Read Online A Call to Arms by William C. Hammond - Free Book Online Page B

Diana, who remarked with smug satisfaction, “Tommy Preston got his backside paddled good and hard by Mr. Evans. He was so mean to Debbie Patterson that he made her cry. He’s always doing that. He hates girls. He had it coming.”
    â€œI’m sure he did,” Katherine mused, recalling a similar incident when Will first attended the school. Derby Academy, which opened in 1791 asthe first coeducational private elementary school in the country, was still very much an experiment. “You girls get some hot chocolate and then come back in and warm up by the fire.”
    â€œThank you, Mrs. Cutler,” Mindy sang out as the two laughing girls raced to the kitchen.
    Jamie watched them go, then said, “Father, here’s a thought.” He folded his playing cards on the table; Will followed suit. “You want to sail to Portsmouth to inspect your ship, don’t you?” His father nodded. “Well, I want to accept Captain Preble’s invitation to visit him in Portland. You read his last letter. He’s quite anxious to meet you. Why don’t we combine the two trips into one?”
    Richard gave that notion only a moment’s thought. “That’s a capital idea, Jamie. I’ll write Captain Preble today and try to arrange a visit for mid-April. This cursed snow should have melted by then, even in Maine.”
    F EBRUARY AND M ARCH crept by at an intolerably slow pace. That naval action was taking place across the Atlantic while he sat shore-bound on the other side was unacceptable to Richard. The Navy Department dispatch that confirmed a midshipman’s berth for James Hardcastle Cutler in USS Constitution under the command of Capt. Edward Preble was some comfort. The dispatch that confirmed the promotion of Agreen Crabtree to the rank of first lieutenant, to serve in USS Portsmouth under the command of Capt. Richard Cutler, actually made him smile.
    The Boston newspapers offered some comfort as well. The Federalists were outraged that President Jefferson had allowed American sailors and Marines to sail into harm’s way in the Mediterranean without proper support and without the authority to engage an enemy that had declared war on the United States. Commodore Dale’s squadron was impotent to do much beyond a halfhearted blockade of Tripoli’s harbor. It was, the Boston press jibed, more a “squadron of observation” than a fighting force. Thus far, to what Richard privately confessed to Agreen came as a relief, there had been only one meaningful naval engagement: a single-ship action between Master Commandant Andrew Sterrett, captain of the 12-gun sloop of war Enterprise, and a more heavily armed Tripolitan corsair. Sterrett had taken the corsair as a prize, claiming after the fact that he was in compliance with the president’s orders to retaliate only if attacked. Dale had refused to convene a court of inquiry to investigate the incident despite a storm of protest raging from the bashaw’s castle in Tripoli.
    Jefferson, for his part, continued to insist that he had sent Dale’s squadron to the Mediterranean to chastise the bashaw of Tripoli, not to bribe him—or any other Barbary ruler who might also have a mind to challenge the United States. He had stated publicly that while America would pay ransom money to free captured American sailors, under no circumstances would the nation pay tribute to any Barbary state. And he was flexing American military muscle strictly on his own authority. Congress had been neither consulted nor informed about any of his decisions.
    â€œIs that legal?” Agreen asked one sunny April day when he and Richard finished reading an editorial on the subject.
    Richard folded the paper. “I have no idea, Agee,” he replied. “At the moment the answer probably depends on who you ask. I’m no constitutional scholar, but my understanding is that only Congress has the power to declare war. But if