Naval Affairs (concluded).--Excitement in the Northern States on the
Appearance of our Cruisers.--Failure of the Enemy to protect their
Commerce.--Appeal to Europe not to help the So-called "Pirates."--
Seeks Iron-plated Vessels in England.--Statement of Lord Russell.--
What is the Duty of Neutrals?--Position taken by President
Washington.--Letter of Mr. Jefferson.--Contracts sought by United
States Government.--Our Cruisers went to Sea unarmed.--Mr. Adams
asserts that British Neutrality was violated.--Reply of Lord
Russell.--Rejoinder of Mr. Seward.--Duty of Neutrals relative to
Warlike Stores.--Views of Wheaton; of Kent.--Charge of the Lord
Chief Baron in the Alexandra Case.--Action of the Confederate
Government sustained.--Antecedents of the United States
Government.--The Colonial Commissions.--Build and equip Ships in
Europe.--Captain Conyngham's Captures.--Made Prisoner.--
Retaliation.--Numbers of Captures.--Recognition of Greece.--
Recognition of South American Cruisers.--Chief Act of Hostility
charged on Great Britain by the United States Government.--The
Queen's Proclamation: its Effect.--Cause of the United States
Charges.--Never called us Belligerents.--Why not?--Adopts a
Fiction. The Reason.--Why denounce our Cruisers as "Pirates"?--
Opinion of Justice Greer.--Burning of Prizes.--Laws of Maritime
War.--Cause of the Geneva Conference.--Statement of American
Claims.--Allowance.--Indirect Damages of our Cruisers.--Ships
transferred to British Registers.--Decline of American Tonnage.--
Decline of Export of Breadstuffs.--Advance of Insurance.
The excitement produced in the Northern States by the effective
operations of our cruisers upon their commerce was such as to receive
the attention of the United States Government. Reasonably, it might
have been expected that they would send their ships of war out on the
high-seas to protect their commerce by capturing or driving off our
light cruisers, but, instead of this, their fleets were employed in
blockading the Confederate ports, or watching those in the West
Indies, from which blockade-runners were expected to sail, and, by
capturing which, either on the high-seas or at the entrance of a
Confederate port, a harvest of prizes might be secured. For this
dereliction of duty, in the failure to protect commerce, no better
reason offers itself than greed and malignity. There was, however, in
this connection, a more humiliating feature in the conduct of the
United States Government.
While, from its State Department, the Confederacy was denounced as an
insurrection soon to be suppressed, and the cruisers, regularly
commissioned by the Confederate States, were called "pirates,"
diplomatic demands were made upon Great Britain to prevent the
so-called "pirates" from violating international law, as if it
applied to pirates. Appeals to that Government were also made to
prevent the sale of the materials of war to the Confederacy, and thus
indirectly to aid the United States in performing what, according to
the representation, was a police duty, to suppress a combination of
some evil-disposed persons--gallantly claiming that they, armed
_cap-a-pie_, should meet their adversary in the list, he to be
without helmet, shield, or lance.
To one who from youth to age had seen, with exultant pride, the flag
of his country as it unfolded, disclosing to view the stripes
recordant of the original size of the family of States, and the
Constellation, which told of that family's growth, it could but be
deeply mortifying to witness such paltry exhibition of deception and
unmanliness in the representatives of a Government around which fond
memories still linger, despite the perversion of which it was the
subject.
If this attempt, on the part of the United States, to deny the
existence of war after having, by proclamation of blockade, compelled
all nations to take notice that war did exist, and to claim that
munitions should not be sold to a country because there were some
disorderly people in it, had been all, the attempt would have been
ludicrously absurd, and the contradiction too bald to require
refutation; but this would have been but half of the story.
Subsequently the United States Government claimed reclamation from
Great Britain for damage inflicted by vessels which had been built in
her ports, and which had elsewhere been armed and equipped for
purposes of war. International law recognizes the right of a neutral
to sell an unarmed vessel, without reference to the use to which the
purchaser might subsequently apply it. The United States Government
had certainly not practiced under a different rule, but had gone even
further than this--so much further as to transgress the prohibition
against armed vessels.
