On the 4th December, 1861, it was deemed expedient, under circumstances then existing, as a temporary measure of precaution to prohibit altogether, by proclamation, the exportation of arms and munitions of war, and Messrs. Schuyler and Tomes countermanded their orders in consequence, the former proceeding to Liege, the latter remaining at Birmingham. The proclamation was practically revoked in the course of January, and formally on the 7th of February, 1862. While it was in force, it, of course, operated equally against both belligerents. It appears from the report of the commissioner on contracts for arms that, by the concurrent action of the Secretary of State, Assistant Secretary of War, and Secretary of the Treasury, M. Laumont Du Pont, of the firm of E. J. Du Pont & Co., of Wilmington, Delaware, had twice visited England, furnished with a credit of £82,800 78. 1d. upon Messrs. Baring Brothers, and purchased and shipped saltpeter at a cost of £79,699 168. 8d. The large purchases of saltpeter which were made toward the close of November, 1861, drained the whole English market, and it was thought prudent to issue a proclamation prohibiting the exportation of that article, which was subsequently revoked at the same time as that respecting the export of arms. Mr. Adams wrote to Mr. Seward on the 24th of January, 1862-"The only event of any importance connected with American affairs that has happened during the last week is the revocation of the orders prohibiting the exportation of arms and munitions of war. This will release the large quantity of saltpeter in the hands of parties here, and will probably renew the activity of the confederate emissaries in forwarding supplies to the insurgents." Mr. Seward replied, on the 13th of February-"It affords us pleasure to know that the inhibition against the exportation of saltpeter, which was so unnecessary, has been rescinded." Mr. F. B. Crowninshield is understood to have acted as agent for the States of Massachusetts and Ohio. His address in London was at the office of the United States consulate, No. 67 Gracechurch street. The Birmingham Small-Arms Company forwarded by his order 16,400 rifles to the care of Messrs. Baring Brothers, at Liverpool, for shipment to the United States, between the months of May and December, 1861. Mr. Crowninshield also ordered large quantities of arms and 10,000 sets of military accouterments from firms in London, which were forwarded and shipped from Liverpool and Southampton. Besides these purchases many were made by private firms, who sold or contracted to supply arms to the Government of the United States. On the 14th of January, 1862, Mr. Donald McCay wrote to Earl Russell, stating that he had lately come to England with the intention of purchasing marine steam-engines and iron armor-plates for men-ofwar ships, but that the manufacturers who could furnish them objected to enter into any contract on account of the possible risks in shipping these articles. He inquired whether Her Majesty's government would allow the shipment of them to the United States. Messrs. James Jack & Co., a manufacturing firm of Liverpool, wrote, on the 16th of the same month, stating that they were offered orders on behalf of the Government of the United States for the construction of gun-boat towers and armor-plates, and asking whether it would be considered improper for them, as British subjects, to undertake the execution of these works at the time. Both applicants were informed that there was not any impediment to their undertaking such works or shipments.1 The Liverpool, New York and Philadelphia Steamship Com[54] pany addressed Lord Russell *on the 31st of January, on the question of the exportation of arms to the United States. They said that, on the issue of the Queen's proclamation of the 13th May, 1861, they had given notice to all their shippers that they could not carry contraband of war. They had subsequently been asked to carry forward the cargo of the steamer Bremen, built in England, but sailing under the Bremen flag, and a competitor with them in the Atlantic trade, which they had engaged to do, but finding on the arrival of the cargo at Hull, en route for Liverpool, that it comprised about 600 cases of rifles, they refused to carry them. A somewhat similar case had occurred with goods from Antwerp. On their refusing to carry these goods they had received information from the Continent that, if they would not do it, the goods would be sent to London, and thence by railway to Southampton, whence there was no difficulty in shipping them by the Hamburg company's steamers, (built in England, but sailed under the Hamburg flag,) and they had reason to believe that this course had been regularly adopted, and that the arms they had refused to carry the day before were being shipped that day by another British steam-conveyance from Liverpool. They found that their own refusal had tended to prejudice them with their customers, and particularly with the United States Government, who had transferred the mail service from them to the German companies. The reply to the company, dated the 12th of February, merely referred them to the Gazette of the 7th of that month, whereby the temporary prohibition of the export of munitions of war had been formally removed." A statement made by Lord Russell to Mr. Adams, and the reply of the latter, are recorded in a dispatch to Lord Lyons of the 19th December, 1861, as follows: In regard to the export of arms and ammunition to the Confederate States, I had lately read the opinion of the attorney-general,3 and believed it was in entire conformity with the provisions of the foreign-enlistment act: warlike equipment of a vessel was prohibited; the loading a vessel with arms and ammunition was not prohibited. But in point of fact a much greater amount of arms and ammunition had been sent to the Federal States, where there was no obstacle to the export or the import, than to the ports of the Confederate States, which were blockaded. Mr. Adams admitted this to be the fact, and said he had refrained from pressing a more rigorous compliance with the foreign-enlistment act for this reason.