Honor was also due the plucky little _Levant_, which, instead of taking to her heels, stood by to assist her larger comrade like a terrier at the throat of a wolf.

It is interesting to note that the captains, English and American, had received word that peace had been declared, but without official confirmation they preferred to ignore it.

The spirit which lent to naval warfare the spirit of the duel was too strong to let the opportunity pass.
The _President_ was a victim of a continually increased naval strength by means of which Great Britain was able to strangle the seafaring trade and commerce of the United States as the war drew toward its close.
Captain Decatur, who had taken command of this frigate, remarked "the great apprehension and danger" which New York felt, in common with the entire seaboard, and the anxiety of the city government that the crew of the ship should remain for defense of the port.

Coastwise navigation was almost wholly suspended, and thousands of sloops and schooners feared to undertake voyages to Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Charleston.

Instead of these, canvas-covered wagons struggled over the poor highways in continuous streams between New England and the Southern coast towns.
This awkward result of the blockade moved the sense of humor of the Yankee rhymsters who placarded the wagons with such mottoes as "Free Trade and Oxen's Rights" and parodied _Ye Mariners of England_ with the lines: Ye wagoners of Freedom Whose chargers chew the cud, Whose wheels have braved a dozen years The gravel and the mud; Your glorious hawbucks yoke again To take another jag, And scud through the mud Where the heavy wheels do drag, Where the wagon creak is long and low And the jaded oxen lag.
Columbia needs no wooden walls, No ships where billows swell; Her march is like a terrapin's, Her home is in her shell.
To guard her trade and sailor's rights, In woods she spreads her flag.
Such ribald nonsense, however, was unfair to a navy which had done magnificently well until smothered and suppressed by sheer weight of numbers.