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]