Sea of Glory

Rebecca Krug were married in Lancaster; Reynolds’s sister Lydia was a bridesmaid. Almost immediately following the ceremony, the couple was on their way to New York City to spend their honeymoon at Wilkes’s court-martial.
    Upshur had ordered that Wilkes must return to Washington and retrieve the requested journals and documents before the trial could begin, but Wilkes’s counsel Philip Hamilton claimed that the secretary’s order required his client “to produce evidence to be used against himself on the trial, contrary to all the rules of law and evidence.” The long journey to Washington and back would also “deprive him of his right to a speedy trial.” Besides, Wilkes had already sent “a confidential agent” to Washington to obtain the journals, which should be arriving in New York in the next few days. Reluctantly, the court agreed to continue with the trial.
    Reynolds was dismayed that Guillou’s charges against Wilkes and their myriad specifications were as long-winded and disorganized as his defence had been. When read in the courtroom, they made for a confusing litany of accusations: illegally attacking natives, excessively punishing sailors and marines, falsely claiming to have seen Antarctica, dressing as a captain, flying a commodore’s pennant, refusing to forward Guillou’s letters to the secretary of the navy, along with a host of other allegations. “We all regret that Guillou’s charges were so wordy, ” Reynolds wrote his father. “We think he has weakened his grounds very much. We would have been better satisfied had he stuck to the Strongest part of his known wrongs, & let other matters alone. There are some errors in his dates, also, which entirely destroy some & weaken other specifications.” Luckily, Pinkney had kept his charges brief and to the point, and Reynolds was confident that they “can all be proved.”
    On the second day of the trial, Wilkes reported that after a thorough search of his home, the man he had sent to Washington had returned with only a few of the requested logs and none of the documents. He was now certain that he had forwarded the papers to the Navy Department when the Expedition was still at sea. When Guillou testified that he knew for a fact that the documents were not in the department’s files, Wilkes’s counsel turned the surgeon’s testimony against him by asking how he had gained such an intimate knowledge of the Navy Department. Guillou had no choice but to admit that he had spent close to two weeks at the department under the orders of the secretary of the navy “to furnish the Judge Advocate with information upon the subject of the accusations I had made against Lieutenant Wilkes.” When one of the court’s judges voiced his concern about possible “collusion between the Secretary of the Navy, the Judge Advocate, and Doctor Guillou, in preparing the charges,” even Wilkes’s detractors had to admit that the Navy Department had lent credence to his claims that a nefarious cabal had tried, and was continuing to try, to undermine him and the Expedition.
    The case against Wilkes began to look even more suspect when the judge advocate appeared the following morning with one of the disputed log books under his arm and shamefacedly admitted that he had had it all along. Du Pont now wished for a “riper lawyer” in the role of judge advocate. Many in the courtroom—both behind the bench and in the gallery—were annoyed that the judge advocate had not stricken the charges related to the actions taken against natives at Fiji and elsewhere. Just about every officer in the Expedition, including Reynolds, felt that while these measures had been lamentable, they had been completely justified. Wilkes’s instructions had stated that, unless it was a case of self-defense, he should refrain from any violent encounters. When the judge advocate asked Lieutenant Robert Johnson if the attack on Malolo “was necessary for self defense,” he heatedly responded, “It was not self-defense. I was ordered to go on shore to revenge my messmates, who were murdered at the island before our arrival.”
    Wilkes’s attorney Philip Hamilton recognized an opportunity to win sympathy for his client. George Emmons was asked to describe what he found when he first landed at Malolo. “On arriving there we found the bodies of Lieutenant Underwood and Midshipman Henry on the beach, close to the water. Midshipman Henry was entirely naked, and Lieutenant