It has already been stated that the Government of the United States,
at the commencement of the war, sought to contract for the
construction of iron-plated vessels in the ports of England, which
were to be delivered fully armed and equipped to her. To this it may
be added that her armies were recruited from almost all the countries
of Europe, down almost to the last month of the war; a portion of
their arms were of foreign manufacture, as well as the munitions of
war; a large number of the sailors of her fleets came from the
seaports of Great Britain and Germany; in a word, whatever could be
of service to her in the conflict was unhesitatingly sought among
neutrals, regardless of the law of nations. At the same time an
effort was made on her part to make Great Britain responsible for the
damage done by our cruisers, and for the warlike stores sold to our
Government.
Some statements of Lord Russell on this point, in a letter to
Minister Adams, dated December 19, 1862, deserve notice. He says:
"It is right, however, to observe that the party which has profited
by far the most by these unjustifiable practices, has been the
Government of the United States, because that Government, having a
superiority of force by sea, and having blockaded most of the
Confederate ports, has been able, on the one hand, safely to receive
all the warlike supplies which it has induced British manufacturers
and merchants to send to the United States ports in violation of the
Queen's proclamation; and, on the other hand, to intercept and
capture a great part of the supplies of the same kind which were
destined from this country to the Confederate States.
"If it be sought to make her Majesty's Government responsible to that
of the United States because arms and munitions of war have left this
country on account of the Confederate Government, the Confederate
Government, as the other belligerent, may very well maintain that it
has a just cause of complaint against the British Government because
the United States arsenals have been replenished from British
sources. Nor would it be possible to deny that, in defiance of the
Queen's proclamation, many subjects of her Majesty, owing allegiance
to her crown, have enlisted in the armies of the United States. Of
this fact you can not be ignorant. Her Majesty's Government,
therefore, has just ground for complaint against both of the
belligerent parties, but most especially against the Government of
the United States, for having systemically, and in disregard of the
comity of nations which it was their duty to observe, induced
subjects of her Majesty to violate those orders which, in conformity
with her neutral position, she has enjoined all her subjects to obey."
Perhaps it may be well to inquire what is, under international law,
the duty of neutral nations with regard to the construction and
equipment of cruisers for either belligerent, and the supply of
warlike stores. Thus the groundlessness of the claims put forth by
the Government of the United States for damages to be paid by Great
Britain will be more manifest, and the lawfulness of the acts of the
Confederate Government demonstrated.
After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the Government
of France, owing to the temporary inferiority of her naval force,
openly and deliberately equipped privateers in our ports. These
privateers captured British vessels in United States waters, and
brought them as prizes into United States ports. These facts formed
the basis of demands made upon the United States by the British
plenipotentiary. The demands had reference, not to the accidental
evasion of a municipal law of the United States by a particular ship,
but to a systematic disregard of international law upon some of the
most important points of neutral obligation.
To these demands Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State under
President Washington, thus replied on September 3, 1793:
"We are bound by our treaties with three of the belligerent nations,
by all the means in our power, to protect and defend their vessels
and effects in our ports or waters, or on the seas near our shores,
and to recover and restore the same to the right owners when taken
from them. If all the means in our power are used, and fail in this
effort, we are not bound by our treaties with those nations to make
compensation. Though we have no similar treaty with Great Britain, it
was the opinion of the President that we should use toward that
nation the same rule which, under this Article, was to govern us with
other nations, and even to extend it to the captures made on the
high-seas and brought into our ports, if done by vessels which had
been armed within them."
It will be observed that the justice of restitution, or compensation,
for captures made on the high-seas and brought into our ports, is
only admitted by President Washington upon one condition, which is
expressed in these words: "If done by vessels which had been armed
within them." The terms of the contract, which the Government of the
United States endeavored to make at the ship-yards of England, were
for the delivery of the ship or ships of war, "to be finished
complete, with guns and everything appertaining." The contract was
not taken, as too little time was allowed for its execution. But, if
entered into and executed, it would have been a direct violation of
international law.
