The Alabama and her prizes., June 16, 1864

The Alabama and her prizes.

To the Editor of the Times:

Sir: Do me the favor to publish in The Times the enclosed communication, which I design as a reply to numerous assaults upon me by the English PRESS-not excepting an occasional “rumble” from yourselves—on the subject of my destroying prizes at sea without adjudication by a prize court. The London Evening Star and kindred negrophilist associates have been particularly virulent and abusive. The term “pirate” is a favorite epithet with them; hut as abuse is always evidence of the weakness of the cause in which it is employed, and as this little failing may be a sort of vocabulistic necessity with them to enable them to pursue their polite calling, perhaps I ought not to quarrel with it.

If in the course of my remarks I have found it necessary to review some of the acts of your government, I trust you will give me credit for doing this in a spirit of justice and fair play, and not with a disposition to be querulous or censorious. I have alleged no fact that will not be conceded, and if my reasoning upon the premises be sound, no harm can have been done to any one, since truth is never unjust. If, on the contrary, the reasoning be unsound, you have the probe and scalpel at hand.

I am, respectfully, &c.,