Gulf of Mexico and adjacent waters, but ter, we may here glance at some of the the blockade soon deprived them of places of refuge, and the obstacles thrown in their way by the foreign governments in the West India Islands proved a formidable check to their efficiency. Formerly, before steam was introduced on the ocean, the privateers had many opportunities which the use of the new element of navigation has denied them. They could keep longer at sea without fresh supplies or repairs, but at present the necessity of constantly renewing their fuel requires depots of coal and a frequent resort to harbor. No sailing privateer can keep out of the way of a fleet of steamers, and no privateer steamer can long keep afloat driven from one unfriendly harbor to another. With several important exceptions, as the Sumter and the Nashville, the Southern privateers thus failed to execute those threats of destruction upon which so much reliance appears to have been placed as a means of injury to the Northern merchants at the beginning of the war. A number of prizes, indeed, were made, and the rise of marine insurance exhibited a proper respect for the powers of mischief of these adversaries, but the result was far less than was expected. Some alarm was at one time felt for the safety of the Aspinwall steamers constantly passing through the Gulf, carrying the millions of the gold product of California; but relying on their fleetness and some extra means of defence for resistance or escape should they be attacked, they experienced no interference from the enemy. The story of several of the privateering vessels of the Confederates is of interest. Reserving for a special chapter the remarkable adventures of the Sum more noticeable incidents in the fortunes of her companions. Among the United States craft seized by the insurgents in the Southern ports, was the revenue-cutter General Aikin, which was taken possession of in Charleston harbor. At the outbreak of the rebellion re-named the Petrel, and fitted out as a privateer, under the command of William Perry of South Carolina, this dashing military schooner was, on the 1st of August, 1861, off the harbor of Charleston when her officers descried what appeared to them an easy subject for capture in an approaching lumbering merchantman, to which they immediately gave chase. This was the United States frigate St. Lawrence, then on a cruise along the Atlantic coast in quest of piratical craft of the enemy. To disguise her real character, her port-holes were closed and her men kept carefully out of sight. The commander of the Petrel, misled by the deception, bore down upon the innocentlooking vessel, which, apparently intent upon escape, was seen hoisting sail and seemingly making every effort to get away, while in reality she was choosing her own position and gaining time to make preparation below for bringing her effective batteries into action. Presently a couple of shots from the Petrel were fired across the bows of the St. Lawrence, followed by a discharge of cannister striking the rigging. As the privateer thus came within range, her crew were seen at work at the guns, while an officer on her deck was calling on the supposed merchantman to heave to and send a boat alongside. The frigate then suddenly threw up her ports and opened a terrific fire, upon her rash assailant. The destruction was instantaneous. A by the rebel privateer brig Jeff. Davis, despoiled of such portions of her freight as were thought desirable by her captors, deprived of her captain, the two mates, and two seamen ; leaving the negro steward, William Tillman, two seamen and Mr. Bryce Mackinnon, a passenger. A prize crew was added, consisting of Montague O'Neil, a Charleston pilot, in command, one Stevens as mate, and Malcolm Skiddy as second mate, and two men. Thus manned, the schooner's course was directed towards Charleston, shell struck the galley, entered the hold, and exploded, tearing the vessel fearfully and bringing her to a sinking condition. Part of the crew threw themselves overboard or sought refuge in the life-boat, holding up a flag of surrender. The boats of the St. Lawrence were immediately lowered, and as the Petrel sank in the waves, her surviving officers and men were rescued and brought on board of the frigate. Four of the privateer's crew thus perished with the sinking vessel, and thirty-six were captured and carried in the United States gunboat S. C., with the view of entering that Flag to Philadelphia. Lieutenant Harvey, one of the officers of the Petrel, a Southerner by birth, was formerly a midshipman of the United States navy, and had sailed under Captain Sartori of the Flag. Perry, the captain of the privateer, is described as about sixty-five years of age, a native of North Carolina, and well known as one of the Charleston pilots. The crew were generally Irishmen by birth. port. The original members of the crew were employed in navigating the vessel, entertaining hopes of recapture till their arrival, after protracted voyaging in the vicinity of their destination. The negro steward Tillman, a man of uncommon resolution, fearful of being carried into slavery, then determined to gain possession of the schooner, and take her to her owners in New York. His proceedings for this purpose were of the most summary and decided character. Having secured the assistance of William Stedding, a German, one of the original The fate of one