The Daily Dispatch: April 23, 1861., [Electronic resource]

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Privateering and piracy.

That chief of Pirates, Abraham Lincoln, has issued a crazy Proclamation declaring that it is his purpose to treat armed vessels, sailing under letters of marque from the Confederate States, as pirates, and to hold them, if captured, subject to the laws of piracy.--This, observes the Enquirer, is an absurdity, which could only emanate from a miserable Black Republican lawyer. All the world knows that the law of nations recognizes the "militia of the seas" as a legitimate arm of offensive service. For hundred of years the policy of every nation has been to cripple, by all available means, the commerce of an enemy. In the last war with Great Britain our privateers swarmed upon the ocean. Mr. Marcy, Secretary of State under Pierce, in an able paper, maintained the right and the policy of privateering, and refused to enter into a convention with the European Powers to abolish it.

The Proclamation will have no effect in stopping privateers. Men who go upon such enterprises go with their lives in their hands, and, if the laws of civilized warfare and the whole usage of the United States are to be disregarded, by hanging privateers men when taken as pirates, the South will most assuredly hang all their Republican prisoners in like manner. The insane threat of the piratical Government shows what is their weak spot, and we shall strike home at it with all our force.