CHAPTER XXXII.
THE CONFEDERATE CRUISERS.
THE "ALABAMA" SUNK BY THE "KEARSARGE"—THE "SUMTER" AND OTHER CRUISERS—PROTEST OF OUR GOVERNMENT TO THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT—SECRETARY SEWARD'S DESPATCHES—PRIVATEERING—WHY ENGLAND DID NOT INTERFERE—ARBITRATION AND AMOUNT OF DAMAGE OBTAINED FROM THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT.
While the Army of the Potomac was putting itself in fighting trim after its change of base, a decisive battle of the war took place three thousand miles away. A vessel known in the builders' yard as the "290," and afterward famous as the Alabama, had been built for the Confederate Government in 1862, at Birkenhead, opposite Liverpool. She was of wood, a fast sailer, having both steam and canvas, was two hundred and twenty feet long, and rated at one thousand and forty tons. She was thoroughly fitted in every respect, and cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars. The American minister at London notified the British Government that such a ship was being built in an English yard, in violation of the neutrality laws, and demanded that she be prevented from leaving the Mersey. But, either through design or stupidity, the Government moved too slowly, and the cruiser escaped to sea. She went to Fayal, in the Azores, and there took on board her guns and coal, sent out to her in a merchant ship from London. Her commander was Raphael Semmes, who had served in the United States navy. Her crew were mainly Englishmen. For nearly two years she roamed the seas, traversing the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico, and captured sixty-nine American merchantmen, most of which were burned at sea. Their crews were sent away on passing vessels, or put ashore at some convenient port. Several war-vessels were sent out in search of the Alabama, but they were at constant disadvantage from the rule that when two hostile vessels are in a neutral port, the first that leaves must have been gone twenty-four hours before the other is permitted to follow. In French, and especially in British ports, the Alabama was always welcome, and enjoyed every possible facility, because she was destroying American commerce.
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CAPTAIN JOHN A. WINSLOW AND OFFICERS ON THE DECK OF THE "KEARSARGE." (From a Government photograph.) |
In June, 1864, she was in the harbor of Cherbourg, France. The United States man-of-war Kearsarge, commanded by John A. Winslow, found her there, and lay off the port, watching her. By not going into the harbor, Winslow escaped the twenty-four-hour rule. Semmes sent a note to Winslow, asking him not to go away, as he was coming out to fight; but no such challenge was called for, as the Kearsarge had come for that purpose, and was patiently waiting for her prey. She was almost exactly the size of the Alabama, and the armaments were so nearly alike as to make a very fair match. But her crew were altogether superior in gun-practice, and she had protected her boilers by chains, "stoppered" up and down the side amidships, as had been done in the fights at New Orleans and elsewhere. On Sunday morning, June 19th, the Alabama steamed out of the harbor amid the plaudits of thousands of Englishmen and Frenchmen, who had not a doubt that she was going to certain victory. The Kearsarge steamed away as she approached, and drew her off to a distance of seven or eight miles from the coast. Winslow then turned and closed with his enemy. The two vessels steamed around on opposite sides of a circle half a mile in diameter, firing their starboard guns. The practice on the Alabama was very bad; she began firing first, discharged her guns rapidly, and produced little or no effect, though a dozen of her shots struck her antagonist. But when the Kearsarge began firing there was war in earnest. Her guns were handled with great skill, and every shot told. One of them cut the mizzenmast so that it fell. Another exploded a shell among the crew of the Alabama's pivot gun, killing half of them and dismounting the piece. Balls rolled in at the port-holes and swept away the gunners; and several pierced the hull below the water line, making the ship tremble from stem to stern, and letting in floods of water. The vessels had described seven circles, and the Alabama's deck was strewn with the dead, when at the end of an hour she was found to be sinking, her colors were struck, and her officers, with a keen sense of chivalry, threw into the sea the swords that were no longer their own. The Kearsarge lowered boats to take off the crew; but suddenly the stern settled, the bow was thrown up into the air, and down went the Alabama to the bottom of the British Channel, carrying an unknown number of her men. An English yacht picked up Semmes and about forty sailors, and steamed away to Southampton with them; others were rescued by the boats of the Kearsarge, and still others were drowned.
In January, 1863, the Alabama had fought the side-wheel steamer Hatteras, of the United States Navy, off Galveston, Tex., and injured her so that she sank soon after surrendering. The remainder of the Alabama's career, till she met the Kearsarge, had been spent in capturing merchant vessels and either burning them or releasing them under bonds. Before Captain Semmes received command of the Alabama, he had cruised in the Sumter on a similar mission, capturing eighteen vessels, when her course was ended in the harbor of Gibraltar, in February, 1862, where she was blockaded by the United States steamers Kearsarge and Tuscarora, and, as there was no probability that she could escape to sea, her captain and crew abandoned her.
