1831.]

DEATH OF EX-PRESIDENT MONroe.

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portant of which is on Craney Island, near the mouth of the Elizabeth river, about five miles below the town. The United States commissioners who were appointed in 1818 to survey the lower part of Chesapeake Bay, reported that Hampton-Roads, though extensive, were capable of adequate defence, so as to prevent the entrance of an enemy's fleet. We therefore trust that our national metropolis will henceforth be secure from invasions.

The general instructions of the secretary of the navy to Commodore Downes, as commander of the Potomac and of the Pacific squadron, are dated on the 27th of June, 1831. He was ordered to proceed to New-York by the 1st of August, if possible; and there receive on board the Honourable Martin Van Buren and suite, the recently-appointed minister to the court of St. James, who was to be landed at Portsmouth, or some other convenient port in the British channel. The commodore was then directed to make the best of his way to the Pacific Ocean by a passage round Cape Horn, first touching at Brazil. These instructions contain full and official directions as to the steps to be taken for the protection of American commerce and sustaining the honour of the American flag, as well as for increasing the domestic resources of our own country, by obtaining and preserving such foreign staple productions as might be naturalized in our own soil. These instructions, so creditable to the department and to the character of our country, are given at length in the Appendix.

Our frigate lay in Hampton-Roads until the 15th of July, during which period all hands were busily employed in taking on board such necessary stores as could be procured at this place. Here her officers first received the intelligence of a third point to a coincidence of a very remarkable character.

4th of July, the anniversary of our national independence, James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States, breathed his last, in the city of New-York, at the residence of his son-in-law, Samuel Governeur, Esq. This event had been for some time. expected, and was several days previous to his death momentarily looked for. His spirit, however, was permitted to linger in the body until his country's birthday came round; and he departed. while a grateful nation, for whose independence he had fought and bled—a nation which venerated him while living, and which

B

hallows his memory now as in the foremost rank of its benefactors -was holding its jubilee! Thus, by a coincidence for which it would be difficult to find a parallel in history, three patriots of the revolution, who had successively graced the presidential chair, were called away to a more permanent state of existence on the glorious anniversary of the independence which they had so zealously laboured to achieve. The death of James Monroe on the 4th of July, 1831, completed the threefold miracle that was doubtless intended to convince the most skeptical of the divine superintendence of that providence which raised up these three statesmen and patriots for the purpose of achieving the work of independence. "Did this event stand single in our annals," says an orator of much deserved celebrity, "were it unconnected in our memories with the deaths, on a former anniversary of the same glorious day, of two of his illustrious predecessors,—even then a similar removal of the deceased would have been deemed admonitory, and would have commanded a solemn and appropriate notice. But following, as it does, that signal union in their flight from this world of the immortal spirits of Adams and Jefferson, the departure of Monroe must impress us with an awful sense of a divine interposition, and awaken a lively gratitude for the favour and protection of an overruling providence.”

On the 15th of July the Potomac, in conformity to orders, sailed from Hampton-Roads for the port of New-York, for the purpose of completing her outfits of all kinds, and also to receive her commander on board; who, having received his orders from the department, was nearly ready to take the immediate command. Nothing material occurred during the passage of the frigate to New-York. On Wednesday, the 20th of July, she was announced by telegraph as being anchored outside the bar, waiting for a fair wind to enter the harbour. On the following day she proceeded up the bay in gallant style, and came to anchor off the Battery, in the Hudson river.

Although it was for some time intended that the Potomac should proceed from New-York to England, in order to convey our newly-appointed minister, the Honourable Martin Van Buren, to the court of St. James as before stated, this arrangement, it will be seen, was ultimately abandoned, and Mr. Van Buren proceeded to England in the regular packet-ship President, which

sailed on the 9th of August; while new and additional orders were issued from the navy department, which totally changed the intended course of the Potomac, and sent her round the southern cape of the opposite continent.

On the 4th of August the United States frigate Hudson, Captain Cassin, arrived in New-York from Rio Janeiro, via Bahia, having left the latter place on the 2d of July. There were now three commanders' pennants floating over the waters of this port; viz. the blue of Commodore Chauncey, who commanded the station; the red of Commodore Downes, who commanded the Potomac ; and the white of Commodore Cassin, who commanded the Hudson;-blue, red, and white being the order of the navy.

About the middle of July information was received in the United States of the piratical attack which had been made upon the ship Friendship, of Salem, on the coast of Sumatra, in the month of February preceding; the Malays having treacherously seized that vessel, and massacred part of her crew, who were receiving on board a cargo of pepper. The particulars of this unparalleled outrage on the United States flag and the lives and property of her citizens, will be given in detail in its proper place, where a chapter shall be devoted exclusively to the subject. The public were unanimous in calling for a redress of such an atrocious grievance, and the Potomac was now designated by government to perform that service instead of proceeding directly to her original destination. The route of the frigate to her station in the Pacific, as contemplated in the previous instructions, was therefore immediately changed, that measures might be promptly and effectually taken to punish so outrageous an act of piracy; Mr. Van Buren having, for this purpose, magnanimously relinquished his purpose of taking passage in the frigate, as the landing him in England would delay her arrival at the scene of this perfidious attack.

Messrs. Silsbee, Pickman, and Stone, of Salem, addressed a letter to Washington, dated on the 20th July, 1831, requesting that measures might be adopted by government for the punishment of the offenders in the case of the Friendship; but before this letter had reached Washington, arrangements for that purpose had been put in progress by the secretary of the navy on the 19th of that month, and a letter written to Salem on the subject on