Background
The Little Belt Affair occurred four years after the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair of 1807, in which HMS Leopard had overcome USS Chesapeake, killing three, wounding eighteen, and putting four of its sailors on trial for desertion. It was fifteen days after an incident involving HMS Guerriere, a frigate. On May 1 the Guerriere had stopped the brig USS Spitfire off Sandy Hook in New Jersey. It had impressed Maine citizen John Diggio, the apprentice sailing master of the Spitfire. The Secretary of the Navy, Paul Hamilton, had ordered the President, along with USS Argus, to patrol the coastal areas from the Carolinas to New York.
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