This text is part of:
[325] inhumanity to man. They knew that the Navy Department of the United States, freed from the restraints imposed by fear of retaliation, would be vindictive and tyrannical to the last degree. That department had always proclaimed the Southern people rebels, and their cruisers only pirates. On the land we had forced a recognition of belligerent rights, but at sea we had been powerless to retaliate. On August 2d, when in north latitude 16 degrees and 122 west longitude, seeing a sailing bark, the Shenandoah made chase under steam and sail and overhauled her at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. It proved to be the British bark Barraconta—thirteen days out from San Francisco, en route for Liverpool. When the British captain was asked for the news of the war he inquired in astonishment, ‘What war?’ ‘The war between the United States and the Confederate States.’ ‘Why,’ said he, “that war has been over ever since April. What ship is that?” ‘The Confederate ship Shenandoah,’ was the reply.
Richmond, VA. 1904.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.