and port of call for cruisers employed to watch and capture blockade-runners. Thus it is explained that "further stay of the [66] United States *vessels of war was useless" when the expe

dient was adopted of sending in cargoes in light and speedy vessels. Further stay was useless, because the cruiser waiting in port could not overtake and capture these light and speedy vessels. If ships carrying contraband and other goods to blockaded ports in the Confederate States were suffered to repair to the colony, United States cruisers ought, it is said, to have been suffered to repair thither likewise for the purpose of watching for and making prize of those ships and their cargoes. That the port would in the latter case have been used as a station for hostilities, and a point of departure for naval operations, and that it was not so used in the former case, is a distinction which seems to escape the notice of the Government of the United States.

The rigorous definition of the duties of a neutral furnished in the third part of the Case of the United States seems to be forgotten in the fourth part. The stringent rules by which the abuse of neutral ports by belligerent vessels was to be prevented have now disappeared, and the measures adopted to guard against that abuse are reckoned among the cases "wherein Great Britain failed to perform her duties as a neutral."

19 A-II

[67]

*PART V.

THE SUMTER AND NASHVILLE,

PART V.-The

ville.

Having examined the miscellaneous charges preferred against Great Britain, but not falling within the limits of the reference to Sumter and Nash arbitration, such as those which regard the traffic in arms and military supplies, Her Majesty's government now ap proaches that part of the Case in which the Government of the United States at length proceeds to specify the vessels to which its claims. relate, the failures of duty which it alleges in respect of them, and the nature of the claims on account of those alleged failures of duty. The wide conceptions of neutral obligation which had been previously presented to the tribunal here assume a concrete form, and are made the basis of actual demands upon a neutral power; and we are thus enabled to understand what those conceptions really mean, to what lengths the Government of the United States is prepared (if we may judge from the Case) to carry them, and what is the code of interna tional duty which it proposes to enforce against neutrals, and asks the arbitrators to sanction.

There is

The first vessels in the list are the Sumter and Nashville. no material dispute as to the facts relating to these two ships. Both of them were fitted out and armed for war in confederate ports, were there commissioned as public ships by the president of the Confederate States. and thence dispatched to cruise under that commission. Up to that time neither of them, so far as appears, had ever been in a British port. In respect, therefore, of the original outfit and equipment of these ships, the United States have found themselves unable to suggest any fault on the part of Great Britain, or to bring any charge against her. Nor is it suggested that either of them obtained men, arms, or other military supplies, or augmented or renewed in any manner her military equip ment within British ports or waters.

THE SUMTER.

The history of the Sumter has been accurately related in the British Case. It will have been observed that she was a steamship. The Sumter. purchased in a confederate port about or soon after the time of the commencement of the war, by the navy department of the gov ernment of the Confederate States; that she had received a crew, and was being actively prepared for war before the end of April, 1861, and upward of a fortnight before the date of Her Majesty's proclamation of neutrality; that she put to sea as a commissioned cruiser of the Confederate States on the 30th June, 1861; that she entered in succession. during the period of her cruise, the Spanish port of Cienfuegos, the Dutch port of Saint Anne's, Curaçoa, the Venezuelan port of Puerto Cabello, the British port of Trinidad, the Dutch port of Paramaribo,

the Brazilian port of San Juan de Maranham, the French ports of Port Royal and Saint Pierre, in Martinique, the Spanish port of Cadiz, and the British port of Gibraltar. In each of those ports she was received as a commissioned ship of war. At Cienfuegos, Curaçoa, Paramaribo, Trinidad, Maranham, and Martinique, she was suffered to renew her stock of coal and provisions. At Curaçoa she appears to have staid seven days; at Paramaribo, twelve; at Maranham, nine; at Martinique, fourteen; at Cadiz, thirteen. The period of time which elapsed between the dates at which she was suffered to coal at various ports appear to have been as follows, namely, from Cienfuegos to Curaçoa, ten days; from Curaçoa to Trinidad, six; from Trinidad to Paramaribo, fourteen; from Paramaribo to San Juan de Maranham, six; from thence to Martinique, fifty-five; from Martinique to Cadiz, forty-two. As to the quantity of coal which she took on board, she appears to have obtained 100 tons at Cienfuegos, 120 tons at Curaçoa, 80 at Trinidad, 125 at Paramaribo, and 100 at Maranham. At Martinique she received, by the written permission of the governor, a sufficient stock to carry her

