It is not likely that the romance of the one hundred and thirty volumes of Civil War Records will ever be written; yet the diligent searcher of those records finds many picturesque points to relieve his tedious hours. For instance, there is the matter of proper names. The novelist who invented 'Philip St. George Cocke' as a military hero would be laughed at for excess of fancy. Yet the Confederates rejoiced in such a general, who was killed early and is said to have been a good fighter. At any rate, he wrote up to his name in almost unbelievable fashion. He is not to be confused with his feebler Union duplicate, I mean feebler as regards nomenclature, Philip St. George Cooke.

Then there is Captain Coward. With that name would you not have chosen to be a preacher, or to follow any respectable profession of peace, rather than to inflict such a military lucus e non lucendo on a mocking world? And the parents of this unfortunate, when they had the whole alphabet to choose from, preferred to smite their offspring with the initial A, perhaps hopingaffectionately but mistakenly — that Alexander, or Ajax, or Achilles, would suffice to overcome the patronymic blight.

All which is but a prelude to the introduction of Raphael Semmes. Is not the name a jewel in itself? In Latin countries Raphael is a fairly

common appellation; but we Saxons are usually familiar with only three instances of it, two artists and an archangel. Elements of both these characters may appear in the subject before us, but I think the artist somewhat predominated, and the other irresistibly suggests Lamb's description of Coleridge, ‘an archangel — a little damaged.'

Really, for a pirate, could anything be finer than 'Raphael Semmes'? And it was always as a pirate that I shuddered at the commander of the Alabama in my boyhood dreams. I thought of him as a joyous freebooter, a Kidd, or a Red Rover, or a Cleveland, skimming the blue main like a bird of prey, eager to plunder and destroy, young, vigorous, splendidly bloodthirsty, gay in lace and gold, perhaps with the long locks, which, Plutarch assures us, make lovers more lovely and pirates more terrible. I cherished this vision even while I knew only vaguely of a certain Semmes. When better knowledge added 'Raphael,' my dream became complete.

Now it must go, with the other dreams of boyhood; for still better knowledge assures me that the man was not a pirate at all. I have his own word for this or words, some hundred and fifty thousand of them. I have also most touching and impressive narratives of his officers, who were of so sympathetic a disposition that

they were moved by their first captive's tears to the point of collecting a purse for him. I do not understand that they continued this habit; but to the very end I have no doubt the hard plight of an orphan would have worked upon their feelings as volcanically as upon the pirates of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Perhaps more convincing than this somewhat ex parte evidence, and indeed, conclusive, are the calmer statements of Union authorities. Throughout the war, 'pirates' was the universal cry of the Northern government and press. But Professor Soley, as competent as any one to give an opinion, declares that 'Neither the privateers, like the Petrel and the Savannah, nor the commissioned cruisers, like the Alabama and the Florida, were guilty of any practices which, as against their enemies, were contrary to the laws of war.' While Robert A. Bolles, legal adviser of the Navy Department, writing in the Atlantic, shortly after the war, to explain why Semmes was not prosecuted, asserts that he was 'entitled to all warlike rights, customs, and immunities, including the right to perform all of the customary cheats, falsehoods, snares, decoys, false pretences, and swindles of civilized and Christian warfare,' and that 'the records of the United States Navy Department effectively silence all right to complain of Semmes for having imitated our example in obedience to orders from the Secretary of the Confederate Navy.'

It is impossible to imagine anything more satisfactory than this, coming from such a source, and the talk of 'pirates' seems to be forever disposed of. Nevertheless, there is one authority on the other side, of such weight and significance, that I cannot altogether pass him by. This authorityAmericanis, indeed, speaking of pri

vateers in the Mexican War; but the methods and practices animadverted upon are so closely akin to those of the Alabama that that vessel could hardly have escaped being included in the condemnation, in spite of her claim to be a duly authorized Confederate cruiser.

Our authority, then, speaks thus of the composition of crews. 'It is necessary that at least a majority of the officers and crew of each vessel should be citizens; not citizens made ad hoc, in fraud of the law, but bona fide citizens; and any vessel which might have attempted to cruise under a letter of marque and reprisal, without this essential requisite, would have become, from that moment, a pirate.'