* Lord Russell returned to the subject in a conversation which was reported by Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward on the 22d May, 1862.5 Mr. Adams, in compliance with instructions from his Government, had pressed on Lord Russell the expediency of revoking the recognition of the belligerent status of the confederate government, and had mentioned, in connection with this subject, the irritation produced in the United States by the reports of supplies furnished by private persons in England to the confederates. Lord Russell said "that large supplies of similar materials had been obtained in England on the part of the United States, which had been freely transported and effectively used against the insurgents." "I answered," said Mr. Adams, "by admitting that at one time a quantity of arms and military stores had been 1 Appendix to British case, vol. vi, pp. 159, 160. 2 Appendix to British case, vol. vi, pp. 160-162. This was, no doubt, in the case of the Bermuda. See appendix to British case, vol. ii, p. 138. 4 Appendix to British case, vol. vi, p. 159. purchased here as a purely commercial transaction, for the use of the Federal Army, but that I had early objected to this practice for the reason that it prevented me from pressing my remonstrances against a very different class of operations carried on by friends and sympathisers with the rebels in this island, and it had been discontinued. We had, indeed, purchased largely in Austria, but that government had never given any countenance to the insurgents." Lord Russell's views are given in a note to Mr. Adams of the 17th May, inclosed in this dispatch. It may be observed that the agents of the confederate government, if the correspondence presented by the United States is to be believed, had themselves at this time been drawing supplies from Austria, and that Major Huse had been endeavoring to ship ten batteries of Austrian field-guus at Hamburg, and was about to invest in 20,000 Austrian rifles then in the Vienna arsenal.1 Mr. Adams was, however, mistaken in supposing that the practice of buying arms in England for the United States Government had been discontinued. Messrs. Naylor, Vickers & Co., of New York, Liverpool, and London, bought and shipped to the United States large quantities of small-arms. They were supplied from Birmingham alone with 156,000 rifles between June, 1862, and July, 1863. They acted very extensively as agents of the United States Government, and submitted to that Government large proposals from the Birmingham Small Arms Company. The Assist ant Secretary of War at Washington, in a letter addressed to [55] them on the 20th October, 1862, * directly sanctioned an arrange ment for the supply of 100,000 rifles, and the acceptance of this order was duly notified to the Secretary of War by a letter from Birmingham, dated November 4, 1862. The arms were sent to Liverpool for shipment. In December, 1863, fifty 68-pounder guns were proved at the royal arsenal at Woolwich, at the request of Messrs. T. and C. Hood, and after proof taken away by Messrs. Naylor & Co., and shipped to New York. Mr. Marcellus Hartley, of the firm of Schuyler, Hartley & Graham, already mentioned, was also a large purchaser of smallarms in London during the latter half of the year 1862.2 The general results of these operations may be traced in the official returns of exports from Great Britain to the northern ports of the United States, published by the board of trade. These show that, whereas the average yearly exports of small-arms to those ports for the years 1858, 1859, and 1860, were 18,329, they rose, in 1861, to 44,904; in 1862, to 343,304; and amounted, in 1863, to 124,928. These are the recorded shipments of small arms; but there is reason to believe that other shipments, to a considerable extent, were made, under the denomination of hardware. Of exports of parts of arms there is no record prior to 1862. In that year they were valued at £21,050; in 1863, they rose to £61,589; in 1864, they still amounted to £10,616; and the average for subsequent years has sunk to £4,249. Of percussion-caps, the average export in the years 1858, 1859, and 1860, was 55,620,000; in 1863 it rose to 171,427,000; and, in 1864, was 102,587,000. Of cannon and other ordnance, the exports in the year 1862 alone were valued at £82,920; while the aggregate value of the exports for the other nine years, from 1858 to 1861, and from 1863 to 1867, was but £3,336. The exports of saltpeter for the years 1858 to 1861 had averaged 248 tons yearly. The purchases for the United States Government raised See Appendix to case of the United States, vol. i, p. 539; vol. vi, p. 69. the amount to 3,189 tons for the year 1862 alone. From 1863 to 1867 the yearly average has again sunk to 128 tons. In addition to the exports from England, there was shipped from India, direct to the northern ports of America, a total of 39,846 tons, between the years 1860 and 1866, both inclusive. The amount of lead shipped, which had averaged 2,810 tons yearly, rose, in 1862 and 1864, to 13,148 and 11,786 tons respectively. The exports of ready-made clothing, apparel, &c., also rose, in 1863 and 1864, to double the average amount, in consequence, as may legitimately be presumed, of the supplies required for the United States Army. It is estimated that the extra supplies of warlike stores thus exported to the northern ports of the United States during the civil war represent a value of not less than £2,000,000, of which £500,000 was the value of muskets and rifles alone. On referring to the published statistics of imports into the United States, a similar increase will be observed. The value of arms imported from England into the United States is there given for the years ending June 30, 1860 and 1861, at $281,998, and $257,055 