United States or Republic of the Congo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


In truth, he used his powers with great prudence, and devoted his time especially to the reorganization of the army and the extinction of privateering, ordering that no more licenses should be issued and that those in force should be recalled.

Slave-auctions were frequent in Liverpool, and one of the streets where these sales were effected was nicknamed "Negro street." The agitation for the abolition of the trade was carried on a long time before Liverpool submitted, and then privateering came prominently out as the lucrative business a hundred years ago during the French wars, that brought Liverpool great wealth.

But privateering soon withered off, because prizes could not be run through the blockade in sufficient numbers to make it pay; and no prize would be recognized except in a Southern port. Raiders did better and for a much longer time. The Shenandoah was burning Northern whalers in Bering Sea at the end of the war.

The British Admiral was continually protesting to the neutrals against the system of smuggling and privateering, but it was hardly consistent, seeing that we were obliged to make breaches of neutrality in order to get our supplies.

Seward offered to waive the point made by Secretary Marcy many years before, and accept the four articles of the Paris convention, he found himself blocked, because the Confederate States had not accepted the first article, abolishing privateering, and her privateers must, therefore, be recognized. It was by these privateers that great damage was inflicted upon American shipping.

In the conduct of hostilities the rules of the Declaration of Paris, including abstention from resort to privateering, have accordingly been observed by both belligerents, although neither was a party to that declaration. Our country thus, after an interval of half a century of peace with all nations, found itself engaged in deadly conflict with a foreign enemy.

Higher modes of civilization an earth more universally colonized the homo sapiens of Linnaeus more humanized, and other improvements must pave the way for that: but amongst the earliest of those improvements, will be the abolition of war carried into quarters where the spirit of war never ought to penetrate. Privateering will be abolished.

A very grave objection to the privateering system, however, was the fact that the promise of profit to sailors engaged in it was so great, that all adventurous men flocked into the service, so that it became almost impossible to maintain our army or to man our ships. I have already quoted George Washington's objections to the practise during the Revolution.

Piracy, far from being, as at the present day, an act falling under the ban of the law, was not only encouraged in that barbarous or half-civilized society, but was celebrated in the songs of the Skalds, who reserved their most enthusiastic eulogies for celebrating chivalrous struggles, adventurous privateering, and all exhibitions of strength.

The British government palpably permitted purchases and shipments of contraband articles by Southern emissaries, but exercised the utmost vigilance when the United States agents entered the market for similar purposes. The action of Lord Russell respecting the proposition to abolish privateering was covertly insulting.