INTRODUCTION

Privateers are armed merchant ships commissioned by the national government of a belligerent country to interdict and capture enemy merchant vessels on the high seas. The legal course normally followed by a national government is to issue a "letter of marque or reprisal" to the would-be privateer legitimizing what would normally be considered piracy.

The motivation for the national government to follow this quasi-legal process was the ability to quickly deploy a low-cost naval force that was capable of attacking and destroying the merchant fleet of an enemy. The motivation of a privateer crew and its supporters was greed mixed with a sense of adventure and patriotism, the key being greed. It was a risky business; they were close to being pirates and were disdained by the professional naval officer. In their hearts they were patriots and strong individualists.

Privateers struck at a romantic cord in Americans. When they spoke of privateers they spoke of the Revolution and the War of 1812 and weak sea forces verses mighty powers; they spoke David vs Goliath. They were a symbol of the little power striking out and triumphing over superior overwhelming might.

During the American Revolution to have any military success at all against the largest commercial and military power in the world, the American colonies had to exploit every means possible to obtain essential military supplies and strike out against the oppressor. British sea power threatened American overseas and coastal shipping. The Americans turned to the issuance of letters of marque, legalizing and commissioning private enterprises to outfit and send out armed merchant ships as commerce raiders. The privateers had the legal authority to prey on British shipping.

A large part of the munitions brought into the United States from abroad, and a large share of the profits of many of the most prosperous merchants were not as a result of ordinary commercial transactions at all. They came from successful raids by American privateers on the high seas. No less than 365 vessels of Boston were commissioned as privateers during the war... It can be said with much truth that the Americas carried on the first two years of the war largely at British expense. (Huston, The Sinews of War, p. 21.)

Privateering was a threat to the European nations especially the country with the world's premier merchant fleet, England. Even though in the past they had relied upon letters of marque in their national wars, like reformed sinners they wanted to outlaw the practice. Meeting in Paris in 1856 the European powers decided to declare the practice illegal and piracy.

The United States, which had institutionalized the practice of issuing letters of marque in Section 8, paragraph (11) of the Constitution, did not support the Paris meeting and the goals of the European powers. Out of past necessity and weakness, raids, harassment and disruptions were the chief pillars of American naval strategy from the Revolution to the War with Mexico. The privateer operating under the letter of marque was the romantic bastion of this strategy. Due to a desire for the ability of a smaller nation to challenge larger ones on the world's oceans as well as the right of privacy, the American Secretary of State William L. Marcy, stating that if privateering were given up the seas would be ceded to the larger powers, requested modifications in the agreement. These requests were ignored and in 1856 the Declaration of Paris banned the use of privateers and the issuance of letters of marque and reprisal. The United States was to regret that it was not part of the international agreement.

The 12 April 1861 Confederate attack on Fort Sumter triggered a chain of events that lead to the Civil War and a naval strategy that was as steeped in pre-history and tradition as the war itself would be modern. In effect the North and South went to war based upon presidential proclamation.

The first link in the chain was the 15 April President Lincoln proclamation stating that an insurrection had occurred in certain sections of the southern states that was beyond the power of the Federal government and traditional law enforcement agencies to handle. He called on the remaining states for 75,000 volunteers for three months with whom he would recover forts, arsenals, navy yards and public buildings that had been sized by the seceding states.

On 17 April 1861, President Jefferson Davis announced by proclamation that Lincoln's action indicated that the South would be invaded and that it was the duty of the Confederate government to repel the invasion. He called for 21,000 volunteers to defend the new nation.

President Davis' proclamation took a step that precipitated the actions that would be the basis of Union naval strategy. He called for volunteers to take out Confederate letters of marque, a commission for privately owned and armed vessels to capture and harass Northern merchant ships at sea.

While this action was based in historic legend in the United States, it may have been the first great miscalculation of the Confederate naval effort. The call for privateers may have been a death warrant for the Confederacy; for Lincoln's next action on 19 April 1861 was to establish, by proclamation, a naval blockade against the ports of the seceded states. In the proclamation Lincoln added that any vessel found interfering with the United States' merchant shipping would be treated like pirates under international law.

While the Union blockade was inevitable and part of the strategy outlined by General in Chief Winfield Scott, the US Navy was in no position to make it effective that first year of the war. However, Davis' decision to issue letters of marque caused the Union action early on in the War.