of the vessels captured by the Confederate privaters involved a tale of revenge-one of those tragedies of the seas, with its bloody in-seamen-the other would not listen to cidents of piratical adventure, well calculated to send a thrill of horror through the community, but which was at the time regarded simply as an act of selfdefence, or of righteous retribution-an admission of those penalties of war on the ocean with which the public was acquiring a strange familiarity on land. The circumstances were these. On the Fourth of July the schooner S. J. Waring, of Brookhaven, Francis Smith, master, sailed from New York for Montevideo, with an assorted cargo, and on the third day out, a hundred and fifty miles from Sandy Hook, was brought to his proposal-he prepared to carry his intention into effect. This was simply to catch the officers asleep, murder them in their beds, and take command of the vessel. After watching two nights without success, his comrade warned him of the looked-for opportunity about midnight of the sixteenth, when he rose from his bed, armed himself with a hatchet, and stole to the state-room of the captain, which was open to the cabin-the door having been removed for ventilation. His blow was a sure one, as he struck the sleeper on the head, fearfully eleaving his skull. He then crossed to the second mate's room, thing of navigation, but the wind was fair, the weather propitious, and, trusting to keep along the land, they steered boldly onward. The guidance and main conduct of the vessel depended upon Mackinnon, Stedding and the steward, two of whom were obliged always to be on deck armed to secure the fidelity of the others. On the third day they made the land, and sounded their way along till on the morning of Sunday, the twen reached Sandy Hook, and were safely piloted to New York. The vessel was then taken in charge by the harbor police, the two Southerners led to prison, and the rest of the company detained as witnesses. and inflicted a similar blow, somewhat less violent in its effect. The man rose staggering from his couch with an oath, while his assailant rushed on deck and confronted the mate who had been aroused by the outcry from his sleeping position on the cabin roof, in front of the wheel. Stedding, the accomplice, was steering, with a pistol in his hand ready for use when the negro drove his hatchet into the mate's skull, and the two quickly ty-first-the day of Bull Run-they tumbled him over into the sea. Tillman then returned to the cabin and completed his relentless work with the hatchet on his two dying victims, while his companion kept guard with his pistol. They then dragged their mangled bodies to the deck and consigned them to the Great curiosity was at once manifestdeep. It was a bright moonlight nighted to hear and know everything relating of extraordinary beauty-one of those brilliant nights which will be remembered with the march of the army of the Potomac toward Manassas the moon of Bull Run. The passenger, Mackinnon, awaked by the sound of the first blow, unable to offer resistance, had he been disposed, quietly witnessed the scene in the cabin. The two privateer seamen yet remained. One of them roused from his sleep on deck, seeing that the officers were gone, quietly submitted to being put in irons, and the other, who was in the forecastle, as readily agreed to assist in working the vessel. The next morning the former was released, and joined his comrade in his task. When Tillman took possession of the schooner she was about fifty miles to the south, and a hundred to the east of Charleston, making for that harbor. He immediately changed her course for the North. None of the party knew any to the hero of this adventure, whose courage and determination had been so sternly exhibited in rescuing the property of his employers from piratical depredators, and incidentally vindicating the authority of the national flag. It was ascertained that he was born of free-colored parents about twenty-seven years ago in Milford, Delaware, that he had been carried to Providence, R. I., when he was fourteen, and that he had followed the sea for ten years, and had been for some time in the employ of Jonas Smith and Co., a firm in Front Street, New York, the owners of the vessel he had brought home. A diligent reporter of the press further described him as "of medium height, rather strongly built, crisp hair, of nearly unmixed negro blood, and bearing in his countenance an expression of honesty and strong common sense, with some touches of humor." Further, to gratify the interest of the public, his portrait was taken by the THE PRIVATEER JEFF. DAVIS. photographers, and might be seen exhibited in the shop windows in Broadway, and somewhat less faithfully presented in the rude wood-cuts of the "illustrated papers" on the sidewalks. Negro Tillman was in fact, with a wide circle, the lion of the hour; thousands had eyes to gaze upon him, and ears to listen to his story, the facts of which he narrated with the utmost coolness and directness, softening the horrors of the description, at the cue of his visitors, with the most exhilarating patriotic emotions. Indeed, his audience was likely to prove so great that sad inroads would have been made upon his time, had he not hit upon an expedient tending to relieve him of a portion of his company, and by the same process make the society of the rest profitable and satisfactory. By an