respectively. In the succeeding year the imports of arms amounted to an estimated value of $1,112,098; in the year ending June 30, 1863, to $717,409; and in that ending June 30, 1864, to $409,887. But, in addition to these entries, there is a table given in the returns of duty-free imports, under the heading of "Articles of all kinds for the use of the United States." During the two years ending June 30, 1860 and 1861, no such articles were returned as imported from England; but in the years ending June 30, 1862 and 1863, amounts of $3,316,492 and $6,778,856 are entered under this heading; and in the two succeeding years the articles thus imported from Great Britain still reached the estimated value of $1,568,407 and $1,853,773 respectively. That a large proportion, if not the whole, of these imports consisted of materials for the supply of the military forces of the United States cannot admit of a doubt. We see then that, during the civil war, arms and military supplies of all kinds in very large quantities were purchased in England, France, Austria, and other neutral countries by the Government of the United States; that they must have exceeded in amount any supplies which could reach the Confederate States; that these purchases were of the most pressing necessity, especially during the earlier years of the war; that they were effected by agents employed by that Government, some of whom were officers in its military service; that arrangements were made for the regular shipment from England to the United States of the goods so purchased from time to time; and that the goods purchased in Eugland were paid for through the financial agents of the American Government in England. In the sense, therefore, in which these [56] expressions are used by the *Government of the United States in its case, that Government had in England during the war a branch of its War Department and a branch of its Treasury—that is, persons employed by the War Department in selecting, ordering, and procuring arms and military supplies, and causing them to be shipped to America, and financial agents of the Treasury, through whom its payments were made, and who were provided by it with funds for that purpose. Inthe sense in which Great Britain is said to have become the arsenal and treasury of the Confederate States, she became the arsenal and treasury of the United States. Had the confederacy and its agents filled, in the foregoing transactions, the parts actually sustained by the 1 See returns, ibid., pp. 200, 202. United States and their agents, we should have a narrative differing in no material respect from the story of confederate purchases and shipents told inthe American case. ARMS AND MILITARY SUPPLIES PURCHASED BY THE CONFEDERATE STATES. supplies purchased The Government of the United States has not furnished the arbitrators with an account of the names and operations of the Arms and military agents employed by it for the above-mentioned purposes by the Confederate during the war; and it has, therefore, been necessary to States. supply that omission, although the means of doing so possessed by Her Majesty's government are very imperfect. Of the operations of the persons employed by the other belligerent, the Government of the United States has, on the other hand, given a very long and circumstantial history, purporting to be drawn from the papers which came into its possession at the end of the war. It is not, and indeed it could not, be pretended, that the correspondence extracted from these papers was in any way known to the British government. Nor has the Government of the United States furnished the arbitrators with any means of judging whether the letters are authentic, or the facts stated in them true, or the persons whose names purport to be attached to them (persons entirely unknown to the British government) worthy of credit. Her Majesty's government thinks it right to say that it attaches very little credit to them. There is, however, no reason to doubt that the confederate government, during the whole course of the war, effected purchases of arms and munitions of war to a considerable amount through its agents in England, France, Austria, and elsewhere. And it is now well known that, as its financial agents for this and other purposes, it employed the mercantile house of Fraser, Trenholm & Co., which was established at Liverpool, in connection with a firm at Charleston. The circumstance is stated as follows in the case of the United States: "Before or about the time the insurrection broke out, and, as the United States believe, in anticipation of it, this house (the Charleston house of John Fraser & Co.) established a branch in Liverpool, under the name of Fraser, Trenholm & Co. Prioleau was dispatched thither to take charge of the Liverpool business, and became, for purposes that may easily be imagined, a naturalized British subject." Her Majesty's government finds, on inquiry, that Prioleau, in fact, settled himself as a merchant in Liverpool in 1854, and remained in England, except during a temporary absence of a few months, from that time till June, 1863, when he applied for naturalization, stating, in his application, that he had been a resident householder for eight years, had married an English wife, and was desirous of acquiring landed property in England, and residing there permanently. What further motives for this step a fertile imagination might discover Her Majesty's government cannot say. The advantages conferred at that time by naturalization in England were the legal capacity to hold immovable property, and to register vessels as a British owner. None of the vessels, however, to which this inquiry relates, were registered in the name of Prioleau, nor in that of his firm. In truth, all of them, except the Shenandoah, with which the firm appears to have had nothing to do, had sailed long before Prioleau became a 1 Case of the United States, p. 220. 2 Appendix to British case, vol. v, p. 202. H. Ex. 324-6 |