On the 30th of June, one bright morning, a boatman reported that the Brooklyn had gone off in chase of a sail. Immediately the Sumter was got under way, when it was soon discovered that the Brooklyn was returning, and that the two vessels were about equally distant from the bar. By steady courage and rare seamanship the Sumter escaped from her more swift pursuer, and entered on her career of cutting the enemy's sinews of war by destroying his commerce.
Numerous armed vessels of the enemy were hovering on our coast, yet this one little cruiser created a general alarm, and, though a regularly commissioned vessel of the Confederacy, was habitually denounced as a "pirate," and the many threats to destroy her served only to verify the adage that the threatened live long.
During her cruise up to January 17, 1862, she captured three ships, five brigs, six barks, and three schooners, but the property destroyed formed a very small part of the damage done to the enemy's commerce. Her appearance on the seas created such alarm that Northern ships were, to a large extent, put under foreign flags, and the carrying-trade, in which the United States stood second only to Great Britain, passed rapidly into other hands. The Sumter, while doing all this mischief, was nearly self-sustaining, her running expenses to the Confederate Government being but twenty-eight thousand dollars when, at the close of 1861, she arrived at Gibraltar. Not being able to obtain coal, she remained there until sold.
Captain James D. Bullock, an officer of the old navy, of high ability as a seaman, and of an integrity which stood the test under which a less stern character might have given way, was our naval agent at Liverpool. In his office he disbursed millions, and, when there was no one to whom he could be required to render an account, paid out the last shilling in his hands, and confronted poverty without prospect of other reward than that which he might find id a clear conscience. He contracted with the Messrs. Laird, of Birkenhead, to build a strong steam merchant-ship—the same which was afterward christened "The Alabama" when, in a foreign port, she had received her armament and crew. So much of puerile denunciation has been directed against the builder and the ship, which, in the virulent language of the day, our enemies denominated a "pirate," that the case claims at my hands a somewhat extended notice.
The senior Mr. Laird was a member of the British Parliament, and, because of the complaints made by the United States Government, and the abuse heaped upon him by the Northern newspapers, he made a speech in the House of Commons, in which he stated that, in 1861, he was applied to to build vessels for the Northern Government, first, by personal application, and subsequently by a letter from Washington, asking him, on the part of the United States Navy Department, to give the terms on which he would build an iron-plated ship, "to be finished complete, with guns and everything appertaining." Mr. Laird continued: "On the 14th of August I received another letter from the same gentleman, from which the following is an extract: 'I have this morning a note from the Assistant-Secretary of the Navy, in which he says, "I hope your friends will tender for the two iron-plated steamers."'" Mr. Laird then said that, while he would not give the name of his correspondent, who was a gentleman of the highest respectability, he was willing, in confidence, to submit the original letters to the Speaker of the House or the first Minister of the Crown; that, as "the American Government is making so much work about other parties whom they charge with violating or evading the law, when in reality they have not done so, I think it only right to state these facts."
Those who have listened with credulity to the abuse of the Confederate Government, as well as that of Great Britain, the one for contracting for the building of the Alabama and the other for permitting her to leave a British port, will thus see how little of sincerity there was in the complaints of the United States Government. For more than a generation the British people have been the great ship-builders of the world, and it is a matter of surprise that they should have given respectful consideration to charges of a breach of neutrality because they allowed a merchantman to be built in one of their ports and to leave it without any armament or crew, which could have enabled it, in that condition, to make war upon a country with which Great Britain was at peace.
Referring to the Alabama, as she was when she left the Mersey, Mr.
Laird said:
"If a ship without guns and without arms is a dangerous article, surely rifled guns and ammunition of all sorts are equally and even more dangerous. I have referred to the bills of entry in the custom-houses of London and Liverpool, and I find that there have been vast shipments of implements of war to the Northern States through the celebrated houses of Baring & Co.; Brown, Shipley & Co.; and a variety of other names. . . . I have obtained from the official custom-house returns some details of the sundries exported from the United Kingdom to the Northern States of America from the 1st of May, 1861, to the 31st of December, 1862. There were—muskets, 41,500; rifles, 341,000; gun-flints, 26,500; percussion-caps, 49,982,000; and swords, 2,250. The best information I could obtain leads me to believe that one third to a half may be added to these numbers for items which have been shipped to the Northern States as hardware . . . so that, if the Southern States have got two ships unarmed, unfit for any purpose of warfare—for they procured their armament somewhere else—the Northern States have been well supplied from this country, through the agency of some most influential persons."
The speech of Mr. Laird, exposing the hypocrisy of the representations which had been made, as well by commercial bodies as by the highest officers of the United States, called forth repeated cheers from the Parliament.
There had been no secrecy about the building of the Alabama. The same authority above quoted states that she was frequently visited while under construction, and it is known that the British Government was applied to to prevent her from leaving port. It was feared that she might be delayed; but it was not considered possible that British authorities would prevent an unarmed merchant-ship from leaving her coast, lest she might elsewhere procure an armament, and, in the service of a recognized belligerent, revive the terror in the other belligerent which the little Sumter had recently inspired.