The three presidential proclamations established the naval strategies of the North and the South and were purely political. No consideration was given to naval capabilities. The Union established a blockade and wanted to destroy the South; the Confederacy sought to break, circumvent or discredit the blockade and survive.

The Confederacy was faced with not only the establishment of a nation but also all of the systems and trappings that went with it. One of the institutions that had to be built was a Navy.

The Confederacy had no navy and had to build one from scratch from the bottom up. By and large an agricultural nation and virtually unskilled in shipping or shipbuilding, the Confederacy had few shipyards, nor the industrial base from which to support a major ship production effort. Initially the value of sea power was not even reconized. They, at one point, even looked on the Union blockade as a blessing in disguise. It would create a cotton famine in Europe that would expedite foreign recognition of their independence. As the War progressed these weaknesses would plague the efforts of the Confederates and be displayed in such places as engine rooms during critical moments.

Without naval traditions, the South took the opportunity to experiment and try new approaches in warfare; these efforts would manifest themselves in armored ships, torpedoes and submarines. However, at the start they turned to history and the naval traditions of the "old Navy."

The Confederate Secretary of Navy, Stephen Mallory (one of the two Davis appointments made during the first days of the War to last in office during the entire course of the life of the Confederacy) recognized that he would never be able to match the Union's capability to sustain naval warfare. He had to develop a new approach. He also realized that one of the Union's vulnerabilities was its merchant fleet, which in 1861 was second only to England in the number of hulls and registered tonnage.

Mallory's approach was to develop vessels that could protect rivers and harbors as well as to interdict the Federal sea borne merchant fleet. The first Confederate war vessels turned to were privateers which could challenge the Union while other vessels could be procured or built as commerce raiders or cruisers. Privateering was an aspect of Confederate naval strategy where armed private vessels holding a government commission or letter of marque were utilized to capture or destroy Union ships of commerce. One goal of the program was to help destroy the blockade by forcing the Union Navy to draw more and more ships off the blockade to chase privateers. The reduction in the effectiveness of the blockade would mean that supply lines would stay open. The second goal of the letters of marque was a more traditional one, the procurement of supplies and war material.

Although the process of developing a privateering fleet was commenced via presidential proclamation in April 1861, the Confederate President wanted to insure that the rules of law were followed. Accordingly, he issued no letters until the Confederate Congress passed proper legislation authorizing the action. "An Act Recognizing the existence of war between the United States and the Confederate States: and concerning letters of marque, prizes, and prize goods" was passed by the Congress on May 6, 1861 and approved by President Davis. The act not only authorized the issuance of the letters but also established the administrative procedure to be followed with approval resting in the Confederate Department of Commerce. The procedures required a bond as well as a list of backers for each of the endeavors and the names of the crew and captain.

Of the approximately 212 ships and vessels commissioned into the Confederate Navy, ninety-nine were initially commissioned through letters of marque from the Confederate government and have records that are still available (See Appendix 1). Of these twenty-nine were captured or destroyed by Union forces. Others were later taken over as naval vessels and some took on new careers as blockade-runners.

The first vessel to receive a letter of marque was the Confederate States Privateer SAVANNAH on 18 May 1861. While the heyday of privateers was in 1861, requests for letters were received as late as May 1864 (See Appendix 2). Over the course of their lives the most successful of the privateers were the DIXIE, GORDON, JEFFERSON DAVIS, MARINER, SALLIE, SAVANNAH, and the YORK.

Although the United States had utilized the letter of marque as a weapon during the Revolution and the War of 1812 and had refused to ratify the Declaration of Paris of 1856 which had outlawed privateering, Northern merchants were unanimously united that the practice was "piracy" and a barbarous method of war. They flooded the government with demands for immediate blockade of the South and for protection.

Jefferson Davis might as well have thrown a lighted match into a powder magazine, as menace the commerce of the North with privateers. The effect of his proclamation upon our community has been only to deepen and make tenfold more intense the hatred and indignation of the public... They cannot even make war in the spirit of a civilized nation, but go back to the habits and practices of the barbarism of a hundred years ago. (The New York Times quoted in Stampp, And the War Came, p. 291)

On 24 April 1861 the Union Secretary of State William Seward requested that the British government allow the United States to enter into negations for the accession of the United States into the 1856 Declaration of the Congress of Paris. The British and the French agreed to this action. However, the inclusion would only after the current situation was resolved.

