131 “any of the guard”: William Jay, A Review of the Causes and Consequences of the Mexican War (Boston: American Peace Society, 1853), 206–07.
132 more than a quarter of his troops: Levinson, Wars Within Wars, 61.
132 “the natural state of man”: William B. Skelton, An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784–1861 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 327.
132 “moral distempers”: Peskin, Winfield Scott, 101.
133 William Marcy: Larry Gara, The Presidency of Franklin Pierce (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 138.
133 The British government agreed: Sir Francis Piggot, The Declaration of Paris, 1856: A Study (London: University of London Press, 1919), 13–18.
133 “most auspicious”: House Exec. Doc. no. 103, 33d Cong., 1st Sess. (1854), 15.
133 “a fair prospect”: Ibid., p. 12.
134 For centuries, private vessels: Mark Grimsley, “The Pirate and the State: Henry Morgan and Irregular Naval Warfare in the Early Modern World,” in Jack Sweetman, ed., New Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers from the Tenth Naval History Symposium (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993), 29–43.
134 “responsible to”: Sir Robert Phillimore, Commentaries Upon International Law (Philadelphia: T. & J. W. Johnson, 1854–60), 1: 290.
134 Benjamin Franklin argued: PBF, 37: 618–19.
134 The 1776 model treaty: JCC, 5: 584.
134 The 1785 treaty: Malloy, 2: 1483.
134 Jefferson’s draft treaty with Austria: Edmund C. Bennett, “Note on American Negotiations for Commercial Treaties, 1776–1786,” American Historical Review 16, no. 3 (1911): 579, 587.
134 a U.S. treaty with Spain: Malloy, 2: 1645.
134 “civilization and Christianity”: ASP: Naval Affairs, 1: 723.
134 John Quincy Adams had advocated: James E. Lewis, Jr., John Quincy Adams: Policymaker for the Union (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001), 83–84.
134 517 American privateering vessels: David S. Heidler & Jeanne T. Heidler, The Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1997), 429; Jerome R. Garitee, The Republic’s Private Navy: The American Privateering Business as Practiced by Baltimore During the War of 1812 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1977), xvi, 244.
134 “from resorting to the merchant”: House Exec. Doc. no. 103, p. 13.
135 consisted of barely forty vessels: John J. Lalor, ed., Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States (Chicago: Melbert B. Care, 1883), 2: 408–10, 984–90.
135 “was aimed exclusively”: George Mifflin Dallas, A Series of Letters from London Written During the Years 1856, ’57, ’58, ’59, and ’60 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1869), 1: 32–33, 75, 129–30.
135 “catch brother Jonathan”: Olive Anderson, “Some Further Light on the Inner History of the Declaration of Paris,” Law Quarterly Review 76 (1960): 379, 384.
135 no longer an effective mode: Charles Francis Adams, Seward and the Declaration of Paris: A Forgotten Diplomatic Episode, April–August, 1861 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1912), 14, 53–55; John W. Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915 (Ithaca. NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 22–25; Edgar Stanton Maclay, A History of American Privateers (New York: D. Appleton, 1899), xxiii–xxiv; Bryan Ranft, “Restraints on War at Sea Before 1945,” in Michael Howard, ed., Restraints on War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 39–56; Theodore S. Woolsey, “The United States and the Declaration of Paris,” Yale Law Journal 3, no. 3 (1894): 77, 80.
135 learned to circumvent: Adams, Seward and the Declaration of Paris, 53–55; The Times (London), May 26, 1856.
135 “The capacity of carrying on”: The Times (London), May 26, 1856.
136 “to subserve their own interests”: Senate Exec. Doc. no. 104, 34th Cong., 1st Sess. (1856), 12.
136 “combined potentates”: Dallas, A Series of Letters from London, 1: 130, 2: 171.
136 “I am afraid”: “Mr. Cobden on Maritime Law,” The Times (London), December 11, 1856.
Part II A Few Things Barbarous or Cruel
139 Epigraph: AL to James C. Conkling, August 26, 1863, Basler, 6: 408.
Chapter 5. We Don’t Practise the Law of Nations
141 “I’m a good enough lawyer”: Don E. Fehrenbacher & Virginia Fehrenbacher, eds., Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 423.