A score of other Confederate cruisers roamed the seas, to prey upon United States commerce, but none of them became quite so famous as the Sumter and the Alabama. They included the Shenandoah, which made thirty-eight captures; the Florida, which made thirty-six; the Tallahassee, which made twenty-seven; the Tacony, which made fifteen; and the Georgia, which made ten. The Florida was captured in the harbor of Bahia, Brazil, in October, 1864, by a United States man-of-war, in violation of the neutrality of the port. For this the United States Government apologized to Brazil, and ordered the restoration of the Florida to the harbor where she was captured. But in Hampton Roads she met with an accident and sank. It was generally believed that the apparent accident was contrived with the connivance, if not by direct order, of the Government.
Most of these cruisers were built in British shipyards; and whenever they touched at British ports, to obtain supplies and land prisoners, their commanders were ostentatiously welcomed and lionized by the British merchants and officials.
The English builders were proceeding to construct several swift iron-clad cruisers for the Confederate Government, when the United States Government protested so vigorously that the British Government prevented them from leaving port. One or two passages from Secretary Seward's despatches to Charles Francis Adams, the American minister at London, contain the whole argument that was afterward elaborated before a high court of arbitration, and secured a verdict against England. More than this, these passages contain what probably was the controlling reason that determined England not to try the experiment of intervention. Secretary Seward wrote, under date of October 5-6, 1863:
"I have had the honor to receive and submit to the President your despatch of the 17th of September, which relates to the iron-clad vessels built at Laird's shipyards for war against the United States, which is accompanied by a very interesting correspondence between yourself and Earl Russell. The positions you have taken in this correspondence are approved. It is indeed a cause of profound concern, that, notwithstanding an engagement which the President has accepted as final, there still remains a doubt whether those vessels will be prevented from coming out, according to the original hostile purposes of the enemies of the United States residing in Great Britain.
"Earl Russell remarks that her Majesty's Government, having proclaimed neutrality, have in good faith exerted themselves to maintain it. I have not to say now for the first time, that, however satisfactory that position may be to the British nation, it does not at all relieve the gravity of the question in the United States. The proclamation of neutrality was a concession of belligerent rights to the insurgents, and was deemed by this Government as unnecessary, and in effect as unfriendly, as it has since proved injurious, to this country. The successive preparations of hostile naval expeditions in Great Britain are regarded here as fruits of that injurious proclamation.... It is hardly necessary to say that the United States stand upon what they think impregnable ground, when they refuse to be derogated, by any act of British Government, from their position as a sovereign nation in amity with Great Britain, and placed upon a footing of equality with domestic insurgents who have risen up in resistance against their authority.
| OPENING OF THE FIGHT BETWEEN THE "KEARSARGE" AND THE "ALABAMA." |
"It does not remain for us even to indicate to Great Britain the serious consequences which must ensue if the iron-clads shall come forth upon their work of destruction. They have been fully revealed to yourself, and you have made them known to Earl Russell, within the restraints which an honest and habitual respect for the Government and the people of Great Britain imposes. It seems to me that her Majesty's Government might be expected to perceive and appreciate them, even if we were henceforth silent upon the subject. When our unhappy civil war broke out, we distinctly confessed that we knew what great temptations it offered to foreign intervention and aggression, and that in no event could such intervention or aggression be endured. It was apparent that such aggression, if it should come, must travel over the seas, and therefore must be met and encountered, if at all, by maritime resistance. We addressed ourselves to prepare the means of such resistance. We have now a navy, not, indeed, as ample as we proposed, but yet one which we feel assured is not altogether inadequate to the purposes of self-defence, and it is yet rapidly increasing in men, material, and engines of war. Besides this regular naval force, the President has asked, and Congress has given him, authority to convert the mercantile marine into armed squadrons, by the issue of letters of marque and reprisal. All the world might see, if it would, that the great arm of naval defence has not been thus invigorated for the mere purpose of maintaining a blockade, or enforcing our authority against the insurgents; for practically they have never had an open port, or built and armed, nor could they from their own resources build and arm, a single ship-of-war.
"Thus the world is left free to understand that our measures of maritime war are intended to resist maritime aggression, which is constantly threatened from abroad and even more constantly apprehended at home. That it would be employed for that purpose, if such aggression should be attempted, would seem certain, unless, indeed, there should be reason to suppose that the people do not in this respect approve of the policy and sympathize with the sentiments of the executive Government. But the resistance of foreign aggression by all the means in our power, and at the hazard, if need be, of the National life itself, is the one point of policy on which the American people seem to be unanimous and in complete harmony with the President.
"The United States understand that the Alabama is a pirate ship-of-war, roving over the seas, capturing, burning, sinking, and destroying American vessels, without any lawful authority from the British Government or from any other sovereign power, in violation of the law of nations, and contemptuously defying all judicial tribunals equally of Great Britain and all other states. The United States understand that she was purposely built for war against the United States, by British subjects, in a British port, and prepared there to be armed and equipped with a specified armament adapted to her construction for the very piratical career which she is now pursuing; that her armament and equipment, duly adapted to this ship-of-war and no other, were simultaneously prepared by the same British subjects, in a British port, to be placed on board to complete her preparation for that career; that when she was ready, and her armament and equipment were equally ready, she was clandestinely and by connivance sent by her British holders, and the armament and equipment were at the same time clandestinely sent through the same connivance by the British subjects who had prepared them, to a common port outside of British waters, and there the armament and equipment of the Alabama as a ship-of-war were completed, and she was sent forth on her work of destruction with a crew chiefly of British subjects, enlisted in and proceeding from a British port, in fraud of the laws of Great Britain and in violation of the peace and sovereignty of the United States.
