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The Confederate privateers were privately owned ships that were authorized by the government of the Confederate States of America to attack the shipping of the United States. Although the appeal was to profit by capturing merchant vessels and seizing their cargoes, the government was most interested in diverting the efforts of the Union Navy away from the blockade of Southern ports, and perhaps to encourage European intervention in the conflict. At the beginning of the American Civil War, the Confederate government sought to counter the United States Navy in part by appealing to private enterprise world-wide to engage in privateering against United States Shipping. In the early days of the war, enthusiasm for the Southern cause was high, and many ship owners responded to the appeal by applying for letters of marque. Not all of those who gained authorization actually went to sea, but the numbers of privateers were high enough to be a major concern for US Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. Many ships of the Union Navy were diverted from blockade duty in efforts to capture privateers. Most of the privateers managed to remain free, but enough were caught that the owners and crew had to consider the risk seriously. The capture of the privateers ''Savannah'' and ''Jefferson Davis'' resulted in important court cases that did much to define the nature of the Civil War itself. Initial enthusiasm could not be sustained. Privateers found it difficult to deliver their captures to Confederate courts, and as a result the expected profits were never realized. By the end of the first year of the war, the risks far exceeded the benefits in the minds of most owners and crews. The practice continued only sporadically through the rest of the war as the Confederate government turned its efforts against Northern commerce over to commissioned Confederate Navy commerce raiders such as the ''CSS Alabama'' and ''CSS Florida''. The Civil War was the last time a belligerent power seriously resorted to privateering.〔The United States authorized a privately owned airship, ''Resolute'', for submarine spotting in late 1941 and early 1942.〕 The practice had already been outlawed among European countries by the Declaration of Paris (1856). Following the Civil War, the United States agreed to abide by the Declaration of Paris. More important than any international agreements, however, is the fact that the increased cost and sophistication of naval weaponry effectively removed any reasonable prospects for profit for private enterprise naval warfare. ==Call for privateers== Following the 12 April 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, President Abraham Lincoln called for raising 75,000 volunteers from state militia to put down the "rebellion". In response, on the 17th of April, Confederate President Jefferson Davis called both for raising troops and for the issuance of letters of marque.〔Tucker, ''Blue and Gray Navies,'' pp. 72–73.〕 Although the Federal government had only 42 warships in commission, and many of the best were laid up as unserviceable or distributed widely around the world, the Confederate States had almost nothing to offer in opposition. With no navy yet established, they turned to the alternative of privateering. The word "privateer" applies to any private citizen in the world who raises a ship and crew to engage in the destruction of enemy shipping for profit. Although specifically allowing attacks upon enemy warships, privateers are typically amateurs employed against commercial shipping because armed navy ships are more likely to fight back effectively. Privateering is authorized by the issuance of "letters of marque and reprisal" by a sponsoring government. It was explicitly allowed by the Confederate Constitution〔Article 1, Section 8.11.〕 the words of which were copied almost directly from the American Constitution. With a mission to prey upon commercial vessels of the enemy, their pay would consist of the value of seized ships and cargoes, also known as prizes, less legal costs.〔Luraghi, ''History of the Confederate Navy,'' p. 71.〕 Two benefits would accrue to the Confederate government; the disruption of commerce might persuade the European nations to pressure the North to end the conflict, and it would also force the North on its own to ease the expected blockade in order to chase down the privateers.〔In the opening days of the hostilities following the firing upon Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to put down the "rebellion," on April 17, 1861 Jefferson Davis made an official proclamation calling for privateers to attack Northern Shipping. Wasting no time, Lincoln proclaimed a blockade on April 19, 1861, not as a full war plan as later endorsed and broadened by Winfield Scott's "Anaconda Plan", but as a counter-measure against Davis's privateers. Having no plans or war strategies in only two days after Fort Sumter and one day after Davis's proclamation, Lincoln used Davis's Privateering Act as the primary justification for the blockade at the time it was announced, although he insisted upon referring to Confederate privateers as "pirates.". See ORN I, v. 4, pp. 156–157, 340.〕 When the war began, "legitimate" privateers could legally clear prizes in neutral ports, which were literally worldwide. Therefore, privateers were a credible threat to the national security of the United States, whereas if the Confederate States could tie up the Union Navy in the protection of Northern shipping, any blockade, which was expected but not yet declared, would be at least mitigated and the Southern Confederacy would be seen as a new world power to be respected. Prior to the hostilities between the North and South, the majority of European maritime powers had declared the practice of privateering to be illegal by the Declaration of Paris (1856). According to the treaty, privateers of ''signatory'' nations were strictly illegal and if caught they could be seized by the ships of any other signatory nation and tried in that nation's courts. However, they were not exactly the same as pirates. Privateers enjoyed limited legal status if they did not murder and if they behaved generally according to the laws of their sponsoring non-signatory government. Thus acting, they were not subject to the death penalty as if they were rogue buccaneers. True piracy was a crime everywhere and the death penalty for piracy was accepted worldwide. In 1856, the United States had declined to ratify the Declaration, or Treaty, of Paris in order to preserve the rights of a smaller fledgling nation against