141 Lincoln himself bitterly opposed: Cong. Globe, 30th Cong., 1st sess., appendix, p. 94.
141 a brilliant battlefield tactician: Joseph E. Chance, Jefferson Davis’s Mexican War Regiment (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 98.
141–42 “I had a good many”: David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 45.
142 “knew absolutely nothing”: Charles Francis Adams, An Address on the Character and Services of William Henry Seward (Albany, NY: Weed, Parson & Co., 1873), 2.
142 the good sense to hide: Dean B. Mahin, One War at a Time: The International Dimensions of the American Civil War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999), 2.
142 “know anything about diplomacy”: Mahin, One War at a Time, 2.
142 “We must not be enemies”: Basler, 4: 271.
142 “Acts of violence”: Ibid., 4: 265.
142 “be hospitable to a foe”: Howard C. Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1942), 2: 785 (April 18, 1861).
142 “entitled to the considerations”: Ibid., 2: 1088 (May 30, 1861).
142 “no quarters should be shown”: Ibid., 2: 727 (April 13, 1861).
142 “war of extermination”: Ibid., 2: 746–47 (April 19, 1861).
142 “refusing to lower”: Elias B. Holmes to AL, April 20, 1861, ALP LC.
142–43 “vindictive, fierce”: “The Character of the Coming Campaign,” New York Herald, April 28, 1861, 4.
143 “Jeff. Davis & Co.”: Donald, Lincoln, 295.
143 “if the U.S. determined”: Lord Newton, Lord Lyons: A Record of British Diplomacy (London: Edward Arnold, 1913), 31, 33; see Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 39–40.
144 The bumper crop of 1860: D. P. Crook, Diplomacy During the American Civil War (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1975), 73–75.
144 “vexations beyond bearing”: Newton, Lord Lyons, 36.
144 “a regular blockade”: Ibid., 36.
145 “to set on foot”: Basler, 4: 339, 346–47.
145 Lincoln understood all too well: Theodore Calvin Peace & James G. Randall, eds., The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning (Springfield, IL: Illinois State Historical Library, 1925), 1: 489.
145 “Our ships”: Newton, Lord Lyons, 36.
145 “A nation cannot blockade”: Howard K. Beale, ed., The Diary of Edward Bates, 1859–1866 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1933), 427; see also Edward Bates, “Memorandum, April 15, 1861,” ALP LC.
145 “the legal and straightforward”: Montgomery Blair to AL, August 10, 1861, ALP LC.
145 “preferred an embargo” . . . “quasi government”: Gideon Welles, Lincoln and Seward: Remarks Upon the Memorial Address of Chas. Francis Adams on the Late Wm. H. Seward (New York: Sheldon & Co., 1874), 122–23.
145 “If the interdiction is to be”: Gideon Welles to AL, August 5, 1861, ALP LC.
145 “the blockade of the Southern ports”: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (New York: Harper & Bros., 1863), 177–78.
146 “the law of Nations”: Basler, 4: 339.
146 “strange inconsistency”: Welles, Lincoln and Seward, 128.
146 “to avoid complications” . . . “on our hands at once”: Ibid., 124.
146 “to conduct the war”: Charles M. Segal, Conversations with Lincoln (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1961), 114; see also Donald, Lincoln, 303.
147 The Union blockading squadron�
��s first capture: Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals, 37–38.
147 captured a dozen: ORN, series 1, 5: 637.
147 the English bark Hiawatha: Stuart L. Bernath, Squall Across the Atlantic: American Civil War Prize Cases and Diplomacy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 22.
147 the schooner Tropic Wind: ORN, series 1, 5: 667.
147 intercepted more than 1,200 vessels: Prize Vessels: Letter from the Secretary of the Navy in answer to a resolution of the House of April 30, relative to prize vessels, House Exec. Doc. no. 279, 40th Cong., 2d Sess. (1868).
147 rail-thin and slightly stooped: Russell, My Diary North and South, 34; Glyndon G. van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).
147 “Seward is Weed”: Welles, Lincoln and Seward, 23.
