Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[490] with the debit and credit side of his ledger, rather muddled his brain. The Crenshaw's certificates were precisely like so many others I had, by this time, overhauled. They simply stated, that the cargo belonged to ‘subjects of her Britannic Majesty,’ without naming them. To quote the certificates literally, they were in these terms: ‘The goods specified, in the annexed bills of lading, were shipped on board the schooner Crenshaw, for, and on account of subjects of her Britannic Majesty, and the said goods are wholly, and bonafide, the property of British subjects.’ And when I came to look at the bills of lading, I found that the property was consigned to the order of the shippers. Here was evidently another of those ‘Yankee hashes,’ spoken of by the New York Commercial Advertiser; or, if it was not a Yankee hash, it was an English hash, gotten up by some ‘subjects of her Britannic Majesty,’ who were resident merchants in the enemy's country— whose property the aforesaid ‘Advertiser’ so innocently thought was not subject to capture. For aught that appeared from the certificates, the ‘subjects’ were all resident in New York. And so we did the usual amount of ‘plundering’ on board the Crenshaw, and then consigned her to the flames.

From papers captured on board this vessel, we learned that the New York Chamber of Commerce—whose leading spirit seemed to be a Mr. Low, one or two of whose ships, if I mistake not, I had burned—was in a glow of indignation. Its resolutions were exceedingly eloquent. This Chamber of Commerce was a sort of debating society, which by no means confined itself to mere commerce, as its name would seem to imply, but undertook to regulate the affairs of the Yankee nation, generally, and its members had consequently become orators. The words ‘privateer,’ ‘pirate,’ ‘robbery,’ and ‘plunder,’ and other blood-and-thunder expressions, ran through their resolutions in beautiful profusion. These resolutions were sent to Mr. Seward, and that renowned statesman sat down, forthwith, and wrote a volume of despatches to Mr. Adams, in London, about the naughty things that the ‘British Pirate’ was doing in American waters. The Alabama, said he, was burning everything, right and left, even British property; would the Lion stand it?

Another set of resolutions was sent to Mr. Welles, the Fede