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- Conduct and Character of Lieut. Edward W. Carpender
Conduct and Character of Lieut. Edward W. Carpender, During the Short Period of his Services on Board of the U.S. Ship John Adams, in the Years 1831 & 1832.
Anon.
( 1834), n.p.
23.5 cm. 19 pp.
Price: $125
This is the answer to an earlier pamphlet, part of a pissing contest between Lt. Carpender and his CO, Capt. Voorhees, aboard the “John Adams” on a Med. cruise in 1831, over a group of musicians taken onboard as the ship’s band. They (some of whom, it was later discovered, were deserters) didn’t like Carpender, and Carpender didn’t like them. They were discharged and sent ashore in the ship’s boats. Somehow, all of this led to a court martial, resulting in Carpender’s dismissal. “We might have left him to the cuttings of his own conscience,” writes the anonymous author of this pamphlet, “had he not, on his return home, in the silly conceit of himself as a sea lawyer, had the audacity to attempt to make the worse appear the better cause, by imposing on the world a pamphlet full of false assertions…” Some of these sorts of pamphlet wars produced valuable information. The main takeaway from this one is how petty these guys could be when they had too much time on their hands. Carpender went on to a successful naval career, servincg in three wars up to his reitirement in 1865, but the period 1831-32 is omitted in his online biography. Foxed throughout, stab sewn as issued, with traces of an old heavy wrapper still attached. Rare. No holdings on Worldcat.