Again, this writer expresses himself in the severest terms as to commercedestroying generally. 'Indeed, there is a growing disposition among civilized nations to put an end to this disreputable mode of warfare under any circumstances. It had its origin in remote and barbarous ages, and has for its object rather the plunder of the bandit than honorable warfare. . . . From the nature of the material of which the crews of these vessels are composed, the adventurous and desperate of all nations, the shortness of their cruises, and the demoralizing pursuit in which they are engaged, it is next to impossible that any discipline can be established or maintained among them. In short, they are little better than licensed pirates; and it behooves all civilized nations, and especially nations who, like ourselves, are extensively engaged in foreign commerce, to suppress the practice altogether.'

By this time, I imagine that the indignant Southern reader is inquiring what twopenny authority I am thus setting up against the best legal judgment of the North itself. I answer,

with hilarious satisfaction, no less an authority than Captain Raphael Captain Raphael Semmes, who in discussing the question generally with regard to Mexico had little forethought of himself as a commissioned officer of the Confederate States.

No doubt he would have had a luxury of excuses and explanations, many of them reasonable. Still, I think we have here a delightful illustration of the difference between abstract theories and concrete applications; and if Seward and Welles could have got hold of this passage, they would have hailed it with infinite glee as indeed the utterance of a Daniel come to judgment.

The Alabama was built by stealth in England, in the summer of 1862, sailed from Liverpool under the British flag, and was commissioned practically on the high seas. Her crew were largely ruffians, sharked up from the worst corners of British seaports, requiring at all times a sharp eye and a heavy hand. The voyage was everywhere, now in Atlantic fog, now in Indian sunshine, battles with tropic storms, owl-flittings in murky twilight. Sometimes there would come a few days' repose in dubiously neutral ports. The captain would slip on shore for a touch of firm land, the sound of a woman's voice, perhaps a long ride over sunny mountains or through strange forests. On his return he would find half his crew drunk, the United States consul stirring up all sorts of trouble,

and, it may be, an order to depart at once, half-coaled and half-provisioned. Or, as at Cape Town, among the friendly English, he would be half-suffocated with intrusive popularity.

Then it was up anchor and away, long months at sea, with incessant watchfulness. But the monotony was broken almost daily by fierce swoops upon Northern merchantmen, which were stopped, examined, seized, their crews taken aboard the Alabama, the vessels themselves since there were no Confederate ports to send them to -burned with all their cargo, serving sometimes as a decoy to lure yet other victims within the reach of the insatiable aggressor. Any passengers on board the prizes were treated as were the crews, detained on the Alabama only until some convenient means was found of getting rid of them. Now and then among these were ladies, who at first regarded their captors with exaggerated fear. But the young officers managed to overcome this in most cases, and the lieutenant who boarded one large steamer returned with his coat quite bare of buttons which had been cut off for mementoes. Assuredly this was playing the pranks of buccaneers with a certain gayety.

The sordid side of such work is obvious enough. For a commissioned war vessel to sail about the world, doing no fighting, but simply capturing and destroying unarmed merchantmen, seems in itself neither very useful, very creditable, nor very amusing. As to the usefulness, however, the Alabama's depredations probably did as much as anything to develop the peace spirit among the merchants of the North, and Semmes was no doubt right in thinking that he seriously diminished the pressure of the blockade by drawing so much attention to himself. And he is further right in asserting, as to discredit, that what damage he did to

property and what injury to persons is not to be named with the damage and injury done by Sherman without one whit more military excuse.

As to amusement, that is, excitement, the course of the Alabama supplied enough of it. Not to speak of winds and storms, to which she was incessantly exposed in her practically unbroken cruise of two years, there was the ever-present necessity of avoiding the Union men-of-war, a fleet of which was on the lookout, flying close upon her traces in every quarter of the globe. With the Northern press and the suffering merchants everywhere clamoring for redoubled vigilance, and an immense reward of glory awaiting the destroyer of the dreaded destroyer, every Union officer was most keenly alert. For instance, it is interesting to find Admiral Mahan, as a young midshipman, begging the Navy Department to give him a ship that he may pursue Semmes, then in command of his first vessel, the Sumter. 'Suppose it fails, what is lost? A useless ship, a midshipman, and a hundred men. If it succeeds, apart from the importance of the capture, look at the prestige such an affair would give the service.'

To evade hostility like this meant excitement enough. Yet for three years, in his two ships, Semmes did it, fighting only once, with an inferior vessel, the Hatteras, which he sank. When at last, on the nineteenth of June, 1864, in the English Channel, he met the Kearsarge, in fair fight, on nearly equal terms, it was by his own choice, not by compulsion; and on the whole, his ship made a good and creditable ending, though Professor Soley is probably right in thinking that the defeat was rather caused by inferior training and marksmanship on the Alabama than by the chain protection of the Union vessel, of which the Confederates made so much.