across the Atlantic. At Trinidad she had applied for leave to pur[68] chase coal from the govern*ment stores, but this request was re

fused, and she procured it from private merchants. The question, whether she was properly received as a ship of war, or ought to have been treated as a pirate, was raised by the United States on two occasions before she touched Trinidad, (namely, on her arrival at Cienfuegos and Curaçoa respectively,) and twice afterward, namely, on her arrival at Maranham and Martinique, and in every case fruitlessly. The right of neutral powers to admit her to the ordinary hospitalities of their ports, and to receive her as a ship of war on the mere declaration of her commander, was upheld and defended in long and carefully reasoned state papers by the governments of Brazil and the Netherlands, and was afterward as firmly maintained by France.

Of the prizes taken by the Sumter, eleven were captured before she put in at Trinidad; none between the date of her leaving Trinidad and that of her arriving at Paramaribo, where she took in fresh supplies of coals and provisions; two between Paramaribo and Puerto Cabello; three after leaving Martinique.+

It will have been observed that at Gibraltar the Sumter was disarmed and dismantled; her crew were dismissed; she was sold, sent to Liverpool, and never afterward used for war. She had arrived at Gibraltar before the issue of the orders of 31st January, 1862, which limited the period during which belligerent vessels of war were to be suffered to remain in British ports. Those orders, therefore, could not with justice have been applied to her. When she left Gibraltar she left it unarmed, and at the mercy of any United States ship which might fall in with her.

On these facts, the United States ask the arbitrators to find and certify that Great Britain "failed to fulfill the duties set forth in the three rules in Article VI of the treaty of Washington, or recognized by the prin ciples of international law not inconsistent with such rules ;" and they ask that, in considering the amount to be awarded to the United States,

Appendix to British Case, vol. vi, pp. 1, 69, 81, 103, 112, 116; also Semmes's "Adventares Afloat," pp. 139, 147, 154, 160, 181, 187, 197, 206, 210, 216, 232, 260, 297, 304.

Appendix to British Case, vol. ii, p. 5; vol. vi, pp. 2, 69, 84; Semmes's "Adventures Afloat," p. 145.

These dispatches will be found printed in full, Appendix, vol. vi, pp. 12, 29, 35, 75, *4.92.98.

*See list given in Appendix to Case of the United States, vol. iv, p. 473.

should the tribunal exercise the power to award a gross sum, "the losses of individuals in the destruction of their vessels and cargoes by the Sumter, and also the expenses to which the United States were put in the pursuit of that vessel, may be taken into account."1

So far as Her Majesty's government is able to understand the grounds of this demand, (setting aside the accusation of "habitually insincere neutrality" against Great Britain,) they appear to be as follows:

"1. That the Sumter was furnished with an excessive supply of coal at Trinidad, which supply enabled her to inflict the subsequent injuries she did on the commerce of the United States." 2

We have here an application of the novel principle asserted in the third part of the Case. The arbitrators had here been told that "if, in these days, when steam is a power, an excessive supply of coal is put into the bunkers" of a belligerent cruiser in a neutral port, the neutral government will, according to the general principles of international law, "have failed in the performance of its duty." They had been told that, in order to prevent this, the neutral government is bound to apply a "wakefulness and watchfulness proportioned to the exigencies of the case and the magnitude of the interests involved." The local authori ties must, therefore, estimate with precision the quantity of fuel which will probably be necessary, taking into account the sailing qualities of the vessel, to bring her to her nearest port, and to watch with the ut most jealousy lest she should procure more. For any failure in this respect, compensation in money is to be paid to the other belligerent by the neutral nation. The arbitrators are asked to affirm by their award this supposed rule of international law, and, in a case where a cruiser, distant more than 1,000 miles from home, has purchased no more than eighty tons of coal in a neutral port, to charge the neutral nation with the value of all captures made by the cruiser, and the cost of fitting out and keeping at sea all vessels that may have been directed to look after her.

