To James Madison from Jabez W. Heustis, 3 January 1816
From Jabez W. Heustis
New York January 3rd., 1816
Sir
Permit me to claim your attention for a moment to a subject, to which equity, impartiality and honour, cannot fail to give a candid hearing.
Your Exelency and Congress have been duly impressed with a sense of the important acquisition which the honour of our Country has derived from the heroic achievements, and the glorious victories, affected by the valour of our intrepid Navy, and have justly & generously confered upon deserving merit, the honour and reward to which it was entitled.
But pardon the liberty I take in requesting a small share of attention to the valient and successful exploits of the Army. Whilst the officers of the Navy have grown rich, those of the Army have been impoverished and neglected.
Your Exelency no doubt recollects the gallant and victorious achievement of the little band of patriots under the command of Col Wm Lawrence at Mobile Point on the 15th of Sept 1814, where a forc of one hundred men, defeated seven ships and sunk one of them, and put to flight a land force of 400 British and Indians. And yet the officers and men have never been rewarded for this signal victory.1 Is there a similar instance of naval valour and success, in which the victors have not recived a pecuniary reward? I conclude that I have said sufficient to convince your Exelency of the justice of the claim, and therefore conclude. I have the honour to be Sir With the greates[t] respect Your Humble and most obt Servant
J W Heustis MD2
Late Surgeon of the
2nd Regt of
U States Infantry.
RC (DNA: RG 107, LRRS, H-8:9). Docketed as received in the War Department in January 1816.
1. For the Battle of Fort Bowyer, see William C. C. Claiborne to JM, 22 Sept. 1814, 8:235, 236 n. 2. In response to a petition from Lawrence, Congress passed “An Act for the relief of Lieutenant-Colonel William Lawrence, …” on 5 Mar. 1816, which provided that the U.S. officers and soldiers who fought in the battle should be paid “the same sum, as prize money, as would be allowed if the sloop of war Hermes, belonging to the enemy, had been captured by an equal naval force” (Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Fourteenth Congress [Washington, D.C., 1815; 39485], 87–88; 6:159).
2. Jabez Wiggins Heustis (1784–1841) was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. He was an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Navy, 1806–7, and graduated from the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1812. Appointed a surgeon in the Second Regiment of Infantry of the U.S. Army on 2 Apr. 1814, he served under Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson, resigning on 31 Mar. 1815. He returned to the army as a post surgeon, 1817–19. His published works include Physical Observations, and Medical Tracts and Researches, on the Topography and Diseases of Louisiana (New York, 1817); Medical Facts and Inquiries, Respecting the Causes, Nature, Prevention and Cure of Fever: More Expressly in Relation to the Endemic Fevers of Summer and Autumn in the Southern States; Together with a History of the Bilious Remitting Fever of Alabama, as It Appeared in Cahawba and Its Vicinity in the Summers and Autumns of 1821 and 1822 (Cahawba, Ala., 1825); and Eulogy on the Life, Services and Character of Gen. Lafayette: The Advocate of Liberty, and the Benefactor of the United States (Selma, Ala., 1834). Heustis died at Talladega Springs, Alabama, from blood poisoning contracted while performing an operation (Kelly and Burrage, American Medical Biographies, 522; 1:527).