I say anything to warrant you in supposing I was not engaged in it. I simply declared that there was nothing on board except what was on the manifest, and that I insist there was nothing suspicious on it. I will now say, as the vessel is 1,000 miles from here, that she was as unfit for a voyage to import negroes as any vessel in port. . . . What she may hereafter do is another matter. . . . John Boston had her detained because he says he knew she would be engaged in the trade, and had heard that from men who confessed that they were eavesdroppers, who hung around my windows to listen to all conversations that took place. . . . Tam coming on to bore you in person unless you will yield to my short epistles.”
That to an officer who had sworn he would execute the laws!
We find in a letter of November 7th, of the same year, to N. C. Trowbridge, of New Orleans, that the venture went awry. The letter reads:
"I am truly glad to find that Grant [the slave captain] is at least honest. He has acted badly and sacrificed our interest most shamefully. His clearance papers would have taken him anywhere he wanted to go, unmolested. . . . He knew the vessel was fitted for nothing else but the trade, and ought to have known we would want to send her back. . . . Why did he not go to the Coast? He knew before he undertook the command that there were armed vessels on the Coast, and a number of them. He ought to have known that he was running no risk — that the captain and crew are always discharged. The captain of the Albert Devereux was here the other day. The British cruisers even let him take his gold. If Grant