In the instance of our cruisers built in the ports of England, it
will be observed that they went to sea without arms or warlike
stores, and, at other ports than those of Great Britain, they were
converted into ships of war and put into commission by the authority
of the Confederate Government. The Government of the United States
asserted that they were built in the ports of Great Britain, and
thereby her duty of neutrality was violated, and the Government made
responsible for the damages sustained by private citizens of the
United States in consequence of her captures on the seas. To this
declaration of Mr. Adams, Earl Russell (he had been made an earl)
replied on September 14, 1863, thus:
"When the United States Government assumes to hold the Government of
Great Britain responsible for the captures made by vessels which may
be fitted out as vessels of war in a foreign port, because such
vessels were originally built in a British port, I have to observe
that such pretensions are entirely at variance with the principles of
international law, and with the decisions of American courts of the
highest authority; and I have only, in conclusion, to express my hope
that you may not be instructed again to put forward claims which her
Majesty's Government can not admit to be founded on any grounds of
law or justice."
On October 6, 1863, Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State of the United
States Government, replied to this declaration of Earl Russell,
saying:
"The United States do insist, and must continue to insist, that the
British Government is justly responsible for the damages which the
peaceful, law-abiding citizens of the United States [!] sustain by
the depredations of the Alabama."
Earl Russell answered on October 26, 1863, thus:
"I must request you to believe that the principle contended for by
her Majesty's Government is not that of commissioning, equipping, and
manning vessels in our ports to cruise against either of the
belligerent parties--a principle which was so justly and
unequivocally condemned by the President of the United States in
1793. . . . But the British Government must decline to be responsible
for the acts of parties who fit out a seeming merchant-ship, send her
to a port or to waters far from the jurisdiction of British courts,
and there commission, equip, and man her as a vessel of war."
The duty of neutral nations relative to the supply of warlike stores
is expressed in these words:
"It is not the practice of nations to undertake to prohibit their own
subjects by previous laws from trafficking in articles contraband of
war. Such trade is carried on at the risk of those engaged in it,
under the liabilities and penalties prescribed by the law of nations
or particular treaties." [59]
We now quote from the great American commentator on the Constitution
of the United States and on the law of nations:
"It is a general understanding that the powers at war may seize and
confiscate all contraband goods, without any complaint on the part of
the neutral merchant, and without any imputation of a breach of
neutrality in the neutral sovereign himself. It was contended on the
part of the French nation, in 1796, that neutral governments were
bound to restrain their subjects from selling or exporting articles
contraband of war to the belligerent powers. But it was successfully
shown, on the part of the United States, that neutrals may lawfully
sell at home to a belligerent power, or carry themselves to the
belligerent powers, contraband articles, subject to the right of
seizure _in transitu_. This right has been explicitly declared by the
judicial authorities of this country [United States]. The right of
the neutral to transport, and of the hostile power to seize, are
conflicting rights, and neither party can charge the other with a
criminal act." [60]
In accordance with these principles, President Pierce's message of
December 31, 1855, contains the following passage:
"In pursuance of this policy, the laws of the United States do not
forbid their citizens to sell to either of the belligerent powers
articles contraband of war, to take munitions of war or soldiers on
board their private ships for transportation; and, although in so
doing the individual citizen exposes his property or person to some
of the hazards of war, his acts do not involve any breach of
international neutrality, nor of themselves implicate the Government."
Perhaps it may not be out of place here to notice the charge of the
Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer to the jury in the case of the
Alexandra, a vessel of one hundred and twenty tons, under
construction at Liverpool for our Government. The case came on for
trial on June 22, 1863, in the Court of Exchequer, sitting at _nisi
prius_, before the Lord Chief Baron and a special jury. After it had
been summed up, the Lord Chief Baron said:
"This is an information on the part of the Crown for the seizure and
confiscation of a vessel that was in the course of preparation but
had not been completed. It is admitted that it was not armed, and the
question is, whether the preparation of the vessel in its then
condition was a violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act. The main
question you will have to decide is this: Whether, under the seventh
section of the act of Parliament, the vessel, as then prepared at the
time of seizure, was liable to seizure? The statute was passed in
1819, and upon it no question has ever arisen in our courts of
justice; but there have been expositions of a similar statute which
exists in the United States. I will now read to you the opinions of
some American lawyers who have contributed so greatly to make law a
science. [His lordship then read a passage from Story and others.]
These gentlemen are authorities which show that, when two
belligerents are carrying on a war, a neutral power may supply,
without any breach of international law and without a breach of the
Foreign Enlistment Act, munitions of war--gunpowder, every
description of arms, in fact, that can be used for the destruction of
human beings.
