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Chesapeake Affair

This article is about an incident during the American Civil War. For an earlier incident prior to War of 1812, see Chesapeake–Leopard affair.

The Chesapeake Affair was an international diplomatic incident that occurred during the American Civil War. On December 7, 1863, Confederate sympathizers from the British colonies Nova Scotia and New Brunswick captured the American steamer Chesapeake off the coast of Cape Cod. The expedition was planned and led by Vernon Guyon Locke (1827–1890) of Nova Scotia and John Clibbon Brain (1840–1906).[1] When George Wade of New Brunswick killed one of the American crew, the Confederacy claimed its first fatality in New England waters.[2]

Chesapeake Affair
Part of the American Civil War

The steamer Chesapeake, illustration from Harper's Weekly, December 26, 1863.
DateDecember 7, 1863
Location
Off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Result
  • Sympathizer tactical success
  • Union diplomatic victory
Belligerents
  United States
Commanders and leaders
Units involved
Maritime pirates Union Navy
Casualties and losses
None
  • 1 killed
  • 3 wounded

The Confederate sympathizers had planned to re-coal at Saint John, New Brunswick, and head south to Wilmington, North Carolina.[3] Instead, the captors had difficulties at Saint John; so they sailed further east and re-coaled in Halifax, Nova Scotia. U.S. forces responded to the attack, violating British sovereignty by trying to arrest the captors in Nova Scotian waters. International tensions rose. Wade and others were able to escape through the assistance of William Johnston Almon, a prominent Nova Scotian and Confederate sympathizer.

The Chesapeake Affair was one of the most sensational international incidents that occurred during the American Civil War.[4] The incident briefly threatened to bring the British Empire into the war against the North.[5]

Historical context

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While slavery had effectively ended in Nova Scotia at the beginning of the 19th century, the British ended the practice of slave-owning throughout its Empire by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.[6] When the Civil War began, most Canadians and Maritimers were overtly sympathetic to the North, which had abolished slavery after the Revolution and which had trading ties.[7] At the beginning of the war, approximately 20,000 men from British North America, almost half of them Maritimers, crossed the border to fight, primarily for the North.[8] Many families had strong kinship ties across the border with people in New England, New York and some of the Midwest.

As the war went on, relations between Britain and the North became strained for numerous reasons, and sympathy turned toward the South. Britain declared itself neutral during the war. Increased trade went through Halifax to both Northern and Southern ports. Nova Scotia's economy thrived throughout the war. This trade created strong ties between Halifax and merchants from both the North and South. In Halifax the main commercial agent for the Confederacy was Benjamin Wier and Co. – a company that flew the Confederate flag outside its office and accepted Confederate currency.[9] The informal headquarters for the Confederates was located at the Waverley Hotel, 1266 Barrington Street (present-day Waverley Inn).[10] At the same time, Halifax became the leading supplier of coal and fish to the North.[11]

While trade with the South was flourishing, the North created a naval blockade to prevent supplies getting to the South. Hundreds of blockade runners loaded with British arms and supplies would use the port of Halifax to ship their goods between Britain and the Confederate States.[12] Much of the coal and other fuels used to run Confederate steamers went through Halifax.[13] Halifax's role in arms trafficking for the South was so noticeable that the Acadian Recorder in 1864 described the city's effort as a "mercenary aid to a fratricidal war, which, without outside intervention, would have long ago ended."[14] U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward complained on March 14, 1865:

Halifax has been for more than one year, and yet is, a naval station for vessels which, running the blockade, furnish supplies and munitions of war to our enemy, and it has been made a rendezvous for those piratical cruisers which come out from Liverpool and Glasgow, to destroy our commerce on the high seas, and even to carry war into the ports of the United States. Halifax is a postal and despatch station in the correspondence between the rebels at Richmond and their emissaries in Europe. Halifax merchants are known to have surreptitiously imported provisions, arms, and ammunition from our seaports, and then transshipped them to the rebels. The governor of Nova Scotia has been neutral, just, and friendly; so were the judges of the province who presided on the trial of the Chesapeake. But then it is understood that, on the other hand, merchant shippers of Halifax, and many of the people of Halifax, are willing agents and abettors of the enemies of the United States, and their hostility has proved not merely offensive but deeply injurious.[15]

Immediately following the 1863 Chesapeake Affair, Seward notified the Canadian government that:

