THE CASE AGAINST ENGLAND.
Passing from the treaty, I come now to consider briefly, but with proper precision, the true ground of complaint; and here again we shall see the constant inadequacy of the remedy now applied. It is with reluctance that I enter upon this statement, and I do it only in the discharge of a duty which cannot be postponed.
Close upon the outbreak of our troubles, little more than one month after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, when the Rebellion was still undeveloped, when the National Government was beginning those gigantic efforts which ended so triumphantly, the country was startled by the news that the British Government had intervened by a Proclamation which accorded belligerent rights to the Rebels. At the early date when this was done, the Rebels were, as they remained to the close, without ships on the ocean, without prize courts or other tribunal for the administration of justice on the ocean, without any of those conditions which are the essential prerequisites to such a concession; and yet the concession was general, being applicable to the ocean and the land, so that by British fiat they became ocean belligerents as well as land belligerents. In the swiftness of this bestowal there was very little consideration for a friendly power; nor does it appear that there was any inquiry into those conditions-precedent on which it must depend. Ocean belligerency, being a “fact,” and not a “principle,” can be recognized only on evidence showing its actual existence, according to the rule first stated by Mr. Canning and afterward recognized by Lord John Russell.[53] But no such evidence was adduced; for it did not exist, and never has existed.
Too much stress cannot be laid upon the rule, that belligerency is a “fact,” and not a “principle.” It is perhaps the most important contribution to this discussion; and its original statement, on the occasion of the Greek Revolution, does honor to its author, unquestionably the brightest genius ever directed to this subject. According to this rule, belligerency must be proved to exist; it must be shown. It cannot be imagined, or divined, or invented; it must exist as a “fact” within the knowledge of the world, or at least as a “fact” susceptible of proof. Nor can it be inferred on the ocean merely from its existence on the land. From the beginning, when “God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas,” the two have been separate, and power over one has not necessarily implied power over the other. There is a dominion of the land, and a dominion of the ocean. But, whatever power the Rebels possessed on the land, they were always without power on the ocean. Admitting that they were belligerents on the land, they were never belligerents on the ocean.
“The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make
Their clay creator the vain title take
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war,”—
these they never possessed. Such was the “fact” that must govern the present question. The rule, so simple, plain, and intelligible, as stated by Mr. Canning, is a decisive touchstone of the British concession, which, when brought to it, is found to be without support.
Unfriendly in the precipitancy with which it was launched, this concession was more unfriendly in substance. It was the first stage in the depredations on our commerce. Had it not been made, no Rebel ship could have been built in England: every step in her building would have been piracy. Nor could any munitions of war have been furnished: not a blockade-runner, laden with supplies, could have left the English shores, except under a kindred penalty. The direct consequence of this concession was to place the Rebels on an equality with ourselves in all British markets, whether of ships or munitions of war. As these were open to the National Government, so they were open to the Rebels. The asserted neutrality between the two began by this tremendous concession, when the Rebels, at one stroke, were transformed not only into belligerents, but into customers.
In attributing to that bad Proclamation this peculiar influence I follow the authority of the Law Lords of England, who, according to authentic report, announced that without it the fitting out of a ship in England to cruise against the United States would have been an act of piracy. This conclusion was clearly stated by Lord Chelmsford, ex-Chancellor, speaking for himself and others, when he said: “If the Southern Confederacy had not been recognized by us as a belligerent power, he agreed with his noble and learned friend [Lord Brougham], that any Englishman aiding them by fitting out a privateer against the Federal Government would be guilty of piracy.”[54] This conclusion is only according to analogies of law. It is criminal for British subjects to forge bombs or hand-grenades to be employed in the assassination of a foreign sovereign at peace with England, as when Bernard supplied from England the missiles used by Orsini against the life of the French Emperor,—all of which is illustrated by Lord Chief-Justice Campbell, in his charge to the jury on the trial of Bernard, and also by contemporaneous opinions of Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Brougham, Lord Truro, and at an earlier day by Lord Ellenborough in a case of libel on the First Consul. That excellent authority, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, gives a summary drawn from all these opinions, when he says: “The obligation incumbent upon a state of preventing her soil from being used as an arsenal, in which the means of attack against a foreign government may be collected and prepared for use, is wholly independent of the form and character of that government.”[55] As every government is constrained by this rule, so every government is entitled to its safeguards. There can be no reason why the life of our Republic should be less sacred than the life of an Emperor, or should enjoy less protection from British law. That England became an “arsenal” for the Rebels we know; but this could not have been, unless the Proclamation had prepared the way.
