The political slogan "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights" became popular as the United States entered the War of 1812 (1812-15). It represented in succinct form the two main maritime grievances that the United States had against Great Britain. "Free Trade" referred to the call for unimpeded neutral trade by U.S. merchant vessels while Britain and France were at war. In the years leading up to the War of 1812, both countries had sought to limit this trading with measures such as the Essex decision and the Orders in Council by the British and the Berlin Decree and Milan Decree issued by the French. "Sailor's Rights" referred to the right of sailors to contract for themselves as merchant seamen, and that once they did so, they should be protected from being seized and forced to serve in the British navy through impressment.

Captain David Porter was the first person to use the phrase when he raised a banner with the words Free Trade and Sailors' Rights from the masthead of the Essex in autumn 1812. Soon it gained widespread use by both the political and maritime community. Henry Clay proclaimed "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights" in the halls of Congress, and it appeared in several publications in support of the war. Other warships and privateers also flew a pennant with the slogan from a mast, including Captain James Lawrence aboard the ill-fated USS Chesapeake when he left Boston in May 1813 to fight the HMS Shannon. Common seamen took the slogan and made it their own. When sailor prisoners of war at Dartmoor prison heard of the Treaty of Ghent (1814), they were hopeful that they would soon be released. Confident that both impressment and limitations on U.S. commerce had been ended by the treaty--which officially did not deal with either issue--they raised a U.S. flag and a pennant proclaiming "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights" over the British compound.

For many years thereafter, the slogan would appear occasionally as a statement not only of sailors' rights but of the rights of the poor. Day laborers in New York City struck for higher wages in 1816 and used a banner with the slogan on it. Whalers etched the phrase on whalebone for decades. As late as 1840, banners appeared in election campaigns proclaiming "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights."

Bibliography:

Paul A. Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)

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