Treason and Piracy in Civil War Halifax: The Second Chesapeake Affair Revisited

by

“A terrible retribution awaits the city of Halifax for its complicity in treason and piracy.”

“Reverend Nathaniel Gunnison, American Consul at Halifax, wrote to Sir Charles Tupper, provincial secretary of Nova Scotia, 10 December 1863, stating that the Chesapeake “had been seized by a band of pirates and murder committed”. The Chesapeake was an American steamer plying between New York and Portland, Maine, which had been captured by a party of sixteen men, led by John C. Braine, who had embarked as passengers at New York. After a foray into the Bay of Fundy and along the south shore of Nova Scotia, the Chesapeake was boarded and captured by a United States gunboat the Ella and Annie in Sambro Harbor fourteen miles from Halifax. She was subsequently towed into Halifax and turned over to local authorities after much diplomatic hurlyburly. The affair raised several interesting points of international maritime law, resulted in three trials before the issues raised by the steamer’s seizure, recapture and disposition were resolved and was the genesis of several myths and local legends. It posed the “most thorny diplomatic problem of the Civil War” provided Halifax with “the most exciting Christmas Week in her history””

“(Alexander) Keith was well known to be an ardent Confederate sympathizer who was “in frequent communication with rebel blockade-runners and with rebel agents in the United States”. According to his biographer he on more than one occasion assisted southern raiders, captured off this port [Halifax], to escape when they were being landed with a guard at one of the docks along the waterfront. By sheer impertinence … he stood before the guard while the man leaped into a boat and was rowed across the harbour to escape near Dartmouth.”

Jones, Francis I.W. “Treason and Piracy in Civil War Halifax: The Second Chesapeake Affair Revisited” Dalhousie Review, Volume 71, Number 4, 1992 https://dalspace.library.dal.ca/bitstream/handle/10222/61175/dalrev_vol71_iss4_pp472_487.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Related posts:

  1. Second Chesapeake Affair: 1863-1864 “As the Civil War began, most Nova Scotians favoured the northern cause. While little was known of Abraham Lincoln, it was generally felt that the Republican party was pledged to a crusade against the dreaded institution of slavery. This all...
  2. “The gorge of every honest man should rise at the servility and treason which would thus sell our birthright” While perusing the abominable misrepresentations and absurd charges which the chief Confederationists indulge in, in striving to support a scheme which has been virtually knocked on the head, for a time at least, one hardly knows whether to smile at...
  3. From John Adams to Boston Patriot, 12 July 1809 “Upon looking over again the words of the first article, there seems to be room for dispute, which a British minister, in the present state of his country, would be capable of taking advantage of. The terms which are used...
  4. A pocket guide book of historic Halifax, Nova Scotia, from the Citadel “Commander of the Tallahassee… was J. Taylor Wood, a nephew of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In after years Captain Wood resided at Halifax. See his grave at Camp Hill cemetery. He died in 1904. In a bay around the bend...
  5. The New York Loyalists in Nova Scotia “From the beginning of the strife in the American colonies, New York, which unlike Massachusetts [–and like Nova Scotia] was a royal or crown colony, naturally showed marked loyalist sympathies. It has often been sweepingly asserted that all the leading...
  6. The Church of England in Nova Scotia and the Tory clergy of the revolution “In the United States there should be much interest in the Diocese of Nova Scotia, for that Diocese owes its existence to the Tories of the Revolution, who went in thousands from New York and Massachusetts to the “Acadian Province...
  7. Annexation in the Maritimes? The Butler Mission to Charlottetown “The agricultural produce of the fertile Island found a ready market in industrial New England between 1854 and 1865. Exports to the United States fell from £120,928 in 1865 to £21,633 in 1866, while imports only slipped slightly.16 The cheap...
  8. To the electors of the county of Halifax “Much misrepresentation has been indulged in concerning the increased debt of the Dominion, and comparisons made between it and the federal debt of the United States most unfair to Canada… the different purposes for which the two debts were incurred...
  9. Nova Scotia in the Critical Years 1775-6 “That from 1758 until the end of the American Revolution, Nova Scotia was in essentials a New England colony is, of course, an elementary fact in the history of the province. Eaton, the local historian, estimates the number of inhabitants...
  10. Trials For Treason In 1776-7 This describes the settlement of Cumberland township in Nova Scotia by settlers from Rhode Island around 1762-1763. During the American Revolution, some settlers sympathized with the revolted colonies, leading to attempted capture of Fort Cumberland in 1776 by parties from...