While this was not acceptable to the United States it was expected. Accordingly in a 19 April 1861 proclamation the Lincoln Administration did "... hereby proclaim and declare that if any person under the pretended authority of the said States, or under any other pretence, shall molest a vessel of the United States, or the persons or cargo on board her, such person will be amenable to the laws of the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy." (Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers, p. 170) Regardless of the laws of the Confederacy and the attempts to insure legal methods and actions, the crews of Confederate warships and privateers were pirates, subject to execution if captured.

The Confederate States Privateer JEFFERSON DAVIS was a New Orleans full-rigged brig, built in Baltimore about 1846 as PUTNAM and captured off Cuba 21 August 1858 by the USS DOLPHIN as the slaver ECHO. ECHO was forfeited to the United States and auctioned in January 1859 to Capt. Robert Hunter of Charleston, S. C.

Hunter signed up 27 shareholders and applied for a letter of marque for PUTNAM to be known as RATTLESNAKE, then JEFFERSON DAVIS. The commission was approved and issued by the State Department as a privateer 18 June 1861 at Charleston, South Carolina. She was armed with five 60-year old, British iron guns and was described by a prisoner as having "black mastheads and yards and a black hull" and being "very rusty." Her master and shareholder was the "impudent sea robber," Louis M. Coxetter, a name high on the list of "pirates" most wanted by the U.S. Navy.

On 28 June the JEFFERSON DAVIS received a gala send-off as she escaped to sea through Maffitt’s Channel, "notwithstanding," as the Charleston Mercury quipped, "the very efficient blockade of Abraham I." (Dictionary of American Fighting Ships, Vol. II, Appendix II Confederate Forces Afloat, p. 539) During the cruise, Coxetter took nine sail in seven weeks in classic privateer actions. These included three brigs, three schooners, two ships and a bark, causing consternation on the coast from Maine to Delaware.

One of these captures was the ENCHANTRESS, which was Newburyport built in 1858 and registered in New York. On 1 July 1861 with John Deverux as captain and with a mixed cargo she sailed out of Boston for Cuba. On 6 July the Confederate States Privateer JEFFERSON DAVIS captured her and a prize-master, William W. Smith, a Savannah pilot, was put on board with a crew of four. Smith was ordered to take the vessel to a Confederate port.

On 22 July off Hatteras Inlet the ENCHANTRESS was recaptured by the United States Steamer ALBATROSS and taken to the Navy Yard in Philadelphia. Here Smith and his crew were arrested by Deputy United States Marshall Thomas B. Patterson and taken to Moyamensing Prison on 2 August 1861. On 22 October 1861, in the United States Circuit Court in Pennsylvania, Smith was tried for piracy.

During his trial Smith's lawyer, Mr. N. Harrison, introduced as part of the defense the Constitution of the Confederate States of America as well as the Confederate acts authorizing the President to issue letters of marque and reprisal. Not swayed by the arguments that Smith was engaged in a legal act of war, the jury on 25 October 1861 found Smith guilty.

On 9 November the Confederate Secretary of War, J. P. Benjamin, directed that the highest ranking Union prisoner of war then confined in Richmond would be held for execution in the same manner as adopted by the United States for the execution of "prisoner of war" Smith condemned to death in Philadelphia. An additional thirteen other Union prisoners of high rank were subsequently directed held as long as other Confederate sailors were slated for trial as pirates. Among this latter group was the grandson of Paul Revere who had been captured at Bull Run.

In the interim, the presiding judge of the United States Court in Philadelphia overruled the verdict of the Smith trial stating in part that Confederate sailors could not be treated any different than Confederate soldiers. With that action he refused to try any more privacy cases. On February 15, 1862 Smith and all other prisoners were transferred to the custody of the United Secretary of War as prisoners of war. "The fact that the war was a civil war afforded no reason for a distinction between combatants at sea and combatants on land... naval warfare is no more criminal than land warfare..." (Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers, p. 171)

Between this action and that of President Lincoln in the declaring of a blockade of the Southern ports rather than simply declaring the ports closed, the United States was forced to grant to the Confederacy the rights of a belligerent despite its claim that the southern states were an organized mob and insurrectionists. As members of the armed forces of a belligerent, the crews of captured privateers were entitled to be treated as prisoners of war.