"Why should ships be an exception? I am of opinion, in point of law,
they are not. The Foreign Enlistment Act was an act to prevent the
enlistment or engagement of his Majesty's subjects to serve in
foreign armies, and to prevent the fitting out and equipping in his
Majesty's dominions vessels for warlike purposes without his
Majesty's license. The title of an act is not at all times an exact
indication or explanation of the act, because it is generally
attached after the act is passed. But, in adverting to the preamble
of the act, I find that provision is made against the equipping,
fitting out, furnishing, and arming of vessels, because it may be
prejudicial to the peace of his Majesty's dominions.
"The question I shall put to you is, Whether you think that vessel
was merely in a course of building to be delivered in pursuance of a
contract that was perfectly lawful, or whether there was any
intention in the port of Liverpool, or any other English port, that
the vessel should be fitted out, equipped, furnished, and armed for
purposes of aggression. Now, surely, if Birmingham, or any other
town, may supply any quantity of munitions of war of various kinds
for the destruction of life, why object to ships? Why should ships
alone be in themselves contraband? I asked the Attorney-General if a
man could not make a vessel intending to sell it to either of the
belligerent powers that required it, and which would give the largest
price for it, would not that be lawful? To my surprise, the learned
Attorney-General declined to give an answer to the question, which I
think a grave and pertinent one. But you, gentlemen, I think, are
lawyers enough to know that a man may make a vessel and offer it for
sale. If a man may build a vessel for the purpose of offering it for
sale to either belligerent party, may he not execute an order for it?
That appears to be a matter of course. The statute is not made to
provide means of protection for belligerent powers, otherwise it
would have said, 'You shall not sell powder or guns, and you shall
not sell arms'; and, if it had done so, all Birmingham would have
been in arms against it. The object of the statute was this: that we
should not have our ports in this country made the ground of hostile
movements between the vessels of two belligerent powers, which might
be fitted out, furnished, and armed in these ports. The Alexandra was
clearly nothing more than in the course of building.
"It appears to me that, if true that the Alabama sailed from
Liverpool without any arms at all, as a mere ship in ballast, and
that her armament was put on board at Terceira, which is not in her
Majesty's dominions, then the Foreign Enlistment Act was not violated
at all."
After reading some of the evidence, his lordship said:
"If you think that the object was to furnish, fit out, equip, and arm
that vessel at Liverpool, that is a different matter; but if you
think the object really was to build a ship in obedience to an order,
in compliance with a contract, leaving those who bought it to make
what use they thought fit of it, then it appears to me that the
Foreign Enlistment Act has not been broken."
The jury immediately returned a verdict for the defendants. An appeal
was made, but the full bench decided that there was no jurisdiction.
Against this decision an appeal was taken to the House of Lords, and
there dismissed on some technical ground.
Sufficient has been said to show that the action of the Confederate
Government relative to these cruisers is sustained and justified by
international law. The complaints made by the Government of the
United States against the Government of Great Britain for acts
involving a breach of neutrality find no support in the letter of the
law or in its principles, and were conclusively answered by the
interpretations of _American jurists_. At the same time they are
condemned by the antecedent acts of the United States Government.
Some of these will be presented.
In the War of the American Revolution, Dr. Franklin and Silas Deane
were sent to France as commissioners to look after the interests of
the colonies. In the years 1776 and 1777 they became extensively
connected with naval movements. They built, and purchased, and
equipped, and commissioned ships, all in neutral territory; even
filling up blank commissions sent out to them by the Congress for the
purpose. Among expeditions fitted out by them was one under Captain
Wickes to intercept a convoy of linen-ships from Ireland. He went
first into the Bay of Biscay, and afterward entirely around Ireland,
sweeping the sea before him of everything that was not of force to
render the attack hopeless. Mr. Deane observes to Robert Morris that
it "effectually alarmed England, prevented the great fair at Chester,
occasioned insurance to rise, and even deterred the English merchants
from shipping in English bottoms at any rate, so that, in a few
weeks, forty sail of French ships were loading in the Thames, on
freight, an instance never before known."
