FAME is a re-creation of a War of 1812 privateer that sails from Salem, MA. FAME is a re-creation of a privateer from the War of 1812.
04/29/2025
“Why should we care about 1776 or 1812? What can we possibly learn from the issues and events of two centuries past?”
THEY ARE THE SAME ISSUES WE ARE CONFRONTING TODAY.
Here are six examples of how the divisions in American society today, and the issues we are divided over, have been present ever since the birth of our nation.
#4 — Citizenship and Impressment
The definition of who was and wasn’t a citizen played a major role in one of the issues that led to war in 1812: impressment. The British, desperate for sailors to man their ships, were kidnapping American citizens on the high seas and forcing them to serve in the Royal Navy. How could this be?
At the time, most countries considered “citizenship” to be determined by the country in which you were born, and to be unchangeable. If you had been born anywhere in the territories of Great Britain, you were a subject of King George, and would always remain his subject — even if you gone off to the US and become a citizen. Seagoing subjects of the King of Great Britain had always been obligated to serve in his Navy when needed. Thus, any current or former British sailor was legally liable to be “pressed” or forcibly enlisted, regardless of where he now resided.
The Constitution empowered the federal government to establish procedures by which new arrivals could become citizens. This process was called “naturalization”. The first naturalization act in 1790 granted citizenship to "free white persons" who had resided in the US for at least two years and were considered to be of "good character". But becoming a naturalized citizen did not release immigrants of their obligations as subjects in their countries of origin.
During the long struggle against Revolutionary and later Napoleonic France, it became increasingly common for British warships to stop vessels on the high seas and examine their crews, looking for seamen who could be pressed. Many British subjects were indeed avoiding military service, and earning higher wages, by working on foreign and especially American vessels. These sailors were the first to be seized.
At the time, it was difficult to tell American from British sailors; anyone with an Irish accent was automatically assumed to be a British subject. Thus, many naturalized Americans, and even some native-born Americans, were taken. This enraged their friends and relatives, as well as the US government.
Sailors took to carrying citizenship papers, but such papers became widely forged. Soon the papers came to be disregarded by British boarding parties. Complaints and appeals occasionally led to the release of wrongly-seized sailors, but that process took a long time.
Nobody knows how many men were impressed. Or how many were foreigners, how many were naturalized Americans, and how many were native-born Americans.
American political parties tried to spin the impressment issue to their advantage. The Republicans, who were hostile to Britain, exaggerated the number of impressments. The opposing Federalist Party — generally friendly toward Britain — downplayed them.
The debate about how serious a problem impressment was, and what if anything should or could be done about it, went on until 1815, when peace in Europe finally put an end to the practice.