The only justification that I have heard for this extraordinary concession, which unleashed upon our country the Furies of War to commingle with the Furies of Rebellion at home, is, that President Lincoln undertook to proclaim a blockade of the Rebel ports. By the use of this word “blockade” the concession is vindicated. Had President Lincoln proclaimed a closing of the Rebel ports, there could have been no such concession. This is a mere technicality; lawyers might call it an apex juris; and yet on this sharp point England hangs her defence. It is sufficient that in a great case like the present, where the correlative duties of a friendly power are in question, an act fraught with such portentous evil cannot be vindicated on a technicality. In this debate there is no room for technicality on either side. We must look at the substance, and find a reason in nothing short of overruling necessity. War cannot be justified merely on a technicality; nor can the concession of ocean belligerency to rebels without a port or prize court. Such a concession, like war itself, must be at the peril of the nation making it.
The British assumption, besides being offensive from mere technicality, is inconsistent with the Proclamation of the President, taken as a whole, which, while appointing a blockade, is careful to reserve the rights of sovereignty, thus putting foreign powers on their guard against any premature concession. After declaring an existing insurrection in certain States, and the obstruction of the laws for the collection of the revenue, as the motive for action, the President invokes not only the Law of Nations, but “the laws of the United States,” and, in further assertion of the national sovereignty, declares Rebel cruisers to be pirates.[56] Clearly the Proclamation must be taken as a whole, and its different provisions so interpreted as to harmonize with each other. If they cannot stand together, then it is the “blockade” which must be modified by the national sovereignty, and not the national sovereignty by the blockade. Such should have been the interpretation of a friendly power, especially when it is considered that there are numerous precedents of what the great German authority, Heffter, calls “Pacific Blockade,” or blockade without concession of ocean belligerency,—as in the case of France, England, and Russia against Turkey, 1827; France against Mexico, 1837-39; France and Great Britain against the Argentine Republic, 1838-48; Russia against the Circassians, 1831-36, illustrated by the seizure of the Vixen, so famous in diplomatic history.[57] Cases like these led Heffter to lay down the rule, that “blockade” does not necessarily constitute a state of regular war,[58] as was assumed by the British Proclamation, even in the face of positive words by President Lincoln asserting the national sovereignty and appealing to “the laws of the United States.” The existence of such cases was like a notice to the British Government against the concession so rashly made. It was an all-sufficient warning, which this power disregarded.
So far as is now known, the whole case for England is made to stand on the use of the word “Blockade” by President Lincoln. Had he used any other word, the concession of belligerency would have been without justification, even such as is now imagined. It was this word which, with magical might, opened the gates to all those bountiful supplies by which hostile expeditions were equipped against the United States: it opened the gates of war. Most appalling is it to think that one little word, unconsciously used by a trusting President, could be caught up by a friendly power and made to play such a part.
I may add that there is one other word often invoked for apology. It is “Neutrality,” which, it is said, was proclaimed between two belligerents. Nothing could be fairer, always provided that the “neutrality” proclaimed did not begin with a concession to one party without which this party would be powerless. Between two established Nations, both independent, as between Russia and France, there may be neutrality; for the two are already equal in rights, and the proclamation would be precisely equal in its operation. But where one party is an established Nation, and the other is nothing but an odious combination of Rebels, the proclamation is most unequal in operation; for it begins by a solemn investiture of Rebels with all the rights of war, saying to them, as was once said to the youthful knight, “Rise; here is a sword; use it.” To call such an investiture a proclamation of neutrality is a misnomer. It was a proclamation of equality between the National Government on the one side and Rebels on the other, and no plausible word can obscure this distinctive character.
Then came the building of the pirate ships, one after another. While the Alabama was still in the ship-yard, it became apparent that she was intended for the Rebels. Our Minister at London and our Consul at Liverpool exerted themselves for her arrest and detention. They were put off from day to day. On the 24th July, 1862, Mr. Adams “completed his evidence,” accompanied by an opinion from the eminent barrister, Mr. Collier, afterward Solicitor-General, declaring the plain duty of the British Government to stop her.[59] Instead of acting promptly by the telegraph, five days were allowed to run out, when at last, too tardily, the necessary order was dispatched. Meanwhile the pirate ship escaped from the port of Liverpool by a stratagem, and her voyage began with music and frolic. Here, beyond all question, was negligence, or, according to the language of Lord Brougham on another occasion, “crass negligence,” making England justly responsible for all that ensued.
