44 dollars.
It must not be supposed, however, that in leaving the building-yard of
Messrs. Laird, the Alabama's equipment was by any means complete. The
strictest injunctions had been given both to Captain Bullock and Captain
Semmes, to avoid doing anything that would by any possibility be
construed into an infringement of either the municipal law, or the
anxiously-guarded neutrality of England; and as the Foreign Enlistment
Act clearly forbade the _equipment_ of ships of war for belligerent
uses, it was necessary that the new cruiser should leave England
unarmed, and take her chance of capture, until some safe place could be
found for taking her armament on board.
This was, of course, a delicate operation, and one requiring the
preservation of strict secresy, that the cruisers of the United States
might at least not be enabled to pounce upon their new enemy, until she
had been placed to some extent in a condition for self-defence. Nor was
this the only ground on which caution had to be observed. The career of
the Sumter had given Captain Semmes a clearer idea than he had probably
before possessed of the precise meaning of the word neutrality, as
applied to the present war, and there was too much at stake to run the
risk of detention from any such views of its obligations as had been put
forward in the case of his captive officer at Tangier. The law of the
case might be--he certainly thought it was--clear enough; but there was
no use in throwing temptation in the way of those by whom it was to be
interpreted.
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