Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/109

 HE cruisers of the Confederate navy were the Sumter, the Alabama, the Florida, the Shenandoah, the Nashville, the Georgia, the Tallahassee, the Chickamauga, the Clarence, the Tacony, the Stonewall and the Olustee. These vessels were regular men-of-war and must not be confounded with privateers. Professor Soley says:

It is common to speak of the Alabama and the other Confederate cruisers as privateers. It is hard to find a suitable designation for them, but privateers they certainly were not. The essence of a privateer lies in its private ownership. Its officers are persons in private employment; and the authority under which it acts is a letter-of-marque. To call the cruisers privateers is merely to make use of invective. Most of them answered all the legal requirements of ships-of-war. They were owned by the government, and they were commanded by naval officers acting under a genuine commission. . ..

A great deal of uncalled-for abuse has been heaped upon the South for the work of the Confederate cruisers, and their mode of warfare has been repeatedly denounced as barbarous and piratical in official and unofficial publications. But neither the privateers, like the Petrel and the Savannah, nor the commissioned cruisers, like the Alabama and the Florida, were guilty of any practices which, as against their enemies, were contrary to the rules of war.

The first man-of-war to get to sea under the Confederate flag was the Sumter. She was a screw steamer of 500 tons, and had formerly been the Spanish steamer Marquis de Habana. She was strengthened, a berth deck was put in, the spar deck cabins removed, and she was armed with an 8-inch shell gun, pivoted amidships, and