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Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Chapter 49: (search)
serted that those of us who were captured should be hung as rebels taken in the act. Crushing the corner stone of the Union, the independence of the states, the federal government assumed toward us a position of haughty arrogance, refused to recognize us otherwise than as insurrectionists and rebels, who resisted and denied its usurped sovereignty, and who were entitled to no amelioration from the punishment of death, except such as might proceed only from the promptings of mercy. On April 17, 1861, I issued a proclamation in which I offered to grant letters of marque and reprisal to seamen. On April 19th President Lincoln issued a counter-proclamation, declaring that, if any person, under the pretended authority of said States, or under any other pretense, shall molest a vessel of the United States, or the persons or cargo on board of her, such person shall be held amenable to the laws of the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy, which was death. Some smal