"The United States understand that the purpose of the building, armament and equipment, and expedition of the vessel was one single criminal intent, running equally through the building and the equipment and the expedition, and fully completed and executed when the Alabama was finally despatched; and that this intent brought the whole transaction of building, armament, and equipment within the lawful jurisdiction of Great Britain, where the main features of the crime were executed. The United States understand that they gave sufficient and adequate notice to the British Government that this wrongful enterprise was begun and was being carried out to its completion; and that upon receiving this notice her Majesty's Government were bound by treaty obligations and by the law of nations to prevent its execution, and that if the diligence which was due had been exercised by the British Government the expedition of the Alabama would have been prevented, and the wrongful enterprise of British subjects would have been defeated. The United States confess that some effort was made by her Majesty's Government, but it was put forth too late and was too soon abandoned. Upon these principles of law and these assumptions of fact, 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.
"Though indulging a confident belief in the correctness of our positions in regard to the claims in question, and others, we shall be willing at all times hereafter, as well as now, to consider the evidence and the arguments which her Majesty's Government may offer, to show that they are invalid; and if we shall not be convinced, there is no fair and just form of conventional arbitrament or reference to which we shall not be willing to submit them."
In 1856 the great powers of Europe signed at Paris a treaty by which they relinquished the right of privateering, and some of the lesser powers afterward accepted a general invitation to join in it. The United States offered to sign it, on condition that a clause be inserted declaring that private property on the high seas, if not contraband of war, should be exempt from seizure by the public armed vessels of an enemy, as well as by private ones. The powers that had negotiated the treaty declined to make this amendment, and therefore the United States did not become a party to it. When the war of secession began, and the Confederate authorities proclaimed their readiness to issue letters of marque for private vessels to prey upon American commerce, the United States Government offered to accept the treaty without amendment; but England and France declined to permit our Government to join in the treaty then, if its provisions against privateering were to be understood as applying to vessels sent out under Confederate authority. There the subject was dropped, and while the insurgents were thus left at liberty to do whatever damage they could upon the high seas, the United States Government was also left free to send not only its own cruisers but an unlimited number of privateers against the commerce of any nation with which it might become involved in war. When at the beginning of President Lincoln's administration Mr. Adams was sent out as minister at London, he carried instructions that included this passage: "If, as the President does not at all apprehend, you shall unhappily find her Majesty's Government tolerating the application of the so-called seceding States, or wavering about it, you will not leave them to suppose for a moment that they can grant that application and remain the friends of the United States. You may even assure them promptly, in that case, that if they determine to recognize, they may at the same time prepare to enter into alliance with the enemies of this Republic."
England had had a costly experience of American privateering under sail in the war of 1812-15, and she now saw what privateering could become under steam power. While she was rejoicing at the destruction of American merchantmen, she knew what might happen to her own. Let her become involved in war with the United States, and not only a hundred war-ships but a vast fleet of privateers would at once set sail from American ports, and in a few months her commerce would be swept from every sea. The fisherman on the coast of Maine would carpet his hut with Persian rugs, and the ship-carpenter's children would play with baubles intended to decorate the Court of St. James.1 The navies of England and France combined could not blockade the harbors of New England; and from those harbors, where every material is at hand, might have sailed a fleet whose operations would not only have impoverished the merchants of London, but called out the wail of famine from her populace. Other considerations were discussed; but it was doubtless this contingency that furnished the controlling reason why the British Government resisted the tempting offers of cotton and free trade, resisted the importunities of Louis Napoleon, resisted the clamor of its more reckless subjects, resisted its own prejudice against republican institutions, and refused to recognize the Southern Confederacy as an independent nation. It may have been this consideration also that induced it, after the war was over, to agree to exactly that settlement by arbitration which was suggested by Secretary Seward in the despatch quoted above. In 1872 the international court of arbitration, sitting in Geneva, Switzerland, decided that the position taken by the United States Government in regard to responsibility for the Confederate cruisers was right; and that the British Government, for failing to prevent their escape from its ports, must pay the United States fifteen and a half million dollars. So far as settlement of the principle was concerned, the award gave Americans all the satisfaction they could desire; but the sum named fell far short of the damage that had been wrought. Charles Sumner, speaking in his place in the Senate, had contended with great force for the exaction of what were called "consequential damages," which would have swelled the amount to hundreds of millions; but in this he was overruled.
1 See lists of goods captured by American privateers in the war of 1812: "Eighteen bales of Turkish carpets, 43 bales of raw silk, 20 boxes of gums, 160 dozen swan-skins, 6 tons of ivory, $40,000 in gold dust, $80,000 in specie, $20,000 worth of indigo, $60,000 in bullion, $500,000 worth of dry goods, 700 tons of mahogany," etc. In Coggeshall's "History of American Privateers."