CONFEDERATE STATES STEAMER SUMTER, ISLAND OF CUBA, July 6, 1861.
SIR:--I have the honor to inform you, of my arrival at the port of Cienfuegos, with seven prizes of war. These vessels are the brigantines _Cuba_,[1] _Machias_, _Ben. Dunning_, _Albert Adams_, and _Naiad_; and barks _West Wind_, and _Louisa Kilham_, property of citizens of the United States, which States, as your Excellency is aware, are waging an aggressive and unjust war upon the Confederate States, which I have the honor, with this ship under my command, to represent. I have sought a port of Cuba, with these prizes, with the expectation that Spain will extend to the cruisers of the Confederate States, the same friendly reception that, in similar circumstances, she would extend to the cruisers of the enemy; in other words, that she will permit me to leave the captured vessels within her jurisdiction, until they can be adjudicated by a Court of Admiralty of the Confederate States. As a people maintaining a government _de facto_, and not only holding the enemy in check, but gaining advantages over him, we are entitled to all the rights of belligerents, and I confidently rely upon the friendly disposition of Spain, who is our near neighbor, in the most important of her colonial possessions, to receive us with equal and even-handed justice, if not with the sympathy which our identity of interests and policy, with regard to an important social and industrial institution, are so well calculated to inspire. A rule which would exclude our prizes from her ports, during the war, although it should be applied, in terms, equally to the enemy, would not, I respectfully suggest, be an equitable, or just rule. The basis of such a rule, as indeed, of all the conduct of a neutral during war, is equal and impartial justice to all the belligerents, without inclining to the side of either; and this should be a substantial and practical justice, and not exist in terms merely, which may be deceptive. Now, a little reflection will, I think, show your Excellency that the rule in question--the exclusion of the prizes of both belligerents from neutral ports--cannot be applied in the present war, without operating with great injustice to the Confederate States. It is well known to your Excellency, that the United States are a manufacturing and commercial people, whilst the Confederate States are an agricultural people. The consequence of this dissimilarity of pursuits was, that at the breaking out of the war, the former had within their limits, and control, almost all the naval force of the old government. This naval force they have dishonestly seized, and turned against the Confederate States, regardless of the just claims of the latter to a large proportion of it, as tax-payers, out of whose contributions to the common Treasury it was created. The United States, by this disseizin of the property of the Confederate States, are enabled, in the first months of the war, to blockade all the ports of the latter States. In this condition of things, observe the _practical_ working of the rule I am discussing, whatever may be the seeming fairness of its terms. It will be admitted that we have equal belligerent rights with the enemy. One of the most important of these rights, in a war against a commercial people, is that which I have just exercised, of capturing his property, on the high seas. But how are the Confederate States to enjoy, to its full extent, the benefit of this right, if their cruisers are not permitted to enter neutral ports, with their prizes, and retain them there, in safe custody, until they can be condemned, and disposed of? They cannot send them into their own ports, for the reason already mentioned, viz.: that those ports are hermetically sealed by the agency of their own ships, forcibly wrested from them. If they cannot send them into neutral ports, where are they to send them? Nowhere. Except for the purpose of destruction, therefore, their right of capture would be entirely defeated by the adoption of the rule in question, whilst the opposite belligerent would not be inconvenienced by it, at all, as all his own ports are open to him. I take it for granted, that Spain will not think of acting upon so unjust, and unequal a rule.