order to abide the fate of the said Gustavus Conyngham. Ordered, That the above letter be immediately transmitted to New York, by the Board of War, and that copies of said letter and resolution be delivered to the wife of Conyngham, and the petitioners.

"Monday, Dec. 13th, 1779.-A memorial of Christopher Hale was read, praying to be exchanged, and to have leave to go to New York, upon his parole, for a few days, to procure a person in his room. Resolved, That Mr. Hale be informed, that the prayer of his memorial cannot be granted, until Captain Conyngham is released, as it has been determined that he must abide the fate of that officer."

Conyngham was afterward released. This is the way in which the ancestors of Mr. Seward, and Mr. Charles Francis Adams, took care of their "rebel pirates."

There is one other point in the legal history of the Alabama, which it is necessary to notice, and to which I propose to adduce another of those awkward precedents, which I have exhumed from those musty old records, which our Northern brethren seem so thoroughly to have forgotten. It has been charged against the Alabama, that her crew was composed mostly of foreigners, and that this was another reason why she was not entitled to be considered as a Confederate States ship of war. Let us look a little into this charge. A sovereign is not only not obliged to account to other nations, for the manner in which he becomes possessed of his ships of war, as we have seen, but he cannot be questioned as to the nativity or naturalization of the persons serving on board of them. It could have been of no sort of consequence to any foreign officer, demanding to see my commission, whether I was a native of England, Germany, or France, or of any other foreign power. All that he could demand of me, in order to satisfy himself that I was entitled to exercise belligerent rights, was a sight of my commission as a Confederate States naval officer. Nationality is presumed in all such commissions, and the presumption cannot be inquired into. Mr. Justice Story, in the decision quoted a few pages back, says, as the reader will recollect, that the commission of a ship of war imports such "absolute verity," that it cannot be inquired into, or contradicted. It is like proving a fact by a record. No other proof than the production of the record is required, or indeed permitted.

The commission of the commander is the commission

of his ship. Neither the Sumter nor the Alabama had any other commission than my own, and the orders assigning me to them. If this be the law with regard to the commander of a ship, a fortiori, must it be the law with reference to the subordinate officers and crew.

The writers on international law, without exception, lay down the rule, that a sovereign may enlist foreigners to assist him in his wars; and that the men thus enlisted are entitled to all the protection of belligerents, equally with native citizens. The Swiss foreign legions, so well known in history, are notable illustrations of this doctrine; and no one has ever heard of a Swiss being hung because he served under a foreign flag. Vattel, who has the rare merit of having so thoroughly exhausted all these subjects, that he has left scarcely anything for those who have followed him to say, lays down the doctrine as follows: "Much has been said on the question whether the profession of a mercenary soldier be lawful or not,-whether individuals may, for money, or any other reward, engage to serve a foreign prince in his wars? This question does not appear to me to be very difficult to be solved. Those who enter into such engagements, without the express or tacit consent of their sovereign, offend against their duty as citizens. But if their sovereign leaves them at liberty to follow their inclination for a military life, they are perfectly free in that respect. [Modern nations, and especially the United States, have left their citizens free to expatriate themselves at pleasure.] Now, every free man may join whatever society he pleases, according as he finds it most to his advantage. He may make its cause his own, and espouse its quarrels. He becomes, in some measure, at least for a time, a member of the State in whose service he engages." Again: "The sovereign has no right to compel foreigners; he must not even employ stratagem or artifice, in order to induce them to engage in a contract, which, like all others, should be founded on candor and good faith."

But it was scarcely necessary to quote other authority, on that point, than the authority of the enemy himself. Mr. Secretary Seward knew, at the very time he was denouncing the Alabama as a "pirate," because of her having, as he alleged, a British

crew on board, that his own Government was filling up its armies, and its navy, too, with hundreds of thousands of raw recruits from Belgium, Germany, and Ireland, and other countries. Nay, more, that by an act of the Federal Congress, these debased and ignorant men, drawn, for the most part, from the idle and thieving classes of their respective countries, were invested, ipso facto, upon enlistment, with all the functions and attributes of American citizens-the function of robbery more especially included! With reference to the conduct of the enemy in this particular, I deem it not amiss to introduce a short extract or two, from a speech made by Sir Hugh Cairnes, her Britannic Majesty's Attorney-General, in the House of Commons, on the 12th of May, 1864. The discussion grew out of the case of the Confederate States steamer Georgia, which had recently returned to Liverpool, after a cruise. Among other questions discussed was whether the Georgia should be excluded from British ports, because of some alleged infraction on her part, of the British Foreign Enlistment Act. In speaking to this question, the Attorney-General, alluding to the insufficiency of the proof in the case, said:

"The case of the Kearsarge was a case of this character. Beyond all question, a considerable amount of recruiting was carried on, at Cork, for the purposes of that ship, she being employed at the time, in our own waters, or very near them, in looking out for the enemy; and she was furnished with a large addition to her crew from Ireland. Upon that being represented to Mr. Adams, he said, as might have been expected, that it was entirely contrary to the wishes of his Government, and that there must be some mistake. The men were afterward relanded, and there can be no doubt that there had been a violation of our neutrality. Nevertheless, we admitted the Kearsarge afterward into English waters. We have not excluded her from our ports, and if we had, I think the Government of the United States would have considered that they had some cause of offence.

