It may not get much publicity, but there it is, smack-dab in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: Congress has the power to grant citizens “letters of marque and reprisal.” Meaning that, with Congress’s permission, private citizens can load weapons onto their fishing boats, head out to the high seas, capture enemy vessels, and keep the booty. Back in the day, these patriotic pirates were known as “privateers.”
At the start of the Revolutionary War, America had a meager navy, so we had to rely on these privateers, who captured nearly two thousand British vessels and confiscated vast amounts of food, uniforms, weapons, and barrels of sherry. They included Jonathan Haraden, who captained several vessels, including the delightfully named Tyrannicide. He once fought three British ships at once off the coast of New Jersey—and captured all of them.
The Founding Fathers were big fans of privateers. Late in life, John Adams wrote glowingly about the 1775 Massachusetts law that first legalized them, calling it “one of the most important documents in history. The Declaration of Independence is a brimborion in comparison with it.” You read that right: in Adams’ opinion, a law authorizing patriotic piracy is much more important than that trifling tidbit about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Yes, he's applied for a letter. We'll see how that goes.
3 comments:
Now if that could be applied to detaining illegal immigrants ...
I point to that article to refute the claim the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to military weapons. How are you going to be a successful privateer without full on cannon?
IIRC, the USA is bound by treaties from the 19th century to not issue letters of marque. We can't create privateers unless we repudiate these treaties with all the other seafaring nations.
The main reason for those treaties was that whenever peace broke out, too many privateers turned pirate instead of finding another occupation. The "golden age of piracy" was enabled largely by frequent wars - each time a war started, many pirates who were in prison in the Caribbean and the Bahamas waiting to hang were pardoned and sent out with letters of marque. Some thus escaped hanging several times. (It would also have helped immensely if the colonial governors could have hanged convicted pirates immediately. Instead, they had to wait months and even years for their home government to sign off on the paperwork for the hangings.)
We used privateers in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, when our navy was minuscule. And similar to the British, French, and Spanish colonial governors in the previous century, Andrew Jackson let Pierre Lafitte and other pirates out of prison in exchange for artillery and men for the defense of New Orleans.
Once we had a stronger navy, we didn't issue letters of marque. In the Civil War, the Confederacy authorized many privateers, and IIRC, the Union authorized none.
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