784 



PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



while their merchant vessels covered the ocean. We 

 were without a navv, while they had powerful fleets. 

 The advantage which they possessed for inflicting in- 

 jury on our coasts and harbors was thus counterbal- 

 anced in some measure by the exposure of their com- 

 merce to attack by private armed vessels. 



It was known to Europe that within .a very few 

 years past the United States had peremptorily refused 

 to accede to proposals for abolishing privateering, on 

 the ground, as alleged by them, that nations owning 

 powerful fleets would thereby obtain undue advantage 

 over those possessing inferior naval forces. Yet, no 

 sooner was war flagrant between the confederacy and 

 the United States, than the maritime Powers of Europe 

 issued orders prohibiting either party from bringing 

 prizes into their ports. This prohibition, directed with 

 apparent impartiality against both belligerents, was in 

 reality effective against the Confederate States alone ; 

 for they alone could find a hostile commerce on the 

 ocean. 'Merely nominal against the United States, the 

 prohibition operated with intense severity on the con- 

 federacy, by depriving it of the only means of main- 

 taining, with some approach to equality, its struggle 

 on the ocean against the crushing superiority of naval 

 force possessed by its enemies. The value and effi- 

 ciency of the weapon which was thus wrested from our 

 grasp by the combined action of neutral European 

 Powers, in favor of a nation which professes openly 

 its intention of ravaging their commerce by priva- 

 teers in any future war, is strikingly illustrated by the 

 terror inspired among the commercial classes of the 

 United States by a single cruiser of the confederacy. 

 One national steamer, commanded by officers and man- 

 ned by a crew who are debarred by the closure of 

 neutral ports from the opportunity of causing captured 

 vessels to be condemned in their favor as prizes, has 

 sufficed to double the rates of marine insurance in 

 Northern ports, and consign to forced inaction num- 

 bers of Northern vessels, in addition to the direct 

 damage inflicted by captures at sea. How difficult, 

 then, to overestimate the effects that must have been 

 produced by the hundreds of private armed vessels 

 that would have swept the seas in pursuit of the com- 

 merce of our enemy if the means of disposing of their 

 prizes had not been withheld by the action of neutral 

 Europe ! 



But it is especially in relation to the so-called block- 

 ade of our coast that the policy of European Powers 

 has been so shaped as to cause the greatest injury to 

 the confederacy, and to confer signal advantages on 

 the United States. The importance of this subject re- 

 quires some development. Prior to the year 1856 the 

 principles regulating the subject were to be gathered 

 from the writings oT eminent publicists, the decisions 

 of admiralty courts, international treaties, and the 

 usages of nations. The uncertainty and doubt which 

 prevailed in reference to the true rules of maritime 

 law in time of war, resulting from the discordant, and 

 often conflicting, principles announced from such va- 

 ried and independent sources, had become a grievous 

 evil to mankind. Whether a blockade was allowable 

 against a port not invested by land as well as by sea, 

 wnether a blockade was valid by sea if the investing 

 fleet was merely sufficient to render ingress to the 

 blockaded port evidently dangerous, or whether it was 

 further required for its legality that it should be suf- 

 ficient really to prevent access, and numerous other 

 similar questions, hod remained doubtful and unde- 

 cided. Animated by the highly honorable desire to 

 put an end to differences of opinion between neutrals 

 and belligerents which may occasion serious difficul- 

 ties and even conflicts I quote the official language 

 the five great Powers of Europe, together with Sardi- 

 nia and Turkey, adopted, in 1856, the following solemn 

 declaration of principles : 



Firstly Privateenng is and remains abolished. 



Secondly The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, 

 with the exception of contraband of war. 



Thirdly beutral goods, with the exception of con- 

 traband of war, are not liable to capture under ene- 

 my's flag. 



Fourthly Blockades, in order to be binding, must 

 be effective ; that is to say, maintained by a force suf- 

 ficient really to prevent access to the coast of the en- 

 emy. 



Not only did this solemn declaration announce to 

 the world the principles to which the signing Powers 

 agreed to conform in future wars, but it contained a 

 clause to which those Powers gave immediate effect, 

 and which provided that the states not parties to the 

 Congress of Paris should be invited to accede to the 

 declaration. Under this invitation every independent 

 state in Europe yielded its assent. At least no in- 

 stance is known to me of a refusal ; and the United 

 States, while declining to assent to the proposition 

 which prohibited privateering, declared that the three 

 remaining principles were in entire accordance with 

 their own views of international law. No instance is 

 known in history of the adoption of rules of public 

 law under circumstances of like solemnity with like 

 unanimity, and pledging the faith of nations with sanc- 

 tity so peculiar. 



When, therefore, this confederacy was formed, and 

 when neutral Powers, while deferring action on its de- 

 mand for admission into the family of nations, recog- 

 nized it as a belligerent Power, Great Britain and 

 France made informal proposals about the same time 

 that their own rights as neutrals should be guaran- 

 teed by pur acceding as belligerents to the declaration 

 of principles made by the Congress of Paris. The re- 

 quest was addressed to our sense of justice, and there- 

 fore met immediate favorable response in the resolu- 

 tions of the Provisional Congress of the 13th of August, 

 1861, by which all the principles announced by the 

 Congress of Paris were adopted as the guide of our 

 conduct during the war, with the sole exception of 

 that relative to privateering. As the right to make 

 use of privateers was one in which neutral nations had, 

 as to the present war, no interest, as it was a right 

 which the United States had refused to abandon, and 

 which they remained at liberty to employ against us. 

 as it was a right of which we were already in actual 

 enjoyment, and which we could not be expected to re- 

 nounce, flagrante bello, against an adversary possess- 

 ing an overwhelming superiority of naval forces, it 

 was reserved, with entire confidence that neutral na- 

 tions could not fail to perceive that just reason existed 

 for the reservation. Nor was this confidence mis- 

 placed ; for the official documents published by the 

 British Government, usually called Blue Books, con- 

 tain the expression of the satisfaction of that Govern- 

 ment with the conduct of the officials who conducted 

 successfully the delicate business confided to their 

 charge. 



These solemn declarations of principle this im- 

 plied agreement between the confederacy and the two 

 Powers just named have been suffered to remain in- 

 operative against the menaces and outrages on neutral 

 rights committed by the United States with unceas- 

 ing and progressing arrogance during the whole 

 period of the war. Neutral Europe remained passive 

 when the United States with a naval force insufficient 

 to blockade effectively the coast of a single State 

 proclaimed a paper blockade of thousands of miles of 

 coast, extending from the Capes of the Chesapeake to 

 those of Florida and to Key West, and encircling 

 the Gulf of Mexico to the mouth of the Rio Grande. 

 Compared with this monstrous pretension of the Uni- 

 ted States, the blockades known in history under the 

 names of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, and the Brit- 

 ish Orders in Council, in the years 1806 and 1807, sink 

 into insignificance. Yet those blockades were justi- 

 fied by the Powers that declared them on the sole 

 ground that they were retaliatory; yet those block- 

 ades have since been condemned bv the publicists of 

 those very Powers as violations of international law ; 

 yet those blockades evoked angry remonstrances from 

 neutral powers, amongst which the United States were 

 the most conspicuous; yet those blockades became 

 the chief cause of the war between Great Britain and 

 the United States in 1812; yet those blokades were 

 one of the principal motives that led to the declara- 



