In connexion with this subject, I transmit herewith a copy of the London
Times of Monday, the 11th instant, containing a leader relating to the
depredations of the Shenandoah.
It is quite clear to me that this is prompted by uneasiness in high
quarters respecting the new consequences that are perpetually developing
themselves from the original mistake in policy.
Hon. William H. Seward,Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.
[From the
London Times of September 11,
1865.]
[Untitled]
It is impossible not to share the indignation so loudly expressed on
the other side of the Atlantic at the continued depredations of the
Shenandoah on the northwest coast of America. Several months have
now elapsed since the American war terminated de
facto. No formal treaty of peace was executed by the
confederate government, for the simple reason that all its leading
members were either captives or fugitives; but the generals had
signed capitulations, the armies were disbanded, the only existing
civil authorities had taken the oath of allegiance to the United
States, and the most influential citizens in the south were suing
for pardon. Yet so lately as the end of June, and when the surrender
of Generals Johnston and Taylor was already known throughout the
ports of the Pacific, Captain Waddell was still burning and
plundering American merchantmen in the name of the Confederate
States. It appears from accounts published in the San Francisco
press that, although in possession of full reports, he professed to
disbelieve the ruin of the confederacy, on the ground that he had
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no information of it
except from northern papers. It remains to be seen how far this plea
will avail him if he should be overhauled by a war vessel of the
United States. In the mean time the utter illegality of his
proceedings can admit of no dispute. From the moment that peace is
concluded between the two belligerent power all acts of hostility
are prima facie wrongful, and this rule
applies a fortiori where the one is so
prostrated as to be incapable of making any conditions. Had the
confederate government been in a position to enter into regular
negotiations, some date would, no doubt, have been fixed after which
all captures by land or sea should be null and void. As it was, that
government suddenly ceased to exist, and thenceforth all persons
claiming to act in obedience to its orders were left to carry on war
or make their submission on their own responsibility. Captain
Waddell has thought proper to adopt the former alternative, and he
has done so at his peril. Unless he can show that he had neither
actual nor constructive knowledge of what was known to every one
else in the same latitudes and discredited by himself, he has no
claim to mercy. It would be absurd in such a case to entertain the
questions raised by jurists as to whether there must be an official
notification of a peace, and whether an individual can be
responsible for ignoring a peace of which he is technically
ignorant. The commander of a vessel like the Shenandoah carries his
life in his hand; his enterprise, at the best, is only distinguished
from piracy so far and so longas it is authorized by a sovereign or,
at least, belligerent state. If he chooses to prolong his cruise
after being positively informed of facts which make his commission
waste-paper, and render him a subject of the United States, he can
expect no presumptions to be made in his favor.
There is every reason to fear that the ravages committed by the
Shenandoah since the close of the war have been far more destructive
than before. Towards the end of July a vessel called the Milo
reached the harbor of San Francisco, having on board the crews of
several American whalers pillaged and set on fire by this privateer.
On the 1st of August another vessel called the General Pike arrived
at the same port with a similar freight, bringing still more
disastrous news. The Milo had left the Shenandoah on the 23d of June
near the entrance of the gulf of Anadyr, on the northeast of
Siberia, where, a number of whalers were then lying. Two officers
belonging to the ship Abigail, then on the point of falling into
Captain Waddell’s hands, had managed to get away in a fog, and to
warn these vessels in the gulf. They at once ought safety among
fields of ice where the Shenandoah, could not follow them, and most
of them are believed to have escaped. Thus baffled, Captain Waddell
destroyed the Abigail and three other ships with which he fell in
soon afterwards, and proceeded towards Behring’s Straits. It is said
that about eighty whalers, comprising nearly the whole Arctic fleet,
were cruising in those seas, and twelve or fourteen were known to
have been captured or destroyed when the mail left San Francisco.
The General Pike was one of the first overtaken, and the crews of
six or seven others were forthwith put on board of her, to be
carried back to San Francisco. No less than two hundred and
fifty-two persons were crowded into this small bark, of which the
ordinary crew did not exceed thirty, and if her master is to be
believed, nothing could be more brutal than Captain Waddell’s
language and behavior towards his prisoners. When the General Pike
quitted the Shenandoah the latter was steering in pursuit of other
whalers, and on the 3d of August intelligence reached San Francisco
that nine more vessels had been destroyed since her departure. In
fact, there was little hope that any considerable part of the
whaling fleet would succeed in making good their escape. Ships of
this class are not built for speed, and a single war steamer may
pounce upon them one after another with perfect ease and
impunity.
It is sad to read of such wanton and vindictive devastation, and we
can make great allowance for the exasperation of the shipping
interest in California. It is, perhaps, natural that their
resentment should betray itself in bitter allusions to the alleged
complicity of this country with the evil deeds of the Shenandoah.
“The English pirate,” “the English thief,” “the English pirate,
thief, or robber Sea King, called Shenandoah”—such are the titles
which the unhappy mates and captains of the captured vessels apply
to the spoiler. This is not the time to revive the wearisome
controversy on the original equipment of the Alabama and her
consorts. Whether or not they ever acquired a lawful national
character under the commission of President Davis, and whatever may
be thought of the privileges conceded to them in British and French
ports, they have now lost both the one and the other. The Shenandoah
is absolutely excluded from shelter in any part of our dominions,
and lest Lord Russell’s circular should not have reached Vancouver’s
island, the British consul at San Francisco, with praiseworthy
forethought, telegraphed the substance of it to the governor of that
colony. This is all that can strictly be required of us by
international law, but it may be worth considering whether a further
step would not be justified under the peculiar circumstances of the
case. Our neutrality, with its very limited rights” and very onerous
“duties,” has ceased with the war, and nothing remains but our
obligations, legal and moral, towards a friendly power in time of
peace. We have amply satisfied the requirements of honor as between
ourselves and the now extinct confederate government, and there is
no longer room for the exercise of impartiality. There is no such
thing as a “confederate steamer Shenandoah,” for there is no
belligerent power to claim her or to be responsible for any
enormities that she may perpetrate. Captain Waddell is, to all
intents and purposes, his own master, and has the absolute disposal
of all the plunder which he may accumulate. In other words, he is
engaged in a private buccaneering raid, and has thereby made himself
the enemy of all civilized
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nations He may have had good reasons of his own for sparing British
merchantmen, but there is no good reason that we can see why he
should be spared rather than any other pirate if he should chance to
fall in with a British man-of-war. It was not his respect for
English hospitality, but the vigilance of the colonial government,
that alone prevented a gross breach of our laws when the Shenandoah
lay in Australian waters. Justice and policy alike suggest that we
should aid the United States in cutting short his lawless career,
and putting down outrages so ruinous to commerce and so disgraceful
to civilization. We hope that instructions to that effect may be
sent to the commander of our squadron in the Pacific. It is an act
that would be appreciated by the United States and justified by
public opinion in Great Britain. Nothing but the direst necessity
could excuse the system of condemning and burning ships on the high
seas adopted by the confederate cruisers during the war. So strong
was the feeling against it in this country that many people could
never be induced to believe that it was tolerated by international
law. As now practiced by Captain Waddell in flagrant defiance of all
law, it can excite nothing but horror, and the circumstance of the
Shenandoah being launched from our own shores, after all our efforts
to maintain the spirit of the foreign enlistment act, will certainly
not win for her any exceptional sympathy.