the larger maritime powers of the day. Now Lincoln wanted exactly the same protection against privateers as the European powers did in 1856, which the United States had denied. As a non-signatory of the Treaty, Lincoln could have legally raised a call for privateers himself, but he had much to lose by engaging in the practice because it could have stirred the wrath of the greatest maritime powers on earth, Great Britain, France and Spain, whom he wished instead would join in condemnation of the Confederacy as an illegal government. The Confederate States had little to lose and much to gain if they could neutralize the United States Navy and force the world to see them as a respectable world power. Surely, they believed, recognition of Southern sovereignty would follow. When the Civil War broke out it was clearly in the interest of the Lincoln government to suppress privateering and Lincoln tried belatedly to make the United States a signatory of the Treaty which was denied by the Europeans.〔Luraghi, ''History of the Confederate Navy,'' p. 73.〕 However, if Lincoln wanted any respect or cooperation by the British (other nations would generally follow British policy) he would have to observe all the rules of the Treaty and not resort to privateering himself. Great Britain, the primary sponsor of the Treaty of Paris, would not abide by the death penalty for privateers, perhaps especially because British subjects aboard Southern privateers might face prosecution in American courts on trumped-up charges of piracy. If the previous signatories had accepted American entry into the scope of the treaty, it would have meant that they were taking sides in the rebellion. Rather than do so, they insisted that the United States should get its own house in order first. The governments of the treaty participants, perhaps in following Britain's lead, proclaimed their neutrality and accepted the blockade without recognizing the sovereignty of the Davis government except as a ''de facto'' belligerent, the same as the United States, while continuing to recognize the Lincoln government as the ''legal'' American government. Of course it also meant that if he were to accept the British ruling, Abraham Lincoln had to acknowledge that a war existed and the Southern Confederacy was more than a few states in insurrection. Shipowners throughout the South, and perhaps some from the North as well, responded with enthusiasm to the call. The largest privateer, ''Phenix,'' was from Wilmington, Delaware.〔Robinson, ''Confederate privateers, p. 30〕 The initial burst of ardor was great enough that the Confederate government could lay down some rather stringent conditions, such as requiring the deposit of large bonds, to insure that the practice did not degenerate into outright piracy. The holders of letters of marque were also required to be the actual owners of the ships; this was to discourage speculation in the letters.〔Robinson, ''Confederate privateers,'' p. 20.〕 An anomalous feature of the legislation governing Confederate privateering was that it allowed attacking enemy warships. To give an incentive in the absence of valuable cargoes of merchant vessels that could be sold for profit, the law provided for fixed monetary awards for capturing or destroying ships of the US Navy, with the size of the awards to be based on the numbers in the crews and the value of the ships taken or destroyed.〔Robinson, ''Confederate privateers,'' p. 22–23.〕 This provision was never applied, as no Union warships were destroyed by privateers. A near exception was provided by the armored ram ''CSS Manassas'', which started as a privateer at New Orleans by riverboat Captain John A. Stevenson. Before he could take his ship into battle, however, she was seized by the Confederate Navy and put under the command of Lieutenant Alexander Warley. ''Manassas'' performed creditably at the Battle of the Head of Passes and Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, but Stevenson and his backers got no reward.〔Tucker, ''Blue and Gray Navies,'' p. 187.〕 Privateering activity was strongest at the major ports of Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, and off the North Carolina coast where the trade of Northern cities with Caribbean and South American countries made use of the Gulf Stream to speed their northward voyages. The first capture of the war was made on 16 May 1861, when the bark ''Ocean Eagle'' was taken by privateer ''J. C. Calhoun'' at the mouth of the Mississippi River. ''Ocean Eagle'' was registered in New England, so the capture was legal, but it is not clear that it aided the South, as she was carrying her cargo of lime to New Orleans. By disrupting the New Orleans trade, the privateers there actually aided the blockade.〔Robinson, ''Confederate privateers,'' p. 38.〕 Privateering activity near Cape Hatteras, on the coast of North Carolina, was particularly irksome to the Union. Because of privateers, many Northern shipowners either dropped out of the Caribbean trade or transferred their registry to Great Britain to sail under the protection of the British flag. Insurers pressured the Federal government to defend their interests. In response, the Union sent a combined Army-Navy expedition to take possession of two Confederate forts at the Hatteras Inlet. This was the first reclamation of seceded territory by the Union, and was also the first notable Union success of the war.〔Robinson, ''Confederate privateers,'' pp. 112–115.〕 Confederate Privateering was not as minor as many retrospective analyses have claimed. It posed the first threat to national security because it had the potential to have instantly put more hostile ships at sea than the U.S. Navy could effectively suppress while also striving to enforce a blockade. Furthermore, it resulted in Lincoln's first proclamation of a blockade, the first internationally recognized act of belligerence on his part, which helped to nudge the war into international waters; and it produced the first Union strategy for the conduct of war. President Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, ordered the Blockading Squadron to secure the primary blockading ports for the South, which was accomplished quickly by joint Army/Navy actions against Forts Hattaras and Clark at the inlet to the NC Sounds, Forts Beauregard and Walker at Port Royal Sound, and Ship Island near New Orleans—all by the end of 1861, while other military efforts, that is, purely Army efforts, stalled. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Confederate privateer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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