148 Seward had been the favorite: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 11–16.
148 “never given any particular” . . . “no lawyer and no statesman”: Charles Francis Adams, Seward and the Declaration of Paris: A Forgotten Diplomatic Episode, April–August, 1861 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1912), 23–24.
148 “His view of the relations”: Newton, Lord Lyons, 30.
148 merely sixty-seven ships: Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals, 49–50; John Niven, Gideon Welles: Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).
148 a navy comprised of 588 vessels: Basler, 7: 43.
148 never a perfectly tight fit: Bernath, Squall Across the Atlantic, 4–5, 11; Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals, 38; cf. Stephen R. Wise, Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1988); William N. Still, “A Naval Sieve: The Union Blockade in the Civil War,” U.S. Naval College Review 36 (1983): 38–45.
148–49 Yet the blockade deterred: Craig L. Symonds, The Civil War at Sea (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2009), 54–58; Crook, Diplomacy During the American Civil War, 61–62.
149 “the bold and vigorous mind”: Welles, Lincoln and Seward, 123.
149 “I am embarrassed”: Gideon Welles to AL, August 5, 1861, ALP LC.
149 “Every capture”: Ibid.
149 would minimize the conflict: Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, 300.
149 “looked in [a] book”: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 2: 232.
150 denying Lincoln’s authority to suspend: See Carl B. Swisher, History of the Supreme Court of the United States: The Taney Period, 1836–64 (New York: Macmillan, 1974), 844–54.
150 “would end the war”: Samuel Shapiro, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., 1815–1882 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1961), 121.
150 “the foremost trial lawyer”: John D. Gordan III, “The Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Schooner ‘Savannah,’” Yearbook of the Supreme Court Historical Society (1983): 31, 39.
150 not to let the cases reach the Supreme Court: Edward Bates to William M. Evarts, March 11, 1862, letterbook B-5, Attorney General Papers, record group 60, NARA; Swisher, The Taney Period, 881–82.
150 adding a tenth seat: An Act to Provide Circuit Courts for the Districts of California and Oregon, and for Other Purposes, Stat., 12: 794; David M. Silver, Lincoln’s Supreme Court (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1998), 84. In the midst of a later court-packing controversy, Erwin Griswold of Harvard Law School explained the tenth circuit as an apolitical response to the founding of the Union Pacific Railroad, which made it possible for a justice to get to a new 10th circuit court based in California. See Hearings on S. 1392 Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 75th Cong., 1st sess. (1937), 763. Dean Griswold wanted to find a neutral basis for the Civil War court packing in order to deny a historical precedent to Franklin Roosevelt’s proposed New Deal court-packing plan.
150 upholding the blockade: The Prize Cases, 67 U.S. 635 (1863).
150 take the slavery question out of politics: Don E. Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 311–14.
151 “there must be war”: The Prize Cases, 67 U.S. at 644.
151 “The law of nations”: The Prize Cases, 67 U.S. at 670.
151 “may exercise both belligerent”: The Prize Cases, 67 U.S. at 673.
151 “Our case is double”: Charles Sumner, The Works of Charles Sumner (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1870–83), 7: 13.
152 “To a long continuance”: Bernath, Squall Across the Atlantic, 4–5.
152 a flotilla of 200 vessels: ORN, series 1, 17: 403.
152 “hope of crushing the rebellion”: ORN, series 1, 17: 192.
152 The Labuan was a neutral vessel: ORN, series 1, 17: 99–115; Bernath, Squall Across the Atlantic, 37–40.
153 restored the vessel: The Labuan, 14 F. Cas. 906 (D.C.N.Y. 1862).
153 seized a parade of British vessels: ORN, series 1, 18: 525 (Will o’ the Wisp); Bernath, Squall Across the Atlantic, 52–60.
153 ruled against U.S. Navy captors: E.g., The Dashing Wave, 72 U.S. 170 (1866); The Teresita, 72 U.S. 180 (1866); The Sir William Peel, 72 U.S. 517 (1866).
153 “large quantities of arms”: ORN, series 1, 1: 207.
153 Welles ordered the Navy: ORN, series 1, 1: 207–08.
154 captured the English bark Springbok: ORN, series 1, 2: 70.