The recent shipment of one thousand rifles [by pro-Confederate British sympathizers] from New York to Halifax in violation of military regulations, the recently discovered plans of Confederate 'pirates' at Halifax to capture other American steamers between New York and Halifax, the plans of 'neutral passengers' to carry forbidden and treasonable mails to the insurgents and the plans of 'neutral merchants' to carry war supplies.[16]

Canadians and Maritimers became fearful of the power that the North demonstrated in defeating the South, and worried that it might want to annex British North America next. Toronto, Montreal, St. Catharines, and Halifax were centers of a well-financed network of Confederate spies, escaped prisoners, and soldiers of fortune who were trying to influence government opinion in the war.[17] The Confederates arranged various attacks on the Union from Canada, such as the raid on St. Albans, Vermont. The plan to kill President Abraham Lincoln was made in the St. Lawrence Hall hotel in Montreal.[18] The Chesapeake Affair was the result of a plan created in Saint John, New Brunswick, by Confederate sympathizers: they intended to capture an American ship and use it as a blockade runner for the South.[19]

Capture

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USS Malvern
 
John C. Braine

Locke had arranged for John C. Braine and sixteen Confederate sympathizers from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to board the Chesapeake as normal passengers in New York.[20] While en route to Maine, on the night of 7 December, just off the coast of Cape Cod, Braine and his men seized control of the vessel. The crew resisted; in the exchange of gunfire that took place, the ship's second engineer was killed, and three crewmen were wounded.[21] After seizing the vessel, Locke took command at Grand Manan Island.

Neutrality regulations forbade the bringing of prizes into British waters.[22] Locke sailed Chesapeake to Saint John, New Brunswick, as planned but was unable to load coal for the voyage south. He next took Chesapeake to Nova Scotia. Chesapeake stopped at Shelburne (10 December) and at Conquerall Bank, Nova Scotia, on the LaHave River (14 December), where they loaded some coal. During the next two days, they sold some of the stolen cargo for supplies.[23]

In the meantime, two Union warships were closing in: the fast side-wheeler USS Malvern, moving south from Halifax, and the USS Dacotah, coming north from Shelburne.[24]

Chesapeake was nearly caught by Malvern on the LaHave River. Under the cover of night, Chesapeake turned all lights out and slipped behind Spectacle Island and out on the LaHave without being detected.[25] Chesapeake again avoided capture at Lunenburg and traveled on to Halifax.[26] The vessel moved through Mahone Bay. At St. Margarets Bay, some crew left the ship. By 16 December, the ship arrived at Mud Cove harbour at Sambro. Once there Locke went to Halifax overland. There he arranged for a schooner come to Sambro with coal.[26] While Chesapeake was being loaded with coal, Malvern and Dacotah arrived.[27]

Arrest

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Upon the arrival of the American warships, most of the rebel prize crew on Chesapeake fled. Lieutenant Nickels of Malvern violated British sovereignty and international laws by arresting the three men who remained: one from New Brunswick and two from Nova Scotia. George Wade, who had killed a crew member during the raid, was among the prisoners. The Americans took Chesapeake to Halifax to get clearance for their actions from the British authorities.[28] Chesapeake arrived in Halifax on 17 December, escorted by the two American warships. Three other warships followed, which had also pursued Chesapeake: USS Acacia, USS Cornubia, and USS Niagara.[29]

News of the capture and the fact that Maritimers were the assailants resulted in widespread anger in the North. The New York Herald condemned the attack as the "most daring and atrocious on record" and the assailants for showing "cold blood and feeble circulation of reptiles." Another paper derided the citizens of Saint John as "mere pimps" of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and "his fellow traitors."[30]

Seward informed Britain that the U.S. wanted Chesapeake returned immediately, and the hijackers arrested and extradited to the U.S. in accordance with Article 10 of the 1842 Webster–Ashburton Treaty, which provided the extradition of "all persons who, being charged with the crime of murder ... or Piracy".[31]

Escape

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A terrible retribution awaits this city of Halifax for its complicity in treason and piracy.

— Reverend Nathaniel Gunnison, U.S. Consul at Halifax, December 24, 1863[32]
 
William Johnston Almon

William Johnston Almon was generally regarded as the unofficial Confederate consul in Halifax.[33] He constantly harboured Confederate "refugees" and hosted numerous prominent Confederate officials, who were automatically welcomed at Rosebank during their stay in town. He was a friend and correspondent of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.[33] He worked with Alexander Keith, Jr. to free the Confederates.

