FORT DELAWARE: Small pristine hand-carried commercially-made envelope to Lieut. John Harleston, Prisoner of War Division 28 with pencil docketing of May 10, 1865, from his cousin, Sabina Wells. Harleston had been one of the earliest POWs. He was the Executive Officer on the Savannah, a CS privateer. Captured June 1861, he was tried as a pirate and confined in New York for a time. Captured again, Lieut. Harleston was one of the last prisoners as well. Ex Galen Harrison. $180.

Confederate Privateers: At the beginning of the war, the Confederate government sought to counter the US Navy in part by appealing to private enterprise worldwide to engage in privateering against United States shipping. Privateering was the practice of fitting ordinary private merchant vessels with modest armament, then sending them to sea to capture other merchant vessels in return for monetary reward. The captured vessels and cargo fell under customary prize rules at sea. Prizes would be taken to the jurisdiction of a competent court, which could be in the sponsoring country or theoretically in any neutral port. If the court found that the capture was legal, the ship and cargo would be forfeited and sold at a prize auction. The proceeds would be distributed among owners and crew according to a contractual arrangement. Privateers were also authorized to attack an enemy's navy warships and then apply to the sponsoring government for direct monetary reward, usually gold or gold specie (coins). The Savannah and others became the subject of an important court case where the U.S. declared the privateers to be pirates, an important distinction that could result in the privateer crews being put to death if captured. Ultimately, the Confederacy prevailed because CSA President Jefferson Davis wrote to President Lincoln to tell him if the privateersmen were not treated as POWs instead of pirates, he would execute Union prisoners in turn. John Harleston (1831-1919), born in South Carolina, was a Texas rancher when the war began.