337
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1856
that I have performed seventeen years and eight months' sea service, which is within two months of as much sea service as has been performed by the conimoclore who acted as presiding officer of the naval retiring board, though that gentleman entered the navy exactly two years before I was born; and I can also show, by the same register, that I have performed more sea service than twenty-six of the post-cavtains, and seventy-nine of the comnW,nders, whose names are there registered." Is this an ordinary case? No; it is an extraordinary one. Here a gallant man is struck down. The eloquence in which he describes his emotions can receive no additions from me. His language is the expression of a wounded heart, suffer- ing under the pangs of wounded honor and lacerated feelings. It requires no embellishment. It has the bright embellishment of truth, prompted in its utterance by wounded honor. I will ask the honorable chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs if this is not a case for the interposition of Congress? How will you reach it? Through the action of the President? If he had an opportunity to restore him to. position and favor, would the naval . board acquiesce in it? No, sir; they would not. It would be a reflection on their judgment and on their action; it would com- promise their honor, and the infallibility of their omnipotent judgment! He has no chance but through the interposition of Congress. Hundreds are in a similar situation. Will you permit them to remain the degraded victims of personal hate, and spite, and envy, and jealousy-down-trodden, pointed at by their com- panions in life as disrated men? Every avenue to success is shut against them. They have no opportunity of making their way through life; for, if they are retired, or furloughed, or dropped- no matter though they were the souls of honor-no underwriter will underwrite for any vessel with these gentlemen on board as officers. No, sir; they are shut out. The insurance companies have adopted a rule, as I have been assured by gentlemen who took the pains to examine, that they will not underwrite a vessel on which one of these officers is employed. If they had originally chosen to follow their profession, and obtain employment in the merchant marine of the United States, they would have found no impediment to their future success; but here every barrier is interposed by the action of this board-I will not say judgment of this board, for I believe judgment had nothing to do with it. I believe it was either caprice, or whim, or jealousy, or preju- dice, or hatred, or envy; and that the higher impulses of the human heart, and the more generous motives of the soul, which
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