But what we are seeking is a closer knowledge of Semmes himself. To accord with his firefly craft and with 'pranks resembling those of the buccaneers,' you no doubt imagine a gay young adventurer, handsome, goldlaced, laughing, swearing, singing, in short, the romantic freebooter of my dreams above mentioned.

The real Semmes was nothing of the sort. To begin with, at the outbreak of the war he was an elderly man. Born in 1809, he took his early training in the United States Navy, then returned to civil life and practiced law, then went into the Mexican War, and served all through it with credit and distinction.

Seen as others saw him, he was anything but a piratical adventurer. He was not handsome, he was not winning, he was not magnetic. In fact, he gave rather the impression of a grave and reverend professional man than of a dashing captain, and some of his prisoners at first sight mistook him for a parson, an illusion quickly dispelled by a habit of marine phraseology which would not have been pleasing to Lee or Jackson. 'Lean, sallow, and nervous, much less like a mariner than a sealawyer,' is the description furnished by Rideing.

I do not know what better testimony to respectability, sanity, and conservatism could be had than that of Alexander H. Stephens, and Stephens speaks of Semmes as follows: 'For some years before secession he was at the head of the Lighthouse Board in Washington. He resigned as soon as Alabama seceded, though he agreed with me thoroughly in my position on that question, as his letters to me show. He was a Douglas man, and you need not therefore be surprised, when I tell you that I considered him a very sensible, intelligent, and gallant man. I aided him in getting an honorable posi

tion in our navy, and in getting him afloat as soon as possible, which he greatly desired.'

Fortunately, however, we are not obliged to depend on any external testimony. We have plenty of writing of the man's own which throws wide light upon his soul. He kept a careful logbook of both his cruises. This was used as a basis for the book written about him, called, Cruise of the Alabama and Sumter, and again, by himself, in his huge Memoirs of Service Afloat during the War between the States. But the original, as printed in the Official Records, is far more valuable than the later studied and literary narratives.

To begin with, one cannot help being impressed with his fine intelligence. He had a mind constantly working, and trained to work with ease, assurance, and dispatch. This is perhaps most striking in his immense legal ingenuity. His position brought him daily into contact with the nicest and most puzzling international questions, both of law and morals, from the disposition of his prizes to the disposition of himself, when he surrendered his vessel, let her sink under his feet, and after he was picked out of the water by the English yacht, Deerhound, betook himself to England and safety, instead of to the Kearsarge and a Northern prison. On all these points he is inexhaustible in legal lore, fertile in persuasive argument, and most apt and energetic in making every possible suggestion tell.

Nor would I intimate that in all this abundant discussion he is not sincere, or any less so than the average lawyer. He is, indeed, quick to take advantage of every quibble. But the long legal cases in regard to many of his captures recorded in his log-book- that is, mainly for his own eye seem to me to indicate a mind much open to conscientious scruples and a feeling that

his elaborate argument must convince himself as well as others.

Much more attractive evidence of Semmes's intellectual power than can be furnished by his legal pyrotechnics is his early book about the Mexican War. A more intelligent narrative of travels it would be difficult to find. There is not only the wide-open eye of the sympathetic observer; but the comments on the social life of the people, on their industries, their manners, their morals, government, and religion,” are sober, fruitful, and suggestive, and may be read to-day with perhaps even more profit than fifty years ago.

Still, a pirate might be intelligent. Let us take other aspects of Semmes's character. How did he treat his prisoners, of whom, first and last, there must have been hundreds? His own account and that of his officers is, of course, highly favorable. He admits that at first, as a measure of retaliation for Union treatment of captured 'pirates,' he was unnecessarily rigid in the use of irons, but he asserts that in the main captives were made as comfortable as circumstances permitted, and he insists especially that at no time was there any pillaging of private personal property. 'We may as well state here,' writes Lieutenant Sinclair, 'that all our prisoners were housed on deck from necessity, the berth-deck being crowded by our own men. But we made them as comfortable as we could under the circumstances, spread awnings and tarpaulins over them in stormy weather, and in every way possible provided for their comfort. They were allowed free rations (less the spirit part), and their own cooks had the range of the galley in preparing their food to their taste. Indeed, when it is considered that our men had watch to keep and they none, they were better off for comfort than ourselves.' This, of course, refers only to the men.