In the spring of 1777 the Commissioners sent an agent to Dover, who
purchased a fine, fast-sailing English-built cutter, which was taken
across to Dunkirk. There she was privately equipped as a cruiser, and
put in command of Captain Gustavus Conyngham, who was appointed by
filling up a blank commission from John Hancock, the President of
Congress. This commission bore date March 1, 1777, and fully entitled
Mr. Conyngham to the rank of captain in the navy. His vessel,
although built in England, like many of our cruisers, was not armed
or equipped there, nor was his crew enlisted there, but in the port
of a neutral. This vessel was finally seized under some treaty
obligations between France and England. The Commissioners immediately
fitted out another cruiser, and still another. It was also affirmed
that the money advanced to Mr. John Adams for traveling expenses,
when he arrived in Spain a year or two later, was derived from the
prizes of these vessels, which had been sent into the ports of Spain.
Captain Conyngham was a very successful commander, but he was made a
prisoner in 1779. The matter was brought before Congress in July of
the same year, and a committee reported that this "late commander of
an armed vessel in the service of the States, and taken on board of a
private armed cutter, had been treated in a manner contrary to the
dictates of humanity, and the practice of Christian civilized
nations." Whereupon it was resolved to demand of the British Admiral
in New York that good and sufficient reason be given for this
conduct, or that he be immediately released from his rigorous and
ignominious confinement. If a satisfactory answer was not received by
August 1st, so many persons as were deemed proper were ordered to be
confined in safe and close custody, to abide the fate of the said
Gustavus Conyngham. No answer having been received, one Christopher
Hale was thus confined. In December he petitioned Congress for an
exchange, and that he might procure a person in his room. Congress
replied that his petition could not be granted until Captain
Conyngham was released, "as it had been determined that he must abide
the fate of that officer." Conyngham was subsequently released.
The whole number of captures made by the United States in this
contest is not known, but six hundred and fifty prizes are said to
have been brought into port. Many others were ransomed, and some were
burned at sea.
Prescribed limits will not permit me to follow out in detail the past
history of the United States as a neutral power. It must suffice to
recall the memory of readers to a few significant facts in our more
recent history:
The recognition of the independence of Greece in her struggle with
Turkey, and the voluntary contributions of money and men sent to her;
the recognition of the independence of the Spanish provinces of South
America, and the war-vessels equipped and sent from the ports of the
United States to Brazil during the struggle with Spain for
independence; the ships sold to Russia during her war with England,
France, and Turkey; the arms and munitions of war manufactured at New
Haven, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, sold and shipped to
Turkey to aid her in her late struggle with Russia.
The reader will observe the promptitude with which the Government of
the United States not only accorded belligerent rights, but, even
more, recognized the independence of nations struggling for
deliverance from oppressive rulers. The instances of Greece and the
South American republics are well known, and that of Texas must be
familiar to every one. One could scarcely believe, therefore, that
the chief act of hostility, or, rather, the great crime of the
Government of Great Britain in the eyes of the Government of the
United States, was the recognition by the latter of the Confederate
States as a belligerent power, and that a state of war existed
between them and the United States. This was the constantly repeated
charge against the British Government in the dispatches of the United
States Government from the commencement of the war down nearly to the
session of the Geneva Conference in 1872. In the correspondence of
the Secretary, in 1867, he says:
"What is alleged on the part of the United States is, that the
Queen's proclamation, which, by conceding belligerent rights to the
insurgents, lifted them up for the purpose of insurrection to an
equality with the nation which they were attempting to overthrow, was
premature because it was unnecessary, and that it was, in its
operation, unfriendly because it was premature."
Again he says, and, if sincerely, shows himself to be utterly
ignorant of the real condition of our affairs:
"Before the Queen's proclamation of neutrality, the disturbance in
the United States was merely a local insurrection. It wanted the name
of war to enable it to be a civil war and to live, endowed as such,
with maritime and other belligerent rights. Without the authorized
name, it might die, and was expected not to live and be a flagrant
civil war, but to perish a mere insurrection."
The first extract in itself contains a fiction. If the Queen's
proclamation possessed such force as to raise the Confederate States
to an equality with the United States as a belligerent, perhaps
another proclamation of the Queen might have possessed such force, if
it had been issued, as to have lifted the Confederate States from the
state of equality to one of independence. This is a novel virtue to
be ascribed to a Queen's proclamation. This idea must have been
borrowed from our neighbors of Mexico, where a _pronunciamiento_
dissolves one and establishes a rival administration. How much more
rational it would have been, to say that the resources and the
military power of the Confederate States placed them, at the outset,
on the footing of a belligerent, and the Queen's proclamation only
declared a fact which the announcement of a blockade of the Southern
ports by the Government of the United States had made manifest!--
blockade being a means only applicable as against a foreign foe.
