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in charge.
They took passage for home in the steamer Mary Washington, Captain Mason L. Weems.
On board of her were Captain Kirwan and his fellow-prisoners, who had been released; also Thomas, the pirate, and some of his accomplices, who were preparing, no doubt, to repeat their bold and profitable achievement.
Carmichael was informed of their-presence, and directed Weems to land his passengers at Fort McHenry.
When Thomas perceived the destination of the vessel he remonstrated; and, finally, drawing his revolver, and calling around him his armed associates, he threatened to throw the officers overboard and seize the vessel.
He was overpowered by superior numbers, and word was sent to General Banks of the state of the case, who ordered an officer with a squad of men to arrest the pirates.
Thomas could not be found.
At length he was discovered in a large bureau drawer, in the ladies' cabin.
He was drawn out, and, with his accomplices, was lodged in Fort McHenry.
Piratical operations on a more extended scale and wider field, under the sanction of commissions from the conspirators at Montgomery, were now frightening American commerce from the ocean.
We have already mentioned the issuing of these commissions by Jefferson Davis,1 the efforts of the conspirators to establish a navy, and the fitting out of vessels for the purpose, which had been stolen from the National Government, or purchased.
Among the latter, as we have observed, was the Lady Davis, the first regularly commissioned vessel in the Confederate Navy.
When the National Congress met in extraordinary session, on the 4th of July, more than twenty of these ocean depredators were afloat and in active service;2 and at the close of that month, they had captured vessels and property valued at several millions of dollars.
Their operations had commenced early in May, and at the beginning of June no less than twenty vessels had been captured and sent as prizes into the port of New Orleans alone.
The most notable of the Confederate pirate vessels, at that early period of the war, were the Savannah, Captain T. H. Baker, of Charleston, and the Petrel, Captain William Perry, of South Carolina; one of which was captured by an armed Government vessel, and the other was destroyed by one.
The Savannah was a little schooner which had formerly done duty as
1 See page 372. The terms pirate and piratical are here used considerately, when speaking of the so-called privateering under commission issued by Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs (See note 4, page 37). The lexicographer defines a pirate to be “A robber on the high seas ;” and piracy, “The act, practice, or crime of robbing on the high seas: the taking of property from others by open violence, and without authority, on the sea.” The acts of men commissioned by Davis and Toombs were in exact accordance with these conditions. These leading conspirators represented no actual government on the face of the earth. The Confederacy of disloyal men like themselves, formed for the purpose of destroying their Government, had been established, as we have observed, without the consent of the people over whom they had assumed control, and whose rights they had trampled under foot. They had no more authority to issue commissions of any kind, than Jack Cade, Daniel Shays, Nat. Turner, or John Brown. Hence, those who committed depredations on the high seas under their commissions, did so “without authority.” And privateering, authorized by a regular government, is nothing less than legalized piracy, which several of the leading powers of Europe have abolished, by an agreement made at Paris in 1856. To that agreement the United States Government refused its assent, because the other powers would not go further, and declare that all private property should be exempt from seizure at sea, not only by private armed vessels, but by National ships of war. The governments of France and Russia were in favor of this proposition, but that of Great Britain, a powerful maritime nation, refused its assent. It also refused its assent to a modification of the laws of blockade, saying, “The system of commercial blockade is essential to our naval supremacy.”
2 A full account of the operations of the Confederate Navy, domestic and foreign, will be given in another part of this work.
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