Confederate Privateer - Call For Privateers

Call For Privateers

Following the 12 April 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, President Abraham Lincoln called for raising 75,000 troops to put down the "rebellion". In response, on the 17th Confederate President Jefferson Davis called both for raising troops and for the issuance of letters of marque.

Although the Federal government had only 42 warships in commission, and most others that were laid up were unserviceable, the Confederate States had almost nothing to offer in opposition. With no navy yet established, they turned to the alternative of privateering. The issuance of letters of marque and reprisal was explicitly allowed by the Confederate Constitution and in fact was copied almost directly from the American Constitution. The privateeers were expected to prey upon commercial vessels of the enemy. Their pay would consist of the value of seized ships and cargoes, less legal costs. Two benefits would accrue to the Confederate government; the disruption of commerce might persuade the European nations to pressure the North to end the conflict, and it would also force the North on its own to ease the blockade in order to chase down the raiders.

By this time, the European maritime powers had declared the practice of privateering to be illegal, in the Declaration of Paris (1856). According to the treaty, privateers were to be regarded as equivalent to pirates, meaning that they had the protection of no national flag. A privateer could be seized by the ships of any signatory nation and tried in that nation's courts. In 1856, the United States had declined to ratify the treaty. When the Civil War broke out, the Lincoln government tried belatedly to make this nation a signatory.

If the previous signatories had accepted American entry into the scope of the treaty, it would have meant that they were taking sides in the rebellion. Rather than do so, they insisted that the United States should get its own house in order first. The governments of the treaty participants, in order to avoid becoming involved in the conflict in North America, refused to regard Confederate privateers as pirates. In doing so, they had to acknowledge that a war existed, and therefore both parties had belligerent rights. Although the government of US President Abraham Lincoln objected that this gave legitimacy to what they considered to be properly merely an insurrection, the policy actually worked to the advantage of the Federal government because it meant that British, French, and Spanish courts, including those in colonies in the Caribbean, were closed to the privateers. They would therefore, in order to make good their prizes, have to take them into Confederate ports for adjudication.

Shipowners throughout the South, and perhaps some from the North as well, responded with enthusiasm to the call. The initial burst of ardor was great enough that the Confederate government could lay down some rather stringent conditions, such as requiring the deposit of large bonds, to insure that the practice did not degenerate into outright piracy. The holders of letters of marque were also required to be the actual owners of the ships; this was to discourage speculation in the letters.

An anomalous feature of the legislation governing Confederate privateering was that it considered attacking enemy warships. To give an incentive in the absence of valuable cargoes of merchant vessels that could be sold for profit, the law provided for fixed monetary awards for capturing or destroying ships of the US Navy, with the size of the awards to be based on the numbers in the crews and the value of the ships taken or destroyed. This provision was never applied, as no Union warships were destroyed by privateers. A near exception was provided by the armored ram CSS Manassas, which was converted into a warship at New Orleans by riverboat Captain John A. Stevenson. Before he could take his ship into battle, however, she was seized by the Confederate Navy and put under the command of Lieutenant Alexander Warley. Manassas performed creditably at the Battle of the Head of Passes and Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, but Stevenson and his backers got no reward.

Privateering activity was strongest at the major ports, Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, and off the North Carolina coast where the trade of Northern cities with Caribbean and South American countries made use of the Gulf Stream to speed their northward voyages. The first capture of the war was made on 16 May 1861, when the bark Ocean Eagle was taken by privateer J. C. Calhoun at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Ocean Eagle was registered in New England, so the capture was legal, but it is not clear that it aided the South, as she was carrying her cargo of lime to New Orleans. By disrupting the New Orleans trade, the privateers there aided the blockade.

Privateering activity near Cape Hatteras, on the coast of North Carolina, was particularly irksome. Northern shipowners either dropped out of the Caribbean trade or transferred their registry to Great Britain. Insurers pressured the Federal government to defend their interests. In response, the Union sent a combined Army-Navy expedition to take possession of two Confederate forts at Hatteras Inlet. This was the first reclamation of seceded territory by the Union, and was also the first notable Union success of the war.