"But it does not rest here. I see from the paper, that the Honorable Member for Horsham, wants information respecting the enlistment of British subjects for the Federal Army. Now, from all quarters reports reach us, which we cannot doubt to be substantially true, that agents for recruiting for the Federal Army, with, or without the concurrence of the Government, are in Ireland, and engage men under the pretext of employing them on railways and public works, but really with the intention of enlisting them, and that many of these men are so enlisted. In Canada and New Brunswick the

same practices prevail. Representations have been made to the United States Government respecting the cases of particular persons, who have been kidnapped into the service, and I feel bound to say that those representations have not met with that prompt and satisfactory attention we might have expected," &c.

The reader thus perceives, that if the Alabama enlisted some foreigners to complete her crew, she was only following the example set her, by Mr. Seward himself; but there was this difference between the honorable Secretary of State and the writer. The former resorted to deceit, trickery, and fraud, whilst no man can say of the latter, that he inveigled him on board the Alabama.

I will now produce the precedent I spoke of, from those musty old records. It is drawn from the career of that remarkable sea-captain, to whom I have before referred, and with whose history every American is acquainted-I mean, John Paul Jones. The naval engagement, which conferred most honor upon Jones, was that between the Bon homme Richard, (named after Dr. Franklin's "Poor Richard," in the almanac, of which this Chief of the Naval Bureau in Paris was the author,) and the British ships Serapis and Countess of Scarborough. Mr. Cooper thus describes the crew of Jones' ship, picked up at Dunkirk, or Nantes, or some of the other French ports:

"To manage a vessel of this singular armament and doubtful construction, Commodore Jones was compelled to receive on board a crew of still more equivocal composition. A few Americans were found to fill the stations of sea officers, on the quarter deck, and forward, but the remainder of the people were a mixture of English, Irish, Scotch, Portuguese, Norwegians, Germans, Spaniards, Swedes, Italians, and Malays, with occasionally a man from one of the islands [meaning Sandwich Islands]. To keep this motley crew in order, 135 soldiers were put on board, under the command of some officers of inferior rank. These soldiers, or marines, were recruited at random, and were not much less singularly mixed as to countries, than the regular crew."

I had something of a mixture on board the Alabama, but I think Jones decidedly beat me, in the number of nationalities he had the honor to command.

26

CHAPTER XXXI.

OF

THE AUTHOR LEAVES LIVERPOOL TO JOIN THE ALABAMA ARRIVAL ᎪᎢ TERCEIRA DESCRIPTION THE ALABAMA

- PREPARING HER FOR SEA - THE PORTUGUESE AUTHORITIES THE COMMISSIONING OF THE SHIP A PICTURE OF HER BIRTH AND DEATH

CAPTAIN BULLOCK RETURNS TO ENGLAND THOR ALONE ON THE HIGH SEAS.

H

AVING cleared the way, in the last two chapters, for the cruise of the Alabama, by removing some of the legal rubbish with which Mr. Seward and Mr. Adams had sought to encumber her, we are in a condition to put the ship in commission. I was at last accounts in Liverpool, as the reader will recollect, having just arrived there in the steamer Bahama, from Nassau. The Alabama, then known as the "290," had proceeded, a few days before, to her rendezvous, the island of Terceira, one of the group of the Azores. The name "290" may need a word of explanation. The newspapers of the enemy have falsely charged that the Alabama was built by 290 Englishmen, of "rebel" proclivities, and hence, they say, the name.

One Parson Boynton has written a book, which he calls the "History of the Navy," but which is rather a biography of Mr. Secretary Welles, his Assistant Secretary Fox, and several ingenious mechanics. Judging by this attempt, parsons are rather bad hands to write histories. Speaking of the Alabama, this gentleman remarks: "Insultingly, this vessel was named '290,' to show, by the large number that contributed to fit her out, how widespread was the English sympathy for the rebel cause. The Alabama was not regarded as a rebel vessel of war, but as a British pirate, or rather, perhaps, as an English man-of-war, sent forth under the veil of the rebel flag, to