The pirate ship found refuge in an obscure harbor of Wales, known as Moelfra Bay, where she lay in British waters from half-past seven o’clock, P. M., July 29th, to about three o’clock, A. M., July 31st, being upward of thirty-one hours, and during this time she was supplied with men from the British steam-tug Hercules, which followed her from Liverpool. These thirty-one hours were allowed to elapse without any attempt to stop her. Here was another stage of “crass negligence.”
Thus was there negligence in allowing the building to proceed, negligence in allowing the escape from Liverpool, and negligence in allowing the final escape from the British coast.
Lord Russell, while trying to vindicate his Government, and repelling the complaints of the United States, more than once admitted that the escape of the Alabama was “a scandal and a reproach,”[60] which to my mind is very like a confession. Language could not be stronger. Surely such an act cannot be blameless. If damages are ever awarded to a friendly power for injuries received, it is difficult to see where they could be more strenuously claimed than in a case which the First Minister of the offending power did not hesitate to characterize so strongly.
The enlistment of the crew was not less obnoxious to censure than the building of the ship and her escape. It was a part of the transaction. The evidence is explicit. Not to occupy too much time, I refer only to the deposition of William Passmore, who swears that he was engaged with the express understanding that “the vessel was going out to the Government of the Confederate States of America,” “to fight for the Southern Government”; that he joined her at Laird’s yard at Birkenhead, near Liverpool, remaining there several weeks; that there were about thirty men on board, most of them old man-of-war’s men, among whom it was “well known that the vessel was going out as a privateer for the Confederate Government, to act against the United States, under a commission from Mr. Jefferson Davis.”[61] In a list of the crew, now before me, there is a large number said to be from the “Royal Naval Reserve.”[62] I might add to this testimony. The more the case is examined, the more clearly do we discern the character of the transaction.
The dedication of the ship to the Rebel service, from the very laying of the keel and the organization of her voyage, with England as her naval base, from which she drew munitions of war and men, made her departure as much a hostile expedition as if she had sailed forth from her Majesty’s dock-yard. At a moment of profound peace between the United States and England there was a hostile expedition against the United States. It was in no just sense a commercial transaction, but an act of war.
The case is not yet complete. The Alabama, whose building was in defiance of law, international and municipal, whose escape was “a scandal and a reproach,” and whose enlistment of her crew was a fit sequel to the rest, after being supplied with an armament and with a Rebel commander, entered upon her career of piracy. Mark now a new stage of complicity. Constantly the pirate ship was within reach of British cruisers, and from time to time within the shelter of British ports. For five days, unmolested, she enjoyed the pleasant hospitality of Kingston, in Jamaica, obtaining freely the coal and other supplies so necessary to her vocation. But no British cruiser, no British magistrate ever arrested the offending ship, whose voyage was a continuing “scandal and reproach” to the British Government.
The excuse for this strange license is a curious technicality,—as if a technicality could avail in this case at any stage. Borrowing a phrase from that master of admiralty jurisprudence, Sir William Scott, it is said that the ship “deposited” her original sin at the conclusion of her voyage, so that afterward she was blameless. But the Alabama never concluded her voyage until she sank under the guns of the Kearsarge, because she never had a port of her own. She was no better than the Flying Dutchman, and so long as she sailed was liable for that original sin, which had impregnated every plank with an indelible dye. No British cruiser could allow her to proceed, no British port could give her shelter, without renewing the complicity of England.
The Alabama case begins with a fatal concession, by which the Rebels were enabled to build ships in England, and then to sail them, without being liable as pirates; it next shows itself in the building of the ship, in the armament, and in the escape, with so much of negligence on the part of the British Government as to constitute sufferance, if not connivance; and then, again, the case reappears in the welcome and hospitality accorded by British cruisers and by the magistrates of British ports to the pirate ship, when her evasion from British jurisdiction was well known. Thus at three different stages the British Government is compromised: first, in the concession of ocean belligerency, on which all depended; secondly, in the negligence which allowed the evasion of the ship, in order to enter upon the hostile expedition for which she was built, manned, armed, and equipped; and, thirdly, in the open complicity which, after this evasion, gave her welcome, hospitality, and supplies in British ports. Thus her depredations and burnings, making the ocean blaze, all proceeded from England, which by three different acts lighted the torch. To England must be traced, also, all the wide-spread consequences which ensued.