The fate of the Chesapeake awaited adjudication in the colonial Admiralty court, but the British planned to give Confederate prisoner Wade to the United States authorities for extradition.[34] Almon and Keith arranged for Wade's escape in a rowboat to Ketch Harbour and to Hantsport.[35] The Americans were outraged and, in response, the British put a warrant out for the rest of his crew.[36] A few of the crew were tried but were found not guilty on a technicality.[37]

Aftermath

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The Southern sympathisers believed they were engaging in an act of war because they had an official letter of marque from the Confederacy. As the investigation into the affair unfolded, it was found their letter had no legal basis. As a result, rather than the Chesapeake Affair being an official act of war, it was an act of piracy and condemned as such by most of the newspapers in the Maritimes.[38]

Many high-ranking Confederates settled in Canada after the war. Approximately 30 senior Naval and Army officers from the South settled in Halifax. Among the most prominent were John Wilkinson (commander of CSS Chickamauga), Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay, and John Taylor Wood.[39]

See also

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References

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Primary texts
  • Hoy, Claire. Canadians in the Civil War. McArthur and Company. 2004.
  • Kert, Faye. The Chesapeake Affair. In Trimming Yankee Sails: Pirates and Privateers of New Brunswick. Goose Lane Editions and The New Brunswick Military Heritage Project. 2005. pp. 63–86.
  • Marquis, Greg. In Armageddon's Shadow: The Civil War and Canada's Maritime Provinces. McGill-Queen's University Press. 1998.
  • Cox, George H."Sidelights on the Chesapeake Affair, 1863-4" (pp. 124–137); Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society Volume 29. 1951,
  • Francis Littlefield. The Capture of the Chesapeake. Collections of the Maine Historical Society, 1901
Endnotes
  1. ^ Locke was born in Sandy Point, Shelburne County, Nova Scotia, in 1827. At the advent of the rebellion, Locke offered his services to the South. He secured his ship Retribution's letter of marque. His alias was John Parker to cover his privateering activities (See Marquis, p.136).
  2. ^ Marquis, p. 143
  3. ^ Hoy, p. 180
  4. ^ Hoy, p. 179
  5. ^ Hoy, p. 182
  6. ^ Hoy, p. 204
  7. ^ Hoy, p. vi
  8. ^ Hoy, p. 130
  9. ^ Hoy, p. 185; Marquis, p. 169
  10. ^ Hoy, p. 257
  11. ^ Hoy, p. 256; The Waverley Hotel used to be at the corner of Barrington and Blowers streets.
  12. ^ Hoy, p. 254
  13. ^ Hoy, p.255
  14. ^ Greg Marquis (January 1998). "The Ports of Halifax and Saint John and the American Civil War" (PDF). 8 (1). The Northern Mariner: 4. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  15. ^ Beau Cleland. Between King Cotton and Queen Victoria: Confederate Informal Diplomacy and Privatized Violence in British America During the American Civil War (Thesis). University of Calgary. p. 2.
  16. ^ Martha Luan Carter Brunson Haynes (August 1958). CONFEDERATE ACTIVITIES: A STUDY IN CANADIAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS (Thesis). Graduate Faculty of Texas Technological College. p. 14.
  17. ^ Hoy, p.vii
  18. ^ Hoy, p.viii
  19. ^ Marquis, p. 147
  20. ^ (Hoy, p.179, Marquis, p. 144)
  21. ^ Hoy, p. 181
  22. ^ Marquis, p. 153
  23. ^ Marquis, p. 154
  24. ^ Hoy, p. 184
  25. ^ Hoy, 185; Marquis, p.157
  26. ^ a b Hoy, p. 185
  27. ^ Hoy, p. 186, Marquis, p. 162
  28. ^ Hoy, p. 187
  29. ^ Marquis, pp. 164, 166
  30. ^ Dean Jobb (April 1, 2016). "East Coast Pirates" – via PressReader.
  31. ^ "British-American Diplomacy: The Webster-Ashburton Treaty". Avalon Project.
  32. ^ Foster N. Gunnison; Alice Gunnison (1910). An Autobiography of the Rev. Nathaniel Gunnison. p. 36.
  33. ^ a b Hoy, p. 192
  34. ^ Hoy, p. 193
  35. ^ Hoy, p. 194
  36. ^ Hoy, p. 199
  37. ^ Hoy, p.204
  38. ^ Marquis, p. 148
  39. ^ Hoy, 259, 263
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