ABSTRACT
The numerous biographers of Paul Jones do not agree in their estimates of the motives that prompted the Commodore to let the Alliance go so easily when he had in his hands full power to stop her, at all hazards. Most of them take the view that he was actuated wholly by impulses of humanity; that he knew or believed Landais, backed and encouraged as he was by Arthur Lee, would make the effort to get out in defiance of the French authorities; that if he should do so Thevenard would open on him with the one hundred and thirty-eight heavy guns of the Barrier Forts, some of which were sixty-eight pounders, and as they commanded the narrow channel at close range, such a fire must tear the little frigate to pieces in five minutes; and that it would be better to submit to the wrong done by two men than to subdue them by measures calculated to destroy more than two hundred men who had done no wrong. This view we think reason2able, and it is borne out by Jones's own records of the affair presented in the foregoing pages.
