The Sun.
London, England, 1869-02-09 00:00:00

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

(From the Anglo-American Times.)
(FIRST NOTICE.)
My Adventures Afloat in the Sumter and Alabama.
By Admiral Raphael Semmes.
This book will furnish pleasant reading for the
British public about to pay the bill for the de-
predations so boastfully described. We must
bear testimony to the consideration of Admiral
Semmes for those to whom he has proved so costly
a caterer, and John Bull will perhaps treasure all
he gets from the gallant officer (this book) when
he learns what an expensive animal he has been
to him. Whether these two square flat volumts
will prove a balm of Gilead under the cruel cir-
cumstances we do not predict, but if abuse of "the
Yankee," " the vile Puritan breed," can console,
the English reader will here have it to his heart's
content. The author is the Admirable Crichton
of the seas—he is the Bayard sans peur et sans re-
proche of the waters ; and it is interesting to gaze
upon the features which adorn the frontispiece
when one knows the amount of chivalry there em-
bodied. We are not, however, about to follow the
Admiral's lead, although nothing would be more
easy than to write in his sneering and abusive
strain. What strikes us most is the intense conceit
of the man ; a shield which we have no
doubt has proved of inestimable value against
the darts of his enemies, while it is a good
conductor of the flattery of his friends. His
preface is dated "The Anchorage, near Mo-
bile, Dec., 1868," so we presume he has written
in America all this abuse of Americans, and he fur-
nishes us, just as the Irish demagogues do, with a
complete answer, in the impunity with which they
write and speak to the allegations made. There are
always two sides to a question, both of which, if
we want to understand the subject, it is necessary
to see. Such books, then, do good, as, not without
literary merit, they help to show the ruling part/
in America, as well as the world, not only
what can be said against the North, but put forth
another view of the particular matter in dispute--
the Alabama claims. Nay more ; they teach Ame-
ricans the danger of accepting partizan statements
of foreign quarrels ; for what is to prevent other
aspiring nationalities from following in perverting
and misrepresenting the other side, as does Admiral
Semmes, who makes a war which freed four millions
of 'slaves appear to have been dictated by the vilest
motives. But the author has the best right to
tell the story of his own. proceedings, because
he knows most about them ; and those who desire
to follow him in his cruises will do well to skip his
first brief historical retrospect, his second brief
historical retrospect, and all the other retrospects
and arguments which intervene and follow, proving,
if they prove anything, that Semmes can come out
in another character besides sea captain, that of a sea
lawyer. Yet, while he so readily takes up the role
of the pleader and the historian, he denies the power
of any but a sailor bred to arms to write the history,
of the Alabama. Neither in feeling nor in profes-
sional knowledge could any other be competent,
though the Admirable Crichton himself is equal to
any occasion. It is not therefore surprising that
he declares all previous efforts " miserable failures,"
not excepting that of the London house of Saunders,
Ottley, and Co., to whom he lent his journal, ex-
pecting something better than the trashy pro,luc-
tion of which no one could suppose him to have
written one line. In his preface he says, " The
people of America being sovereign, they are like
other sovereigns ; they like those best who fool them
most, by pandering to their vices, and flattering
their foibles. The author, not being a flatterer,
cannot expect to be much of a favourite at the
Court of the Demos." As might be expected in the
historical retrospects, &c., &c., we have all the
old stock arguments of the South, and all the in-
consistent resolutions of the North. It never seems
to strike these people unless indeed they desire
purposely to conceal • the fact that resolutions
will change as the quarrel progresses, and in the
nature of things must so change. We all desire to
play the game—" Heads, I win ; tails, you lose ;"
while we strongly object to the little game being
played on ourselves. The resolutions taken by
Congress, and announced by President Lincoln
when the war commenced, were those of men who
desired to avert the enormous bloodshed which en-
sued and which some foresaw. But if the mild con-
ditions the one party offer be spurned by the other
the propositions are cancelled ; and it is absurd for
the defeated to revert to such resolutions as proof of
dishonestintentions and great inconsistency, who re-
jected them when passed with disdain and fought
the fight to the bitter end. Having lost, it would
doubtless be pleasant to go back to the early inten-
tions of many timorous Congressional leaders.
After describing the fitting out of the Sumter in the
early days of the war, the author thus alludes to
England's part in the blockade then instituted and
her recognition of the South as a belligerent :
" Indeed Great Britain could do nothing less
(than declare a strict neutrality of the unequal ope-
ration of which he complains elsewhere). In re-
cognizing the war which had broken out between
the sections as a war, and not as a mere insurrec

Lion, she had only followed the lead of Mr. Lincoln
himself. Efforts had been made, it is true, both by
Mr. Lincoln and his Secretary of State, to convince
the European Governments that the job which they
had on their hands was a small affair—a mere
family quarrel, of no great significance. But the
truth would not be suppressed, and when at last it
became necessary to declare the Confederate ports
in a state of blockade, and to send ships of war
thither, to enforce the declaration, the sly little
game they had been playing was all up with them.
A blockade was an act of war, which came under
the cognizance of the laws of nations. It concerned
neutrals as well as belligerents, and foreign nations
were bound to take notice of it. It followed that
there could not be a blockade without a war, and it
equally followed that there could not be a war with-
out at least two belligerent parties to it. It will
thus be seen that the declaration of neutrality of
Great Britain was a logical sequence of Mr. Lin-
coln's and Mr. Seward's own act. And yet with
sullen and singular inconsistency the Northern Go-
vernment has objected, from that day to this, to this
mere routine act of Great Britain. So much was
this considered as a matter of course at the time
that all the other Powers of the earth, of sufficient
dignity to act in the premises at all, followed the
example set them by Great Britain and issued
similar declarations, and the four years of bloody
war that followed justified the wisdom of their

acts,

Alluding to the escape of the Sumter, for which
Captain Poor of the Brooklyn was blamed, the author
says : " He had only permitted his cupidity to draw
him away from his station. He had chased a prize
iu his eagerness to clutch the prize-money a little
too far—that was all. But in this he sinned only
in common with his countrymen. The thirst of
gain, as well as the malignity of hate, seemed, from
the very first days of the war, to have seized upon
the majority of the Northern people. The army and
the navy, professions hitherto held honourable, did
not escape the contamination. They were soon
found, first plundering, then maliciously burning,
private houses. The spectacle of cotton-thieving
was more than once presented by the highest digni-
taries of the two services—the admiral quarrelling
with the general, as ignoble rogues are wont to
quarrel as to which rightly pertained the booty."
Thus he describes the first prize : " Resuming our
course, we now stood for the other sail, which, by
this time, there was no mistaking ; she being
plaicly American, although she had not yet shown
her colours. A gun soon brought these to the peak ;
when, as 1 expected, the stars and stripes unfolded
themselves gracefully to the breeze. Here was our
first prize, and a most welcome sight it was. The
capture, find, on looking over my notes, was re-
corded in a few lines, barren of all incident or re-
mark, except only that the doomed ship was from
the Black Republican State of Maine.' When I
had fired the gun as a command to the stranger to
heave to and show his colours, I had hauled dow❑
the Englishand hoisted my own flag. The stars and
stripes seemed now to look abashed in the presence
of the new banner of the South, pretty much as a
burglar might be supposed to look when caught in
the act of breaking into a gentleman's house ; but