American Union

YANKEE FIGHTING.

The Memoirs of Sir Charles James Napier, just published in England, contains many passages interesting to Americans. We select a couple of paragraphs:

When at Bermuda, in 1813, with his regiment, Col. Napier, writing to his mother says:—Two packets are due, and we fear they have been taken, for the Yankees swarm here; and when a frigate goes out to drive them off, by Jove they take her! Yankees fight well, and are gentlemen in their mode of warfare. Decatur refused Cardon's sword, saying, 'Sir you have used it so well, I should be ashamed to take it from you.' These Yankees, though so much abused, are really fine fellows.—One, an acquaintance of mine, has just got the Macedonian, he was here a prisoner, and dined with me: he had taken one of our ships, but was himself captured by the Poictiers, seventy-four, being now in an English frigate, if he meets us we must take him, or we are no longer sovereign on the ocean."

From Bermuda Charles Napier sailed for America, and become engaged in some of the daring and disastrous operations carried on against the Americans by the Government over which King George III exercised a despotic power. The bush method of warfare struck him as cowardly, and as for the system of loading cannon to the mouth with odds and ends of old iron, it was his abhorrence:—'Seven thousand men are at Baltimore, and have no such force; still my opinion is, that if we tuck up our sleeves and lay our ears back we may thrash them, that is, if we caught them out of their trees, so as to slap at them with the bayonet. They will not stand that. But they fight unfairly, firing jagged pieces of iron and every sort of devilment, nails, broken pokers old locks of guns, gun-barrels, and every-thing that will do mischief. On board a twenty gun ship that we took, I found this sort of ammunition regularly prepared. This is wrong. Man delights to be killed according to the law of nations; and nothing so pleasant or correct; but to be doused against all rule is quite offensive. We don't then kick like gentleman, A 24lb shot in the stomach is fine; we die heroically; but a brass candlestick for stuffing, with a garnishing of rusty two-penny nails makes us die ungentlely, and with the cholic.