The Case of Lieut. Cox

The House Armed Services Committee received an unusual assignment: in effect, it had to fight over again one of the celebrated naval actions of the War of 1812--the capture of the U.S. frigate Chesapeake by the British frigate Shannon, off Boston Harbor. The American hero in that encounter was Captain James ("Don't give up the ship!") Lawrence. The villain, according to a later Navy court-martial, was 3rd Lieut. William S. Cox. Last week the House Committee had a resolution before it that would reverse the verdict against Cox.

In the thick of battle, as the British prepared to board the Chesapeake, the third lieutenant helped carry the dying captain below. Technically, as next in command (the senior non-wounded officer), Cox should have remained on deck. For this dereliction of duty he was subsequently discharged from the service in disgrace.

Soon afterward, naval historians began to doubt Cox's guilt, wondered if he had been made a scapegoat for a sorry U.S. defeat. Arguments in the third lieutenant's favor: the Chesapeake was fresh from refitting, manned by a green crew. Just before she sailed out to meet the Shannon, many of her men were drunk. The court-martial testimony showed that Cox, who was 23, fought his guns bravely until the crews deserted; then, cutlass in hand, he rushed up on deck to repel the boarders. Cox probably did not realize he was in command when he helped Captain Lawrence below deck.

Cox's descendants have been campaigning ever since to clear his record. His son, William Cox, was expelled from Lafayette College for striking a professor who called his father a coward, according to the family. Half a century ago, an unsuccessful effort was made to get Congress to reverse the court-martial verdict. When Theodore Roosevelt, in his Naval War of 1812, said that Lieut. Cox had acted "basely," one of Cox's descendants protested so vigorously that Roosevelt apologized, and corrected his account in a later edition.

Just before World War II, Electus D. Litchfield, a Manhattan architect who is Cox's great-grandson, appealed to President Franklin Roosevelt, who proved sympathetic but without any legal power to reverse the 1814 court-martial. Two years ago Litchfield persuaded Georgia's Representative Eugene Cox (no kin) to introduce a resolution restoring William Cox to the rank of third lieutenant as of his death in 1874. This was the resolution before the House Armed Services Committee last week. The outlook is that Litchfield, now 80, and 30-odd other descendants may see the family name cleared by this session of Congress.

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