Boston, August 12, 1861.
My Dear Sir, — I have
been hard at work for some weeks upon the organization of the new volunteer
navy, and although it will be made an auxiliary, and a very useful one, to the
navy, I regret to say I find great difficulties in giving it that efficiency
which it ought to have, as a substitute for privateering. I am of course not
going to give it up, and am looking to such changes in our law as will
doubtless be adopted whenever an emergency really puts us to our trumps; but
while it is yet an experiment, I am satisfied that we ought not to give up our
right to issue letters of marque unless accompanied by Mr. Marcy's broader
principle of exempting all private property on the sea from capture.
Even then I
consider the time an unlucky one, and hope that some happy accident or some
unreasonable demands on the part of the European powers may enable us to
postpone the whole question. I need not, I hope, assure you that I have no
disposition to interfere with your duties beyond giving you at the earliest
moment the result of my personal observation upon the experiments we are trying
now, and which of course has a direct bearing upon the questions which you are
perhaps now discussing.
Pray make my best
regards to Mrs. Adams and the rest of your family, and believe me,
Truly yours with high respect,
J. M. Foebes.
N. B. — Our hope
was (and still is) to make the volunteer navy equally strong for attack —
without the barbarism of privateering, but it is by no means so easy a task as
we had supposed.
SOURCE: Sarah Forbes Hughes, Letters and
Recollections of John Murray Forbes, Volume 1, p. 233-4
No comments:
Post a Comment