Posted on 04/17/2017 12:46:13 PM PDT by Bull Snipe
Confederate States President Jefferson Davis issued a proclamation calling on Southern mariners to serve as privateers and raid United States shipping. He requested authorization from the Confederate Congress to issue Letters of Marque to those serving as privateers. On April 29 the Confederate Congress gave Davis the authority to issue letters of Marque.
Things really sucked here in Hawaii. Those Confederate privateers destroyed the whole whaling fleet and pretty much ended the whaling industry here.
If you notice the date on the Letter of Marque and Reprisal, it is the 17th of April, 1861. The Confederate Congress did not authorize Davis to grant letters of Marque until April 19, 1861.
In the op article it says the date was April 29
The Confederate Congress did authorized Davis to issue Letters of Marque on April 29. Davis had already signed at least one Letter of Marque on April 17th. He may not have given it to the Letter the individual, while awaiting action by the Confederate Congress. Or the Congress may have given him authority retroactively to April 17.
How did all that work out for them in the end?
Privateers sailing under Confederate Letters of Marque did do some damage to commerce for the first few months of the war. The 1852 Declaration of Paris outlawed privateering as a form of piracy. Both the British and French signed this treaty. If they captured a Confederate privateer, they were obligated to try the crew for piracy. Lincoln said that captured privateers would be tried on piracy charges. In addition, the privateers, were forbidden to sell their captured ships and cargos in most European ports. The ever strengthening blockade of Southern ports by the Union Navy, closed these ports to the privateers to sell their captured ships. By early fall 1861, most of the Southern holders of Letters of Marque, surrendered them to the Confederate government. They chance of being hung for piracy and unable to sell captured ships pretty much ended privateering for the Confederacy.
The whaling fleet was decimated by Confederate Naval vessels. There are no records, I am aware of, that show any Confederate privateers operating in the Pacific. Several ships of the Confederate Navy did operate in the Pacific and did very heavy damage to the whaling ships of the United States.
On this date in 1861, the Virginia secession convention voted to secede from the United States (pending ratification by the citizens of Virginia), following Lincoln’s call for volunteers to put down the rebellion.
Happily for the North making Jefferson Davis President of the CSA was one of the dumbest things the South did.
ah
excellent point
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