tually
blockaded, from a thousand miles at sea, than were those of the
southern fleet-bound coast.

It may not be irrelevant here to allude to the finale of the
Confederate cruisers; and to recall the most inane farce of all those
enacted by the madmen who held power in '66.

In the January of that year, Raphael Semmes was seized and thrown into
prison. He was now charged--not with having violated his parole given
to General Grant, who was personally and morally responsible for his
persecution--not with doing aught but "obeying the laws themselves;"
but he was charged with having escaped, the year before, from the
custody of a man whose prisoner he was not and had never been--with
having broken from a durance that ought to have existed! From
incontrovertible testimony, we know that Captain Semmes only raised the
white flag, after his vessel began to sink; that he stayed on her deck
until she went down beneath him; that no boat came to him from the
"Kearsage," and that he was in the water full an hour, before the boat
of the "Deerhound" picked him up and carried him aboard that yacht.

But radical hatred, and thirst for vengeance on a disarmed enemy,
raised the absurd plea that Semmes became a prisoner of war by raising
the white flag; that by so doing he gave _a moral parole_! and
violated it by saving himself from a watery grave and afterward taking
up arms again. It is only a proof that the country was a little less
mad than the radical leaders, that the unheard-of absurdity of its Navy
Department was not sustained by popular opinion. It would have no doubt
been chivalric and beautiful in Raphael Semmes to have drowned in the
ocean, because the boat of the "Kearsage" would not pick him up after
accepting his "moral parole;" but, as he did not see it in that light,
and as he was never called upon to surrender by any officer of that
ship, he was perfectly free the moment his own deck left him in the
waves. The white flag was but a token that he desired to save the lives
of his men; and would surrender them and himself, if opportunity were
given. But even granting the nonsensical claim that it made him a
prisoner--the laws of war demand absolute safety for prisoners; and the
fact of the "Kearsage" leaving him to drown was, in itself, a release.

There is no necessity for defense of Captain Semmes' position; but it
may be well to record how blind is the hate which still attempts to
brand as "_Pirate_" a regularly-comm