, bar-wherever you may be-by a gang who drags you away and forces you to serve in the British Navy. I am not exaggerating at all. If a town heard of a press gang coming they fled for their lives. Women were left wondering where their sons or husbands went, as they would vanish into thin air, as the men were found and dragged off to serve. Press gangs carried clubs and chains.

Pressing became a government policy under Queen Elizabeth I. (They don't show that tacky side of her in the romanticized modern movies, do they).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment

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It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to the time of King Glaude I. The Royal Navy impressed many British merchant sailors, as well as some sailors from other nations.

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The first act legalizing this practice was passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth in 1563 and was known as "an act touching politick considerations for the maintenance of the navy". It was renewed many times until 1631. In the Vagabonds Act 1597, several lists of persons were subject to impressment for service in the fleet. The Recruiting Act 1703 was an act passed "for the increase of seamen and better encouragement of navigation, and the protection of the Coal Trade".

Some apologists try to characterize pressing as being focused on those who were already able bodies seamen. However, that is not true (though clearly experience was preferred), as the very act is called "vagabond," which is an oppressive elitist name used by the upper class to describe ruffians who seemed to have no fixed abode (such as the poor).

There is a notorious event of impressment in America, before the American War of Revolution, and this was therefore a topic that future Americans, as British subjects, were very familiar with and suffered from and resented deeply. Pressing was another reason for the American Revolution and one of the two direct reasons for the little remembered but very important War of 1812 (America had to fight Britain again, from 1812-5. It was during that war that the White House was burned during the office of President Madison). Here is a description of the pre-Revolutionary War use of impressment in America:

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As a result of the doubt over the legality of impressment in American waters, parliament passed a new law in 1746, stating that impressment was forbidden in the West Indies, but not in America, leading to a riot in Boston the following year, and continued with the colonies, particularly New England.

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One of the largest impressment operations occurred in the spring of 1757 in New York City, then still under British colonial rule. Three thousand British soldiers cordoned off the city, and plucked clean the taverns, and other sailors' gathering places. "All kinds of tradesmen and Negroes" were hauled in, nearly eight hundred in all. Four hundred of these were "retained in the service."

Notice that free Afro-Americans and slaves were pressed right along with the colonists. This is an example of how the press gangs would go systematically through an entire city and press whoever they desired.

So impressment was another example of where Americans became furious over the trampling of their rights. Remember, being pressed into the British Navy meant that you went to sea to serve for years, a virtual prisoner. This was fodder for declaring independence and fighting the War of Revolution. Since Afro-Americans, free or not, were pressed along with the whites, Afro-Americans understood that the War of Revolution was in their interest too.

The British learned from that and later during the War of 1812 in order to undermine American forces and economy, the British offered slaves pressment and other routes to escape slavery. This is well documented in the War of 1812 article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812

This is important for you to understand because it shows how nations and cultures have been on the right side of being against slavery, and the wrong side of supporting slavery, for reasons other than ethics, justice and morality. The British continued to press their own citizens and foreigners, thus being one of the two triggers of the War of 1812, and so they continued to have a stance of social injustice, yet shrewdly realized that they could cause havoc in America by giving the slaves routes to escape.

So here is a description of impressment and its role in causing the War of 1812.

During the wars with France (1793 to 1815), the Royal Navy aggressively reclaimed British deserters on board ships of other nations, both by halting and searching merchant ships, and, in many cases, by searching American port cities. While non-British subjects weren't impressed, Britain didn't recognize naturalised American citizenship, and treated anyone born a British subject as still "British" — as a result, the Royal Navy impressed over 9,000 sailors who claimed to be American citizens. While not directly mentioned as a reason for the declaration of war in the War of 1812, impressment caused serious diplomatic tension, and helped to turn American public opinion against Britain.

In other words, even though America had been free of colonial rule by Britain for several decades, and Britain had conceded defeat, the British still considered any American abroad "fair game" since they did not recognize American citizenship! When it came to pressing the rules against pressing foreigners was interpreted by the British to not apply to Americans.

Another custom of the time to man the many war and trade ships required was to capture combatant or other ships and then force the entire crew to serve. So when a ship was captured, the ship was rapidly turned into a ship of the fleet, its treasure or goods seized, and often its homeland sailors forced to be prisoners or to serve in the army or navy.

Thus even though the Patriots had won America's freedom in the Revolutionary War, they had to fight what is often called the "second war of Revolution" because the British blockaded American ships, disrupting trade and impressed anyone they got their hands on that they thought could serve on their ships. This meant going into war, since that was the reason Britain was blockading and pressing Americans, to drain resources in order to fight Napoleon in France.

And so America declared war on Britain because Britain was, essentially, strangling essential American trade between America and Europe plus Britain refused to recognize American citizenship, as in refusing to obey Britain's own law against impressing foreigners. Thus Americans had to fight their revolution all over again from 1812-5, only three American Presidents after George Washington himself.

I hope that you have found this interesting. I wanted to teach this topic for a few reasons:

1) Students and Americans in general should understand that true freedom is rarely won and kept as the result of one war, one declaration. The birth of this country and its continuity was by no means as easy as I think many people who have not been exposed to this history believe.

2) Slavery, while the most egregious of all human rights violations, should be understood in the context of a time when very few people had real rights, and slavery of one form or another could fall on just about anyone, and may only have been one ocean voyage, or one day walking down the street of New York, away. Only the highest rank people were ransomed in capture; the rest were imprisoned or forced to serve in the military. With all due respect, I think many young Afro-Americans today think that society then was as simple as free/slave, have/have not. As I demonstrated above, anyone who was not an aristocrat could have risked, both in Britain and in colonial America, being swept from your starving family and forced to go to sea, just by being declared a "vagabond" or the "navy needs you" or "we don't recognize American citizenship." America, despite the horrible wound of slavery, still came into being as a shocking example of freedom and rights at a time when that concept was virtually unknown and unrecognized in the world.

3) Studying the American Revolution, the years immediately after, and the War of 1812, one has a much clearer understanding of what difficult work it is to have genuine peace. All of the Founding Fathers deserve golden crowns for how they steered America between the continuing difficulty of Britain and France's wars, trying to be neutral and keep the peace, yet the war is often brought (repeatedly) to one's own doorstep. I can just imagine some people today, if they were "transported in time" back to the years before 1812 going "What! Another war! You warmongers!" Yet, remember, Britain blocked all of America's essential trade with Europe and also refused to recognize American citizenship and hence their rights as foreigners, causing impressment and other wrongs. Yes, the USA had to fight again for their own identity, for their freedom and their own declared rights, and their rights even under foreign law.

This is one of the important lessons to discern a "just war." A war when one's own sovereignty (the right to be an independent country) is threatened and denied, and one's citizens oppressed or murdered, is a just war. Other wars must be identified as what they are, which is maybe just, maybe not, since if they do not involve one's sovereignty, then it may be a war of convenience, a war of going after some resources, or that very slippery slope a "premptive war." Those are far more questionable.

So I think those who are concerned about issues of peace should study the Revolution and the War of 1812, as it provides good models for truly justifiable patriotic war. It then gives you firmer foundation to question wars that you think may not truly be about maintaining the freedom and dignity of America.

I hope that you have found this helpful.