Nevertheless, the Government of the United States, although refusing
to concede belligerent rights to the Confederate States, was very
ready to take advantage of such concession by other nations, whenever
an opportunity offered. The voluminous correspondence of the
Secretary of State of the United States Government, relative to the
Confederate cruisers and their so-called "depredations," was filled
with charges of violations of international law, which could be
committed only by a belligerent, and which, it was alleged, had been
allowed to be done in the ports of Great Britain. On this foundation
was based the subsequent claim for damages, advanced by the
Government of the United States against that of Great Britain; and,
for the pretended lack of "due diligence" in watching the actions of
this Confederate belligerent in her ports, she was mulcted in a heavy
sum by the Geneva Conference, and paid it to the Government of the
United States.
It is a remarkable fact that the Government of the United States, in
no one instance, from the opening to the close of the war, formally
spoke of the Confederate Government or States as belligerents.
Although on many occasions it acted with the latter as a belligerent,
yet no official designations were ever given to them or their
citizens but those of "insurgents," or "insurrectionists." Perhaps
there may be something in the signification of the words which,
combined with existing circumstances, would express a state of
affairs that the authorities of the Government of the United States
were in no degree willing to admit, and vainly sought to prevent from
becoming manifest to the world.
The party or individuality against which the Government of the United
States was conducting hostilities consisted of the people within the
limits of the Confederate States. Was it against them as individuals
in an unorganized condition, or as organized political communities?
In the former condition they might be a mob; in the latter condition
they formed a State. By the actions of unorganized masses may arise
insurrections, and by the actions of organized people or states,
arise wars.
The Government of the United States adopted a fiction when it
declared that the execution of the laws in certain States was impeded
by "insurrection." The persons whom it designated as insurrectionists
were the organized people of the States. The ballot-boxes used at the
elections were State boxes. The judges who presided at the elections
were State functionaries. The returns of the elections were made to
the State officers. The oaths of office of those elected were
administered by State authority. They assembled in the legislative
chambers of the States. The results of their deliberations were
directory to the State, judicial, and executive officers, and by them
put in operation. Is it not evident that, only by a fiction of
speech, such proceedings can be called an insurrection?
Why, then, did an intelligent and powerful Government, like that of
the United States, so outrage the understanding of mankind as to
adopt a fiction on which to base the authority and justification of
its hostile action? The United States Government is the result of a
compact between the States--a written Constitution. It owes its
existence simply to a delegation of certain powers by the respective
States, which it is authorized to exercise for their common welfare.
One of these powers is to "suppress insurrections"; but there is no
power delegated to subjugate States, the authors of its existence, or
to make war on any of the States. If, then, without any delegated
power or lawful authority for its proceedings, the Government of the
United States commenced a war upon some of the States of the Union,
how could it expect to be justified before the world? It became the
aggressor--the Attila of the American Continent. Its action
inflicted a wound on the principles of constitutional liberty, a
crashing blow to the hopes that men had begun to repose in this
latest effort for self-government, which its friends should never
forgive nor ever forget. To palliate the enormity of such an offense,
its authors resorted to a vehement denial that their hostile action
was a war upon the States, and persistently asserted the fiction that
their immense armies and fleets were merely a police authority to put
down insurrection. They hoped to conceal from the observation of the
American people that the contest, on the part of the central
Government, was for empire, for its absolute supremacy over the State
governments; that the Constitution was roiled up and laid away among
the old archives; and that the conditions of their liberty, in the
future, were to be decided by the sword or by "national" control of
the ballot-box.
