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The Confederate prize Enchantress was recaptured by the U.S.S. Albatross off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and the prize crew sent to Philadelphia to be tried for piracy. The four day trial of prize captain William Smith in the U.S. District Court there, Justices Grier and Cadwaladar presiding, resulted in a guilty verdict and a sentence of death by hanging. The trial caused a sensation in the South as well as threatened reprisals against Union prisoners of war that resulted in the quashing of the sentence several months later. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
D.F. Murphy, The Jeff Davis piracy cases: full report of the trial of William Smith for piracy, as one of the crew of the confederate privateer, the Jeff Davis : before Judges Grier and Cadwalader, in the Circuit Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, held at Philadelphia, in ... (Philadelphia, PA: King & Baird, 1861), 12-13
Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Civil War Naval Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 179-180
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Lawmaking/Litigating
