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Maryland State Archives Baltimore's claims for expenses incurred during the War of 1812 msa_s931_3-0010 Enlarge and print image (669K) |
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Maryland State Archives Baltimore's claims for expenses incurred during the War of 1812 msa_s931_3-0010 Enlarge and print image (669K) |
| 6 [Doc. No. 39.] Your memorialists beg leave to state to your honorable body, thai nearly S"i000 of the rejected amount is the difference between seamen's wages, at sixteen dollars per month, and 1 lie pay of militiamen, at eight dollars per mouth. Your memorialists were compelled, from their peculiar situation, in the year 1813, to employ, as means of defence, barges and look-out boats ; and it will be within the recollection of your honorable body, that this species of defence was sanctioned and approved by the Government, who subsequently established, in the succeeding year, a flotilla, under the command of Commodore Barney, for the defence of tlie Chesapeake and its tributary waters. Those barges and look-out boats having been advised and recommended by the officers commanding at Baltimore, it became necessary to man them, and as thai port was blockaded by the enemy, and the seamen were constantly lea\ing it for the neighboring ports of Philadelphia and New York, where they could get employment, your memorialists were obliged to pay tlieui the same wages they could have obtained at those places, and did so accordingly. When this item came before the Secretary of War, he did not reject it upon the grounds that the expenditure was unnecessary, or not called for, but declared that ho could not. under the law by which he must be governed, allow them more wages than were provided for soldiers or militia-men, and accordingly rejected so much of the amount as exceeded eight dollars per month. However proper it may have heen, and undoubtedly was. for the Secretary of War, acting under the provisions *>f laws which he was bound to obey, to reject the claim of your mc-morialistsj they humbly conceive that, if your honorahle body should he satislied of the necessity of the expenditure, and that the'mouey was not wastefully. but, on the contrary, judiciously applied, they will not hesitate to direct its being refunded with interest. Your memorialists beg leave respectfully to state to your honorable body, thai, although the' proofs of the disbursements made by the city of Baltimore were not such as would justify the Secretary of War in passing them as vouchers, yet they were sufficient to satisfy him that the whole, amount claimed"had been actually expended in the defence of the citv, over and above a heavy amount of voluntary contributions. And "when your honorable hod'y consider that the citizens of Baltimore made many sacrifices, (if am thing can be called a sacrifice v hen the rights of our country are at slake :) that 1hey garrisoned the forts in the neighborhood with their volunteer artillery and infantry; thatthev erected works and fortifications, and performed many other duties as soldiers, before they were called inlotlic public service and pay of the United Stales, and for which they never received, nor claimed, or expected compensation : that these sen ices and the defence which thev afterwards made, were greatly instrumental in the preservation of their own citv. and. thereby, of other cities of the Union, from the devastation threatened bv 1 he"enemy along our sea-boards ; and that their Committee of Vigilance and Safety, through whose hands the mono borrowed bv your memorialists passed, were unacquainted with the niode of keeping' accounts as prescribed by the offices at Washing- |