It must be conceded that this view of international law opens a sufficiently alarming prospect to neutral powers. Happily, it is as completely erroneous in principle as it would be intolerably unjust in prac

tice.

International law sets no limit to the quantity of coal which may be obtained by a belligerent cruiser in a neutral port. There is no such thing, therefore, as an "excessive" supply. Whatever such a vessel may require for repairing or renewing her sailing or steaming power. may lawfully be furnished to her; supplies of arms or munitions of war. repairs or alterations of her structure or equipment, serving to augment

her warlike force and directly applicable to that purpose, she may [69] not lawfully receive. The general *consent of nations has drawn

this line, and it draws no other. Even, however, if there had been any foundation for the pretended rule, what proof have the United States given that it was infringed? Where is the evidence that the supply of coal to the Sumter at Trinidad was more than enough to

1 Page 327.

2 Page 324.

3 The instructions of 1793 have already been referred to:

Equipments in the ports of the United States of vessels of war in the immediate service of the government of any of the belligerent parties, which, if done to other vessels, would be of a doubtful nature, as being applicable either to commerce or war, are deemed lawful."

*

"Equipments of vessels in the ports of the United States, which are of a nature solely adapted to war, are deemed unlawful."

carry her home? There is none whatever. The Sumter procured coal at a port in a British colony, as she procured it before and afterward at Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian, and French ports; in fact, the quantity she received at Trinidad seems to have been less than she got at other places; and it is clear that each of those powers is, according to the view of the United States, equally liable, as regards this vessel, to the entire claim which they now make against Great Britain. If any additional fact could make the answer of Great Britain more complete, it would be the circumstance that, in that part of the Sumter's cruise within which the coal she obtained at Trinidad was exhausted, she made not a single capture. The captures for which compensation is claimed were made four months afterward, with the aid of coal procured, not at Trinidad, but at Martinique.

2. The remaining argument in support of this claim is, that the Sumter ought to have been compelled to leave Gibraltar, (where, according to the United States consul, he had himself made it impossible for her to procure coal for navigation;) and that she was transferred while in that port, by a sale which is alleged to have been fictitious, but which appears from an intecepted letter produced by the United States to have been real. Whether it was fictitious or not, was a question into which it was not the duty of the British government to inquire, nor was it a matter of much importance to the United States. If the sale was real, the confederate government parted with the ship and got the money; if it was merely nominal, they got no money but retained the right to the ship. How the circumstance that she lay in port, disarmed and without a crew, from January, 1862, to February, 1863, or the sale of her in December, 1862, to a real or nominal purchaser, could have enabled her to make prizes in the year 1861, is not explained to the arbitrators. All her captures having been previously made, the United States suffered no loss in consequence of anything which happened after she entered the port of Gibraltar. Even if this had been otherwise, in what respect do the facts alleged by the United States involve any failure of neutral duty? Orders were issued by Her Majesty's government, on the 30th of January, 1862, that, if any ship of war or privateer of either belligerent should after the time when the orders should be first notified and put in force in the United Kingdom or in any colony or dependency of the Crown, enter any port, roadstead, or waters of the United Kingdom, or of any such colony or dependency, she should be required to depart within twenty-four hours, or, if in need of supplies or repairs, as soon as possible after the expiration of that period. The Sumter reached Gibraltar several weeks before these orders had been either notified or issued. The orders were therefore violated, (it seems to be argued,) to the detriment of the United States, by suffering her to remain in port even when disarmed and without officers or a crew. Her Majesty's government is unable to follow this train of reasoning. It cannot be admitted that this government was under any obligation to enforce orders different from those which it had made, and inflict on a vessel, actually in a British port, the injustice of subjecting her to the operation of an extremely stringent rule, of which she could have had no notice when she entered, and which, if enforced against her, would have exposed her to certain capture or destruction.

The sale," it is added, "was a palpable evasion." "The purchase of ships of war belonging to enemies is held in British courts to be invalid.”

Appendix to Case of the United States, vol. vii, p. 214. 2 Ibid., p. 71.