arrangement with the eminent showman, Mr. Phineas T. Barnum, he was enabled to hold his court with some degree of public privacy, on the usual terms of admission at the Museum, opposite the Park, where, the large class with whom seeing is believing, might, according to the promise of the advertisement, hear him relate "his experiences with the Southern chivalry," and behold, with their own eyes, "the secession flag which the rebels made out of the schooner's American flag, also a rebel cutlass, and the identical hatchet with which he killed the ocean robbers." It was the sight of this outrage to the stars and stripes on board the vessel, he was encouraged to say, which, above all other motives, had moved him to his deed of violence. Tillman became also quite a prominent personage by the illustration which his case afforded of maritime law. An interesting question immediately arose as 489 to his rights of salvage. The Board of Underwriters took it into consideration, and distinguished counsel volunteered to defend his claims. It was said that, as one of the hands of the vessel, he had done no more than his duty, and was hardly entitled to this legal privilege; but it was at the same time admitted that his conduct had been so meritorious that he was entitled to the amplest remuneration generosity could dictate. When the question was brought before the Courts, it was decided that Tillman was entitled to salvage, and a large sum thus passed into his hands. The privateer Jeff. Davis, the captor of the Waring, we may here mention, was, several weeks after, on the morning of Sunday, the 19th of August, wrecked in attempting to cross the bar at the entrance to the port of St. Augustine. Her heavy guns were thrown overboard in the fruitless effort to relieve her and save the supplies which she had captured. The crew however, escaped, and were received with triumph by the people of St. Augustine. The ladies threw open their houses with every demonstration of joy in congratulation of the safety of the privateersmen, enhanced by the relief which their arrival afforded, from the dread of a visit from a Yankee cruiser, for which the Jeff. Davis had been at first mistaken, her Confederate flag, it was supposed, having been hoisted for purposes of deception.* The Charleston Mercury tells us how "the town bells rung out a joyous peal of welcome, and the people vied with each other in their courtesies to the shipwrecked ones," adding, as an obituary of the venturesome craft: "The name of the privateer Jeff. Davis had Statement of F. C. Dutneux, one of the crew of the Jeff. Davis, to the Richmond Enquirer. become a terror to the Yankees. The Davis herself had a characteristic prenumber of her prizes and the amount of merchandise which she captured has no parallel since the days of the Saucy Jack." This notable Jeff. Davis was commanded by Captain Coxetter of Florida, described as "a gentleman of large experience upon the sea, having been in the merchant service in various capacities until the Mexican war, when he was master of a transport vessel in the Gulf of Mexico, and became thoroughly conversant with the ports of Mexico and the West India Islands, as well as the coast of the United States. After the war, he took charge of a steamer running from Charleston, S. C., to Jacksonville and Pilatka, East Florida, in which capacity he became extensively known to the travelling public as the polite and popular captain of the Carolina, and afterwards the Everglade."* Her First-Lieutenant, Portell, was at one time a midshipman in the United States navy, and had held a position in the Savannah Custom - House. The Jeff. * Port Byron (N. Y.) Gazette, ed. by B. W. Thompson, vious history. She was formerly the slaver Echo, which had been captured about two years previously and condemned in Charleston harbor. She was a full-rigged brig, having a general resemblance to a whaler, and mounted a long 18-pound pivot-gun amidships, two short 18-pound guns in the waist, and two short 12-pounders on the top-gallant forecastle. The month before she was wrecked she had made a dashing and highly successful cruise along the Eastern shore, running in as near as Nantucket shoals, whither the sloop-of-war Vincennes was sent in haste to look after her. Her last adventure, previous to her destruction, was the capture of the ship John Crawford from Philadelphia, bound to Key West, with arms and coal for the United States forces. The offcers and crew, twenty-two in number, were taken on board the privateer, and the captured vessel, drawing too heavily to be brought into any of the accessible Southern ports, was fired, and holes being bored in her sides and bottom, she a refugee from Florida. New York Tribune, Sept. 3, 1861. quickly sank in flames. CHAPTER XXXI. EXTRA SESSION OF THE NATIONAL CONGRESS. THE extra session of Congress closed financial measures and adjustments reat Washington on the 6th of August. quired for meeting the necessary exIts legislation was almost exclusively penses, and the determination, to a cerconfined to acts bearing immediately tain extent, of the policy to be pursued upon the prosecution of the war-the toward the rebellious States. The most maintenance of the army in the field and ample resources of men, money and maprovisions for its enlargement and effi- terial were placed in the hands of the ciency, the increase of the navy, the Government for the prosecution of the |