With like disregard for truth, our cruisers were denounced as
"_pirates_" by the Government of the United States. A pirate, or
armed piratical vessel, is by the law of nations the enemy of
mankind, and can be destroyed by the ships of any nation. The
distinction between a lawful cruiser and a pirate is that the former
has behind it a government which is recognized by civilized nations
as entitled to the rights of war, and from which the commander of the
cruiser receives his commission or authority, but the pirate
recognizes no government, and is not recognized by any one. As the
Attorney-General of Great Britain said in the Alexandra case:
"Although a recognition of the Confederates as an independent power
was out of the question, yet it was right they should be admitted by
other nations within the circle of lawful belligerents--that is to
say, that their forces should not be treated as pirates, nor their
flag as a piratical flag. Therefore, as far as the two belligerents
were concerned, on the part of this and other governments, they were
so far put on a level that each was to be considered as entitled to
the right of belligerents--the Southern States as much as the other."
The Government of the United States well knew that, after the issue
of the Queen's proclamation recognizing our Government, the
application of the word pirate to our cruisers was simply an
exhibition of vindictive passion on its part. A _de facto_ Government
by its commission legalizes among nations a cruiser. That there was
such a Government even its own courts also decided. In a prize case
(2 Black, 635), Justice Greer delivered the opinion of the Supreme
Court, saying:
"It [the war] is not less a civil war, with belligerent parties in
hostile array, because it may be called an 'insurrection' by one
side, and the insurgents be considered as rebels and traitors. It is
not necessary that the independence of the revolted province or State
be acknowledged in order to constitute it a party belligerent in a
war, according to the laws of nations. Foreign nations acknowledge it
a war by a declaration of neutrality. The condition of neutrality can
not exist unless there be two belligerent parties."
In the case of the Santissima Trinidad (7 Wheaton, 337), the United
States Supreme Court says:
"The Government of the United States has recognized the existence of
a civil war between Spain and her colonies, and has avowed her
determination to remain neutral between the parties. Each party is
therefore deemed by us a belligerent, having, so far as concerns us,
the sovereign rights of war."
The belligerent character of the Confederate States was thus fully
acknowledged by the highest judicial tribunal of the United States.
This involved an acknowledgment of the Confederate Government as a
Government _de facto_ having "the sovereign rights of war," yet the
Executive Department of the United States Government, with reckless
malignity, denounced our cruisers as "pirates," our citizens as
"insurgents" and "traitors," and the action of our Government as an
"insurrection."
It has been stated that during the war of the colonies with Great
Britain many of the prizes of the colonial cruisers were destroyed.
This was done by Paul Jones and other commanders, although during the
entire period of the war some of the colonial ports were open, into
which prizes could be taken. In that war Great Britain did not
attempt to blockade all the ports of the colonies. Sailing-vessels
only were then known, and with these a stringent blockade at all
seasons could not have been maintained. But, at the later day of our
war, the powerful steamship had appeared, and revolutionized the
commerce and the navies of the world. During the first months of the
war all the principal ports of the Confederacy were blockaded, and
finally every inlet was either in possession of the enemy or had one
or more vessels watching it. The steamers were independent of wind
and weather, and could hold their positions before a port day and
night. At the same time the ports of neutrals had been closed against
the prizes of our cruisers by proclamations and orders in council.
Says Admiral Semmes:
"During my whole career upon the sea, I had not so much as a single
port open to me, into which I could send a prize."
Our prizes had been sent into ports of Cuba and Venezuela under the
hope that they might gain admittance, but they were either handed
over to the enemy under some fraudulent pretext, or expelled. Thus,
by the action of the different nations and by the blockade with
steamers, no course was left to us but to destroy the prizes, as was
done in many instances under the Government of the United States
Confederation.
The laws of maritime war are well known. The enemy's vessel when
captured becomes the property of the captor, which he may immediately
destroy; or he may take the vessel into port, have it adjudicated by
an admiralty court as a lawful prize, and sold. That adjudication is
the basis of title to the purchaser against all former owners. In
these cases the captor sends his prizes to a port of his own country
or to a friendly port for adjudication. But, if the ports of his own
country are under blockade by his enemy, and the recapture of the
prizes, if sent there, most probable, and if, at the same time, all
friendly ports are closed against the entrance of his prizes, then
there remains no alternative but to destroy the prizes by sinking or
burning. Courts of admiralty are established for neutrals; not for
the enemy, who has no right of appearance before them. If, therefore,
any neutrals suffered during our war for want of adjudication, the
fault is with their own Government, and not with our cruisers.
