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  • Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights in the War of 1812 by Paul A. Gilje
  • Denver Brunsman
Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights in the War of 1812. By Paul A. Gilje (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2013) 437 pp. $85.00 cloth $29.99 paper

On July 2, 1812, in the first weeks of the War of 1812, Captain David Porter sailed the United States Frigate Essex out of New York harbor and raised a banner proclaiming “A free trade and sailors’ rights.” Porter’s vessel had a distinguished history in the war, taking America’s first British warship (HMS Alert) and wreaking havoc on Britain’s Pacific whaling fleet before finally being captured off the coast of Valparaiso, [End Page 556] Chile, in March 1814. Yet, Porter’s exploits paled in comparison to the influence of his banner. In this fresh work on the causes and meaning of the War of 1812, Gilje argues that Porter’s motto—“Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights”—became the leading political slogan for the war. The phrase neatly encapsulated the two primary causes of the war for the United States—predatory British commercial regulations, known as the Orders in Council (the free-trade issue), and the impressment of American citizens as sailors on British naval vessels (the sailors’-rights issue). Furthermore, the motto appealed across the social strata by conjoining the high culture of Enlightenment political economy with a concern for the equal status and treatment of common people.

Gilje’s work similarly brings together several subfields of history—cultural, intellectual, social, political, and diplomatic. The narrative succeeds most when it focuses on the fascinating career of Porter’s phrase. The slogan soon appeared on the flags of other American ships and on tavern signs; in public and private toasts and congressional speeches; and, especially, in poems, songs, and headlines adorning political pamphlets and newspapers. Indeed, Gilje depends heavily on early American newspapers for sources; it is hard to fathom how this study could exist without digital databases. A generous number of illustrations (twenty-four) complement the digital newspaper research by showing “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights” on such material objects as prints, cartoons, pottery, and pieces of scrimshaw (etched whalebone or tooth).

The use of digital newspaper databases yields some genuine breakthroughs. Gilje discovered that use of the word impressment, as opposed to impress, to describe the forced service of sailors did not become common until the mid-1790s. Although he is wrong that Americans coined the more menacing term—impressment dates to at least the 1690s—he correctly links its expanded usage to U.S. resistance against British maritime depredations. In addition, by counting the number of times impressment appeared in American newspapers in the years leading up to the War of 1812, Gilje proves what historians have long suspected based on anecdotal evidence: After waxing and waning for years, interest in the issue exploded in 1812.

Gilje is less successful when he veers from the subject of his title. Given the absence of new archival manuscript sources, his chapters on Native Americans, western expansion, and peace negotiations repeat material commonly found in other works on the War of 1812. Nonetheless, Gilje’s ambition is admirable. He has rescued the forgotten phrase that gave meaning to America’s original forgotten war. [End Page 557]

Denver Brunsman
George Washington University
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