I take the case of the Alabama because it is the best known, and because the building, equipment, and escape of this ship were under circumstances most obnoxious to judgment; but it will not be forgotten that there were consort ships, built under the shelter of that fatal Proclamation, issued in such an eclipse of just principles, and, like the ships it unloosed, “rigged with curses dark.” One after another, ships were built; one after another, they escaped on their errand; and, one after another, they enjoyed the immunities of British ports. Audacity reached its height when iron-clad rams were built, and the perversity of the British Government became still more conspicuous by its long refusal to arrest these destructive engines of war, destined to be employed against the United States. This protracted hesitation, where the consequences were so menacing, is a part of the case.
It is plain that the ships which were built under the safeguard of this ill-omened Proclamation, which stole forth from the British shores and afterward enjoyed the immunities of British ports, were not only British in origin, but British in equipment, British in armament, and British in crews. They were British in every respect, except in their commanders, who were Rebel; and one of these, as his ship was sinking, owed his safety to a British yacht, symbolizing the omnipresent support of England. British sympathies were active in their behalf. The cheers of a British passenger-ship crossing the path of the Alabama encouraged the work of piracy; and the cheers of the House of Commons encouraged the builder of the Alabama, while he defended what he had done, and exclaimed, in taunt to him who is now an illustrious member of the British Cabinet, John Bright, that he “would rather be handed down to posterity as the builder of a dozen Alabamas” than be the author of the speeches of that gentleman “crying up” the institutions of the United States, which the builder of the Alabama, rising with his theme, denounced as “of no value whatever,” and as “reducing the very name of Liberty to an utter absurdity,”[63] while the cheers of the House of Commons echoed back his words. Thus from beginning to end, from the fatal Proclamation to the rejoicing of the accidental ship and the rejoicing of the House of Commons, was this hostile expedition protected and encouraged by England. The same spirit which dictated the swift concession of belligerency, with all its deadly incidents, ruled the hour, entering into and possessing every pirate ship.
There are two circumstances by which the whole case is aggravated. One is found in the date of the Proclamation which lifted the Rebels to an equality with the National Government, opening to them everything that was open to us, whether ship-yards, foundries, or manufactories, and giving to them a flag on the ocean coëqual with the flag of the Union. This extraordinary manifesto was signed on the very day of the arrival of our Minister in England,—so that, when, after an ocean voyage, he reached the British Government, to which he was accredited, he found this great and terrible indignity to his country already perpetrated, and the floodgates opened to infinite woes. The Minister had been announced; he was daily expected; the British Government knew of his coming;—but in hottest haste they did this thing.
The other aggravation is found in its flagrant, unnatural departure from that Antislavery rule which, by manifold declarations, legislative, political, and diplomatic, was the avowed creed of England. Often was this rule proclaimed, but, if we except the great Act of Emancipation, never more pointedly than in the famous circular of Lord Palmerston, while Minister of Foreign Affairs, announcing to all nations that England was pledged to the Universal Abolition of Slavery.[64] And now, when Slaveholders, in the very madness of barbarism, broke away from the National Government and attempted to found a new empire with Slavery as its declared corner-stone, Antislavery England, without a day’s delay, without even waiting the arrival of our Minister at the seat of Government, although known to be on his way, made haste to decree that this shameful and impossible pretension should enjoy equal rights with the National Government in her ship-yards, foundries, and manufactories, and equal rights on the ocean. Such was the decree. Rebel Slaveholders, occupied in a hideous attempt, were taken by the hand, and thus, with the official protection and the God-speed of Antislavery England, commenced their accursed work.
I close this part of the argument with the testimony of Mr. Bright, who, in a speech at Rochdale, among his neighbors, February 3, 1863, thus exhibits the criminal complicity of England:—
“I regret, more than I have words to express, this painful fact, that, of all the countries in Europe, this country is the only one which has men in it who are willing to take active steps in favor of this intended Slave Government. We supply the ships; we supply the arms, the munitions of war; we give aid and comfort to this foulest of all crimes. Englishmen only do it.”[65]
In further illustration, and in support of Mr. Bright’s allegation, I refer again to the multitudinous blockade-runners from England. Without the manifesto of belligerency they could not have sailed. All this stealthy fleet, charged with hostility to the United States, was a part of the great offence. The blockade-runners were kindred to the pirate ships. They were of the same bad family, having their origin and home in England. From the beginning they went forth with their cargoes of death;—for the supplies which they furnished contributed to the work of death. When, after a long and painful siege, our conquering troops entered Vicksburg, they found Armstrong guns from England in position;[66] and so on every field where our patriot fellow-citizens breathed a last breath were English arms and munitions of war, all testifying against England. The dead spoke, also,—and the wounded still speak.