Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 July 1885 — Privateering. [ARTICLE]

Privateering.

Ifi -the Congress of Paris, 1856, all the great Powers of Europe, together with Turkey, and, later, forty other states, agreed to tlip abolition of privateering, and to the rules which protected Beutral commerce and confined wars as far as practicable to belligerents. The United States refused lo accept the rule abolishing privateering, unless there were accompanied with it a stipulation of the inviolability of private property on the sea, excepting only contraband of war. The United States during the war of the rebellion offered to accede to the declaration of Paris, without the condition "it had before demanded. The proposed separate conventions, bowevei’, on this subject fell through. No letters of marque were issued by the American GoA-ernment during the civil war, though authorized by Congress.