THE ALABAMA QUESTION.

Evening Star, Issue 2822, 5 March 1872, Page 3

THE ALABAMA QUESTION.

At the present moment when difficulties are threatened on account of ngland s contention that the Alabama was not fitted out in England, and therefore that she is not responsible for the ind rect losses arising from the depredations of that vessel, it wiil not be without iuterest to produce the version of the affair given by the man who of all others is best in a position to give an opinion on the subject. Richard Pennies, or “Admiral” Semmes, the commander of the Alabama has been lecturing in the Southern States j and the papers to baud last mail contain a report of his deliverances by a well-known contributor to the principal New York papers—David Macrae. Dae of tho lectures, he tells us, was an attempted vindication of the career of the Alabama on historical grounds. He compared the Confederate struggle against the North to the struggle of the American colonies against Britain and said that though the one had succeeded and the other faile , this made no difference in the prior rights of belligerency. If George Washington’s commission was valid, so was Robert E. Lee’s ; if Lee’s was valid, so was the Alabama’s. He then drew a parallel between himself and Paul Jones, the American commander, who figured so prominently in the American War of Independence. He said that Jones had destroyed many of his prizes, and with far less excuse than he had; for Jones had always open ports into which ho eould have carried his prizes for adjudication, whereas the Alabama was a homeless wanderer, with all the ports of the world shut against her. He had, therefore, done from necessity what Jones had so often done from choice. “And yet,” he said, “the Yankees, who call Jones a hero, call me a pirate ! It is the old story about the bull goring the wrong ox. What J ones destroyed was British commerce; wh<t I destroyed was Yankee commerce. That makes the difference.” And then he came to the fitting out of his vessel, on which point he Sal Th'e few minutes conversation" I now had with the Admiral related to the Alabama. When the difficulty she had given rise to between Great Britain and America was mentioned, Semmes said—“ Great Britain had nothing to do with the Alabama in her capacity as a Confederate war shi . The Yankee papers say she was equipped in a British port. It was not so. She left Liverpool like any merchant ship, without a gun or a single armed man aboard of her. I reached Liverpool three days after, and found that she had gone to the Azores. I followed her ; and there a transport met us with guns. If any nation is lesponsible, it is Portugal. But Portugal is not responsible either; for she had no force there to prevent me. I was three days at the Azores, and then st* amed out upon the high seas, and put the Alabama formally upon commission. ” e also said—- “ Not one penny of the cost was contributed in England. She was paid for out of the treasury of the Confederate States ; and she was used for Confederate purposes, just as the rifles and ammunition bought by the North in England were used for Federal purposes.” He said that though the Nortli laid so much stress on the Alabama having been built in England, he could prove to me, from documents in his possession, that the Federal Government were at one time negotiating with Laii'd of Liverpool to build war-ships for them. A copy of these proofs he afterwards forwarded. Speaking of life on board the Alabama, ho said he had no chaplain on board, but Sunday was observed as a day of rest. Describing the routine of a capture, he said—“ I had a man at the masthead in all weathers. ‘ Sail ho from him announced a ship in sight. The officer on deck would then cry up to him through the trumpet, ‘ Where away ?’ ‘ What does she look like ?’ and so forth. Ifjshe turned out to be a merchantman we hoisted the flag most likely to lull any suspicions, stood for her, and sent off a boat. As soon .is our officer stepped aboard of her we hoisted the Confederate flag, and the officer pointed to it as the one under which the capture was made. When she was an American ship we took off her crew and burnt her. We had no 'resource ; there was no port open to take her to. If she had English property aboard I took a ransom bond and let her go.” He had still same of these bonds “ stowed away,” he said, “where even Ben Butler in search of spoons could not find them.” X asked him for one as a curiosity, seeing they were waste paper now ; but the Admiral did not know what, in the course of Providence, might turn up yet, and thought it best to keep them. At the close of bis lecture be described with great eloquence of language the beautiful Sunday morning when he sailed his ship from the Azores out upon the high seas ; and when for the first time the Confederate flag waved from her peak. “I was at her baptism,” he said ; “I was also at her burial. Two years had passed. Again it was a Sunday—the I9th of June—this was her funeral morning.” lie described his fight with the Kearsage, and its result. “ Many,” he said, with a touch of pathos, “many went down with the ship that day who had stood with bared heads at her christening on that Sunday morning two y - ars before.” And now for a moment the Admiral’s voice deepened, and his dark eyes kindled with fire, as he added, “No en my’s foot ever polluted her deck. No splinter of her hull, no shred of her flag, remains as a trophy in the hands of the enemy !” This passage, in newspaper phrase, “brought down the house.”