154 “the voyage from London”: The Springbok, 72 U.S. 1, 28 (1866).
155 “when destined to the hostile country”: The Peterhoff, 72 U.S. 28, 59 (1866).
155 “humane policy”: Montague Bernard, A Historical Account of the Neutrality of Great Britain During the American Civil War (London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer, 1870), 153.
155 “raised an inference”: Ibid., 503.
155 “Old Abe”: Bradford Perkins, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations. Vol. 1: The Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 223.
155 “scarcely needs to be considered”: Basler, 4: 441 n. 47.
156 facilitated the exit of foreign merchants: Bernard, Neutrality of Great Britain, 101, 240.
156 the status of foreign nationals: Ibid., 324.
156 subsequently seized the vessel back: Ibid., 325–28.
156 compensation of foreign nationals: Basler, 7: 38, 40–41.
157 sailed out of Charleston Harbor: John Thomas Scharf, History of the Confederate States Navy (New York: Rogers & Sherwood, 1887), 84–85.
157 Calvo had a wife: United States Census for 1850, Town of Columbia, County of Richland, South Carolina, roll M432_858, p. 20A.
157 a printer by trade: John C. Ellen, Jr., “Political Newspapers of the South Carolina Up Country 1850–1859: A Compendium,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 63 (1962): 158, 162.
157 Along with thirty-four other men: William Morrison Robinson, The Confederate Privateers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929), 89–92.
157 the promise of huge profits: Ibid., 30–46.
157 eventually capturing the Mary Alice and its crew: ORN, series 1, 6: 61–63, 68.
157 imprisoned at Fort Hamilton: OR, series 2, 3: 28.
158 “a poor man” . . . “considered and treated the same”: J. P. M. Calvo to AL, November 12, 1861, ALP LC.
158 “a good deal of joking”: Russell, My Diary North and South, 127.
158 “an easy remedy for that”: Ibid., 175.
158 “insane and blood-thirsty spirit”: “The Charleston Mercury on the Privateer Savannah,” Christian Recorder (Philadelphia), June 22, 1861.
158 “A just regard to humanity”: James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy (Nashville, TN: United States Publ. Co., 1905), 2: 115.
159 to accept belatedly the British invitation of 1856: Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, 297.
160 “only be because she is willing”: William Henry Seward to Ch
arles Francis Adams, May 21, 1861, ALP LC.
160 “inconsistencies of the Northern people”: Russell, My Diary North and South, 559.
160 “Very well”: Jay Monaghan, Diplomat in Carpet Slippers: Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1945), 82.
160 “within the rules of modern civilized”: Perkins, Creation of a Republican Empire, 222.
161 a federal grand jury in New York: A. F. Warburton, Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (New York: Baker & Godwin, 1862); Mark A. Weitz, The Confederacy on Trial: The Piracy and Sequestration Cases of 1861 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005).
161 a grand jury in Philadelphia: D. F. Murphy, The Jeff Davis Piracy Cases: Full Report of the Trial of William Smith for Piracy (Philadelphia: King & Baird, 1861).
161 verdict of guilty against William Smith: Murphy, Jeff Davis Piracy Cases, 99–100.
161 The New York trial: Gordan, “Trial of the Officers and Crew,” 34–39.
162 “as enemies, for the purpose”: Ibid., 124.
162 remember that their fathers: Ibid., 229.
162 transferred from the Tombs: Gordan, “Trial of the Officers and Crew,” 43.
162 At the end of May: OR, series 2, 3: 611.
162 the first great land battle of the war: On the importance of Bull Run for the privateering cases, see Adams, Seward and the Declaration of Paris, 42.
163 after an interview with Congressman Alfred Ely: Scharf, Confederate States Navy, 78. Scharf puts the Ely meeting on February 2, 1862. Ely met with Lincoln on the evening of December 29, 1861—see “The War for the Union,” New York Tribune, December 30, 1861, p. 5.
163 to draw from a tin: Alfred Ely, The Journal of Alfred Ely, a Prisoner of War in Richmond (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1862), 212–14.
163 commissioned only fifty-two privateers: Spencer C. Tucker, Blue and Gray Navies: The Civil War Afloat (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 74.
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