The overall fate and impact of the privateers on the outcome of the War was minimal. This was due to two actions that limited their overall value. First was the careful action of the Confederacy. In order to insure the acceptance of their nation as legitimate, it was essential to the Confederate government that its actions were careful and inaccordance with law. The decision was made from the start that commissions or letters of marque would only be issue to actual vessel present within Confederate borders. There would be no trading of commissions and no piracy under the guise of the Confederate commissions. With all of the problems to be faced by the new nation respectability would not be sacrificed and the leaders were determined to establish a "legitimate state".

Second, there was a lack of profit to balance the risk taken by the privateers. This was due to the British proclamation early in the war of neutrality. According to law and custom the owners of privateers kept the profits from the sale of captured vessels and their cargoes. After the paying of shares and a tax to the government, which in the case of the Confederacy equaled one twentieth of the total value, the profits made up for the risk taken and funds invested. However the prize had to get to a properly constituted court. With the declaration of neutrality by the British and its acceptance by the other European powers the Confederate privateers had to reach a Southern port in order to appear before a "properly constituted court."

The privateer now had to get by the Union blockade in order to hunt, it had to avoid Union war ships and capture prizes and then get the prizes back though the blockade. As was seen by the ENCHANTRESS, this would be the telling issue.

In the end the Confederates did not realize the profits they sought and the privateers that were not captured or destroyed by the Union were for the most part commissioned into the regular Confederate Navy or turned to blockade-running.

The privateers were the first Confederate war vessels to get to sea and provided an important aspect of the Confederate naval strategy. In turn some of their cruses were successful, Union merchant ships were captured and some trade interdicted. However, the impact of these quasi-warships was out of proportion to the actual damage they inflicted. There was a near panic among the merchants of the North. The privateers started what would become a flood as the Confederate cruisers went to sea. This impact was in the form of "flight from the flag" or the registering of United States merchant ships under the flags of foreign nations in order to protect their cargoes. In turn insurance rates increased dramatically. At the same time the Confederate Navy was turning to cruisers which did not worry about prizes but the outright destruction of Union shipping.

Much like the Navy they helped spawn, the privateers were never defeated but were replaced by different methods. In the final analysis the practice of privateering simply petered out and faded away.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Bern. By Sea and by River: The Naval History of the Civil War. New York: Da Capo Press, 1962.

Boatner, Mark M., III. The Civil War Dictionary. New York: David McKey Company, Inc., 1959.

Campbell, R. Thomas. Gray Thunder: Exploits of the Confederate States Navy. Shippensburg: Bund Street Press, 1996.

Coombe, Jack D. Thunder Along the Mississippi: The River Battles That Split the Confederacy. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.

--------------------- Gunfire Around the Gulf: The Last Major Naval Campaigns of the Civil War. New York: Bantam Books, 1999.

Dufour, Charles L., The Night The War Was Lost. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960.

Eaton, Clement. A History of the Southern Confederacy. New York: The Free Press, 1965.

Fowler, William M., Jr., Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990.

Hearn, Chester G. Admiral David Dixon Porter: The Civil War Years. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996.

Howarth, Stephen. To Shining Sea: A History of the United States Navy - 1775- 1991. New York: Random House, 1991.

Huston, James A. The Sinews of War: Army Logistics 1775 - 1953. Army Historical Series. Washington, D.C., Center of Military History, 1966.

Luraghi, Raimondo. A History of the Confederate Navy. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1996.

McPherson, James M. Ordeal By Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1982.

Soley, J. Russell. The Blockade and the Cruisers. New York: Jack Brussel, Publisher. (Part of a series of fifteen volumes written and published in 1810 as the Campaigns of the Civil War.)

------------------ "Minor Operations of the South Atlantic Squadron Under DuPont," in Volume Four Battles and Leaders of the Civil War a collection of writings by Union and Confederate officers and based upon the "Century War Series", edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, of the editorial staff of Century Magazine.

Stampp, Kenneth M., And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crises. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1950.

Still, William N., Jr. Iron Afloat: The Story of the Confederate Ironclads. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985.

United States, Navy Department. Office of Naval War Records. Official Records of the Union and confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. 30 Vols and Index. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894-1922. (On CD-ROM, Guild Press of Indiana, Inc. Carmel, Indiana.)

-----------------. DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN FIGHTING SHIPS, Vol. II, Appendix II Confederate Forces Afloat. Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Naval History Division.

About the author, William C. Lowe

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