Volume II Part 22 (2/2)
Seward, with his usual diplomatic insincerity and Machiavellianism, characteristically prevaricated, while he plotted with a distinguished admiral as to the most adroit method of disposing of the ”elephant.” The result of these plottings was that an engineer was placed in charge of the stolen steamer, with positive orders to ”open her sea-c.o.c.k at midnight, and not to leave the engine-room until the water was up to his chin, as at sunrise _the Florida must be at the bottom_.” The following note was sent to the Brazilian _charge d'affaires_ by Mr. Seward:
”While awaiting the representations of the Brazilian Government, on the 28th of November she [the Florida] sank, owing to a leak, which could not be seasonably stopped. The leak was at first represented to have been caused, or at least increased, by collision with a war-transport. Orders were immediately given to ascertain the manner and circ.u.mstances of the occurrence. It seemed to affect the army and navy. A naval court of inquiry and also a military court of inquiry were charged with the investigation. The naval court has submitted its report, and a copy thereof is herewith communicated. The military court is yet engaged. So soon as its labors shall have ended, the result will be made known to your Government. In the mean time it is a.s.sumed that the loss of the Florida was in consequence of some unforeseen accident, which casts no responsibility on the Government of the United States.”
The rest.i.tution of the s.h.i.+p having thus become impossible, the President expressed his regret that ”the sovereignty of Brazil had been violated; dismissed the consul at Bahia, who had advised the offense; and sent the commander of the Wachusett before a court-martial.” [58]
The commander of the Wachusett experienced no annoyance, and was soon made an admiral.
The Georgia was the next Confederate cruiser that Captain Bullock succeeded in sending forth. She was of five hundred and sixty tons, and fitted out on the coast of France. Her commander, W. L. Maury, Confederate States Navy, cruised in the North and South Atlantic with partial success. The capacity of the vessel in speed and other essentials was entirely inadequate to the service for which she was designed. She proceeded as far as the Cape of Good Hope, and returned, after having captured seven s.h.i.+ps and two barks. Then she was laid up and sold.
The Shenandoah, once the Sea King, was purchased by Captain Bullock, and placed under the command of Lieutenant-commanding J. J. Waddell, who fitted her for service under many difficulties at the barren island of Porto Santo, near Madeira. After experiencing great annoyances, through the activity of the American consul at Melbourne, Australia, Captain Waddell finally departed, and commenced an active and effective cruise against American s.h.i.+pping in the Okhotak Sea and Arctic Ocean. In August, 1865, hearing of the close of the war, he ceased his pursuit of United States commerce, sailed for Liverpool, England, and surrendered his s.h.i.+p to the English Government, which transferred it to the Government of the United States. The Shenandoah was a full-rigged s.h.i.+p of eight hundred tons, very fast under canva.s.s. Her steam-power was merely auxiliary.
This was the last but not the first appearance of the Confederate flag in Great Britain; the first vessel of the Confederate Government which unfurled it there was the swift, light steamer Nashville, E. B.
Pegram, commander. Having been constructed as a pa.s.senger-vessel, and mainly with reference to speed and the light draught suited to the navigation of the Southern harbors, she was quite too frail for war purposes and too slightly armed for combat.
On her pa.s.sage to Europe and back, she, nevertheless, destroyed two merchantmen. Nearing the harbor on her return voyage, she found it blockaded, and a heavy vessel lying close on her track. Her daring commander headed directly for the vessel, and ran so close under her guns that she was not suspected in her approach, and had pa.s.sed so far before the guns could be depressed to bear upon her that none of the shots took effect. Being little more than a sh.e.l.l, a single shot would have sunk her; and she was indebted to the address of her commander and the speed of his vessel for her escape. Wholly unsuited for naval warfare, this voyage terminated her career.
A different cla.s.s of vessels than those adapted to the open sea was employed for coastwise cruising. In the month of July, 1864, a swift twin-screw propeller called the Atlanta, of six hundred tons burden, was purchased by the Secretary of the Navy, and fitted out in the harbor of Wilmington, North Carolina, for a cruise against the commerce of the Northern States. Commander J. Taylor Wood, an officer of extraordinary ability and enterprise, was ordered to command her, and her name was changed to ”The Tallaha.s.see.” This extemporaneous man-of-war ran safely through the blockade, and soon lit up the New England coast with her captures, which consisted of two s.h.i.+ps, four brigs, four barks, and twenty schooners. Great was the consternation among Northern merchants. The construction of the Tallaha.s.see exclusively for steam made her dependent on coal; her cruise was of course brief, but brilliant while it lasted.
About the same time another fast double-screw propeller of five hundred and eighty-five tons, called the Edith, ran into Wilmington, North Carolina, and the Navy Department requiring her services, bought her and gave to her the name of ”Chickamauga.” A suitable battery was placed on board, with officers and crew, and Commander John Wilkinson, a gentleman of consummate naval ability, was ordered to command her. When ready for sea, he ran the blockade under the bright rays of a full moon. Strange to say, the usually alert sentinels neither hailed nor halted her. Like the Tallaha.s.see, though partially rigged for sailing, she was exclusively dependent upon steam in the chase, escape, and in all important evolutions. She captured seven vessels, despite the above-noticed defects.
[Footnote 58: M. Bernard's ”Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War.”]
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
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 Was.h.i.+ngton.--Letter of Mr. Jefferson.--Contracts sought by United States Government.--Our Cruisers went to Sea unarmed.--Mr. Adams a.s.serts 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 s.h.i.+ps 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.--s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps 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, s.h.i.+eld, 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 a.r.s.enals 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.
<script>