USS Constellation on the Dismal Coast

This seaman’s journal recounts a twenty-month voyage from Boston to the African coast to intercept slave-trading vessels as America approach the Civil War. Today the twenty-gun sloop USS Constellation is a floating museum in Baltimore Harbor; in 1859 it was an emblem of the global power of the American sailing navy. William E. Leonard served aboard the Constellation during a crucial and eventful period, chronicling it all in this remarkable journal. Sailing from Boston, the Constellation, flagsh