Chesapeake Leopard Incident Question's

               I think that the Chesapeake, an American warship, did the right choice in telling the HMS Leopard, a British warship, that he did not want to return back the four sailor that abandoned ships. I think that the Chesapeake captain knew that the sailors that had supposedly abandoned the Leopard were a false and that the four men had just left. If the captain of the Chesapeake would have given up the four sailors then he would be giving up to the British and it would also have been his four men. The British should have gotten proof to show that these four men had actually joined the Chesapeake warship. I think that the incident would have been different if they were further out at sea due to the fact that the Chesapeake would have never made it back to the shore, it barely made it when it was close to the shore. I think that it should have cause the America to declare war because the British had broken the Treaty of Paris.

                If the Americans had the military more prepared then surely we would have declared war and got the four American sailors back from the British. Also if America was more economically stable they could have gone to war; however, they had no money and could not fight without adding more debt to the nation. The British still thought they were in power or still had control over American in which they would kidnap American sailors from the eastern sea board since the end of the revolution. The Americans should be upset and fight against the British in which declaring war to get their men back form their grasp. It would make a difference that the British still had not left the fort that they occupied on the Mississippi River since the French and Indian war due to the fact that the British were still on the American soil and could attack them on land and sea. The British still had some type of control of the Americas even if the nation stated they were free.

                The British had the right in demanding the return of their sailors if they had abandon ship and joined the American navy because the men were from there crew and they had been fighting for their side but all of a sudden the men had sided with the enemy. If the sailors were to return I think that they do not have the right to be taken back even if it was by force and they needed it because they have been traders. The British do not know if they the men had told the Americans (the enemy) any vital information about the British army. I don’t think that the American captain and navy can be held responsible for harboring fugitives from the British navy because it was just an assumption that the four men had went to the American navy. I think that the situation was not handled correctly and it is not worth a war due to the fact that the British did not show any proof that the men had joined the American navy. I think that the justice in this situation is that the Americas would ask for paper work or something to show that four men had joined their army and if it would show that there were some British men then they should give back those men. However, the British should not just take four men at random because those men are Americans.