See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1865 (MAY-JULY), to 1868-1870. ----------ALABAMA: End---------- ALABAMA CLAIMS, The: A. D. 1861-1862. In their Origin. The Earlier Confederate cruisers. Precursors of the Alabama. The commissioning of privateers, and of more officially commanded cruisers, in the American civil war, by the government of the Southern Confederacy, was begun early in the progress of the movement of rebellion, pursuant to a proclamation issued by Jefferson Davis on the 17th of April, 1861. "Before the close of July, 1861, more than 20 of those depredators were afloat, and had captured millions of property belonging to American citizens. The most formidable and notorious of the sea-going ships of this character, were the Nashville, Captain R. B. Pegram, a Virginian, who had abandoned his flag, and the Sumter [a regularly commissioned war vessel], Captain Raphael Semmes. The former was a side-wheel steamer, carried a crew of eighty men, and was armed with two long 12-pounder rifled cannon. Her career was short, but quite successful. She was finally destroyed by the Montauk, Captain Worden, in the Ogeechee River. The career of the Sumter, which had been a New Orleans and Havana packet steamer named Marquis de Habana, was also short, but much more active and destructive. She had a crew of sixty-five men and twenty-five marines, and was heavily armed. She ran the blockade at the mouth of the Mississippi River on the 30th of June, and was pursued some distance by the Brooklyn. She ran among the West India islands and on the Spanish Main, and soon made prizes of many vessels bearing the American flag. She was everywhere received in British Colonial ports with great favor, and was afforded every facility for her piratical operations. She became the terror of the American merchant service, and everywhere eluded National vessels of war sent out in pursuit of her. At length she crossed the ocean, and at the close of 1861 was compelled to seek shelter under British guns at Gibraltar, where she was watched by the Tuscarora. Early in the year 1862 she was sold, and thus ended her piratical career. Encouraged by the practical friendship of the British evinced for these corsairs, and the substantial aid they were receiving from British subjects in various ways, especially through blockade-runners, the conspirators determined to procure from those friends some powerful piratical craft, and made arrangements for the purchase and construction of vessels for that purpose. Mr. Laird, a ship-builder at Liverpool and member of the British Parliament, was the largest contractor in the business, and, in defiance of every obstacle, succeeded in getting pirate ships to sea. The first of these ships that went to sea was the Oreto, ostensibly built for a house in Palermo, Sicily. Mr.