Many other objections were advanced by the United States Government
as evidence that we committed a breach of international law with our
cruisers, but their principles are embraced in the preceding remarks,
or they were too frivolous to deserve notice. Suffice it to say that,
if the Confederate Government had been successful in taking to sea
every vessel which it built, it would have swept from the oceans the
commerce of the United States, would have raised the blockade of at
least some of our ports, and, if by such aid our independence had
been secured, there is little probability that such complaints as
have been noticed would have received attention, if, indeed, they
would have been uttered.
In January, 1871, the British Government proposed to the Government
of the United States that a joint commission should be convened to
adjust certain differences between the two nations relative to the
fisheries, the Canadian boundary, etc. To this proposition the latter
acceded, on condition that the so-called Alabama claims should also
be considered. To this condition Great Britain assented. In the
Convention the American Commissioners proposed an arbitration of
these claims. The British Commissioners replied that her Majesty's
Government could not admit that Great Britain had failed to discharge
toward the United States the duties imposed on her by the rules of
international law, or that she was justly liable to make good to the
United States the losses occasioned by the acts of the cruisers to
which the American Commissioners referred.
Without following the details, it may be summarily stated that the
Geneva Conference ensued. That decided that "England should have
fulfilled her duties as a neutral by the exercise of a diligence
equal to the gravity of the danger," and that "the circumstances were
of a nature to call for the exercise, on the part of her Britannic
Majesty's Government, of all possible solicitude for the observance
of the rights and duties involved in the proclamation of neutrality
issued by her Majesty on May 18, 1861." The Conference also added:
"It can not be denied that there were moments when its watchfulness
seemed to fail, and when feebleness in certain branches of the public
service resulted in great detriment to the United States."
The claims presented to the Conference for damages done by our
several cruisers were as follows: The Alabama, $7,050,293.76; the
Boston, $400; the Chickamauga, $183,070.73; the Florida,
$4,057,934.69; the Clarence, tender of the Florida, $66,736.10; the
Tacony, tender of the Florida, $169,198.81; the Georgia, $431,160.72;
the Jefferson Davis, $7,752; the Nashville, $108,433.95; the
Retribution, $29,018.53; the Sallie, $5,540; the Shenandoah,
$6,656,838.81; the Sumter, $179,697.67; the Tallahassee, $836,841.83.
Total, $19,782,917.60. Miscellaneous, $479,033; increased insurance,
$6,146,19.71. Aggregate, $26,408,170.31.
The Conference rejected the claims against the Boston, the Jefferson
Davis, and the Sallie, and awarded to the United States Government
$15,500,000 in gold.
But the indirect damages upon the commerce of the United States
produced by these cruisers were far beyond the amount of the claims
presented to the Geneva Conference. The number of ships owned in the
United States at the commencement of the war, which were subsequently
transferred to foreign owners by a British register, was 715, and the
amount of their tonnage was 480,882 tons. Such are the laws of the
United States that not one of them has been allowed to resume an
American register.
In the year 1860 nearly seventy per cent. of the foreign commerce of
the country was carried on in American ships. But, in consequence of
the danger of capture by our cruisers to which these ships were
exposed, the amount of this commerce carried by them had dwindled
down in 1864 to forty-six per cent. It continued to decline after the
war, and in 1872 it had fallen to twenty-eight and a half per cent.
Before the war the amount of American tonnage was second only to that
of Great Britain, and we were competing with her for the first place.
At that time the tonnage of the coasting trade, which had grown from
insignificance, was 1,735,863 tons. Three years later, in 1864, it
had declined to about 867,931 tons.
The damage to the articles of export is illustrated by the decline in
breadstuffs exported from the Northern States. In the last four
months of each of the following years the value of this export was as
follows: 1861, $42,500,000; 1862, $27,842,090; 1863, $8,909,043;
1864, $1,850,819. Some of this decline resulted from good crops in
England; but, in other respects, it was a consequence of causes
growing out of the war.
The increase in the rates of marine insurance, in consequence of the
danger of capture by the cruisers, was variable. But the gross amount
so paid was presented as a claim to the Conference, as given above.
[Footnote 59: Wheaton's "International Law" sixth edition, p. 571, 1855.]
[Footnote 60: Ken's "Commentaries," vol i, p. 145, 1854.]