USS Constellation on the Dismal Coast
(University Press of South Carolina, 2013)
On the threshold of the Civil War, the 22-gun sloop USS Constellation (now a museum ship in Baltimore) was sent as flagship of the U.S. Navy's African Squadron, with the mission of interdicting slave ships from the West African coast. Young Bostonian William Leonard's journal describes in vivid detail his life as an American sailor on such a mission.