Page:A legal review of the case of Dred Scott, as decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.djvu/63



that part of the foregoing review which relates to the citizenship of free negroes was printed, our attention has been directed to the case of the seamen taken out of the American frigate Chesapeake, by the British ship of war Leopard in 1807, which was the beginning of the difficulty between the United States and Great Britain, that ultimately led to the war of 1812. The committee of the House of Representatives, to whom the subject was referred, reported to the house "that it has been incontestably proven, as the accompanying printed document No. 8 will show, that "three of the men taken (naming them) "are citizens of the United States." By the document referred to, it appears that two of these three men were colored, one of them the child of a female slave, and who had himself formerly been held as a slave. See Report of the Committee, pp. 31–36, 43, 44, 49. President Jefferson, in his proclamation interdicting our harbors and waters to British armed vessels, issued immediately after the outrage, said:—"That no circumstance might be wanting to mark its character, it had been previously ascertained that the seamen demanded were native citizens of the United States." p. 6. This proclamation was countersigned by Mr. Madison, then Secretary of State. Mr. Madison, in his letter to Mr. Monroe, then the minister of the United States at London, instructing him to demand reparation of the British govermentgovernment [sic], dwells upon the fact that the men were citizens of the United States; and Mr. Monroe, in his formal demand upon the British government, said:—"I have the honor to transmit you documents which will, I presume, satisfy you that they were American citizens." Correspondence between Mr. Madison, Mr. Monroe, and Mr. Canning, on the subject of the attack on the Chesapeake, pp. 6, 10, 27. All the above references are to the public documents printed by order of the House of