the Mistress of the Seas. This is extolled in story and song. But all authority is unanimous in horror and indignation at the depredations of that pirate ship, the Alabama, which swept our own flag from the ocean; it execrates the memory of the Napoleonic despot who harboured the "spy" Sliddel, and plotted the independence of Richmond under a neutral cloak.
Although there remains no sane American who does not devoutly thank heaven for the success of the Union and the end of the withering system of slavery, there are many to whom it is not at all self evident that a sympathy and agreement with the cause of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in 1862 is conclusive proof of total depravity. So in writing this chronicle of the masterful manœuvre by which a champion of the Federal cause contributed so much to the saving of the Union and discouraging its secret enemies abroad, there will be no pretence of thereby attempting to brand or catalogue the friends and enemies
