"The Georgia" 1864

Source: The Friend. Honolulu: August 8, 1864.

The editor of the London Star thus expresses his opinion of the Confederate vessel, the Georgia. A loyal Yankee could not do more. 

"The Georgia is not merely a Confederate privateer —an armed vessel carrying the commission of a belligerent power, or acting under letters of marque ; she is British in everything but her flag. The AttorneyGeneral gravely objects to her being called a British pirate, as a gratuitous dishonor to our country. But our reticence and selfish spirit cannot blind the judgment of the world on plain facts. Delicacy in the use of words is of little advantage when the ideas to be expressed are themselves shameful in the last degree. The well-known truth is that the Georgia is British built and British manned, that she was made and equipped in a British port, owned by a British merchant, twice manned by a British crew, and is a living defiance of British law. Till the Attorney-General can contradict these dishonorable facts, nothing is gained by the discussion of a dishonorable degradation. No one in all the world would suppose that the British Government or nation is responsible for the piracies of the Georgia, but she is, nevertheless, a blot upon the British name. Every argument of justice and good faith, of honor and of prudence, binds us to make the utmost reparation in our power to the American Government and people. When the largest allowance has been made for the force of legal pleas—when we have exhausted, as the Attorney-General did last night, the apologies that may be drawn from American jurists and precedents—when we have said all that can be said in defense of our motives and in extenuation of our mismanagement— it yet remains unhappily and undisputably true that enormous mischief has been wrought by vessels of war illegally built and equipped in British ports.