Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 07.djvu/143

Rh which it knows to be its rights, and of which it is conscious it is not undeserving.

Secretary of State.

April 26th, 1864. Hon. Secretary of State, C. S. A.:

Sir—Nothing has transpired since the date of my last dispatch to alter my convictions of the of any intervention by the Confederate States in the affair of the Chesapeake. I have conversed freely on the subject with eminent legal gentlemen both in official position and out of it. They generally express regret that through the folly and misconduct of the captors the Chesapeake was not secured to the use of the Confederacy. They think, however, that the courts, if required to pass upon the character of the transaction, would have been compelled to regard it as in fact a capture by British subjects never enlisted in our service by any person having authority so to do; or, if otherwise, then enlisted in violation of the neutrality laws. It is morally certain the home Government would not, under the circumstances, allow a claim for compensation for the surrender of the vessel by the judicial authorities. And I cannot but think that the presentation of such a claim by our Government and its rejection—the case being one, as all must admit, very doubtful both in law and in morals—would impair its public prestige and weaken the moral weight which might attach to its interposition upon future and more important occasions.

None of the captors have as yet been taken under the new warrants. It would embarrass the Government here, as much as it would the Confederate Government, to have the solution of this question forced upon them, in reference to the captors. Whatever may be the strict legal character of the transaction, public opinion would not tolerate their treatment as pirates, whether by proceedings against them as such on the part of the Colonial authorities, or by their extradition to the United States.

For the reasons stated in dispatch number four I shall remain here until the return of the next Bermuda boat, about the middle