Excerpt from The Life of Silas Talbot: A Commodore in the Navy of the United States The following memoir was intended for the series of American Biography edited by President Sparks. Owing to the suspension of that valuable work, and at the suggestion of its accomplished editor, the present sketch appears in a separate volume. In preparing it, I have been actuated by a desire to ren der justice to a highly efficient and patriotic American officer, and, at the same time, to preserve some of the incidents and corre spondence which belong to that period of our country's annals, to which the flight of time only adds new significance and interest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.