Symposium Spotlight: Confederate Privateering Activity in San Francisco
Welcome back to our spotlight series, highlighting speakers and topics for our upcoming symposium. Over the coming weeks, we will continue previewing of our speaker’s presentations for the 2025 Emerging Civil War Symposium. This week we feature Neil Chatelain’s topic.
USS Cyane loomed over J.M. Chapman after capturing it in March 1863. (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 9, 1863)
Confederate Privateering in San Francisco
Though San Francisco is not generally thought of when it comes to Confederate activity, there was a flurry of such in early 1863. A team of Confederate sympathizers planned to outfit their own privateer in California waters to disrupt and possibly capture steamers along the Panamá route, the transportation network carrying western gold to New York. One of their leaders journeyed to the Confederacy to procure a letter of marque. With that in hand, the secessionists, including a British subject, purchased a small schooner named J.M. Chapman and prepared to take it to sea. The ship was captured in San Francisco on March 15, 1863, the day of its planned departure. The secessionists were arrested, imprisoned on Alcatraz Island, and put on trial. Most of the crew played ignorance and were released. Another turned against the Confederates and testified against them. Three were found guilty, but were ultimately released, one at the insistence of British leadership, and two after taking oaths of allegiance. The Chapman incident highlights the complexities of San Francisco in the Civil War, exploring secessionist activity in the city, demonstrating integrated intelligence networks that tracked them, highlighting the legal complexities of putting British subjects and American citizens on trial for privateering, and explaining what protective mitigations were implemented by the U.S. Army and Navy to safeguard San Francisco, the Pacific coastline, and the critical shipments of gold.
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Interesting tidbit
Tidbit indeed… The record of California’s involvement in the Civil War can be summed up as, “Despite Southern sympathizer efforts, the Union successfully kept California from becoming a fourth front.” The J.M. Chapman incident highlights the fact that Southern supporters never gave up on the dream of a Greater Confederacy extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific… and beyond.
Mark Twain just missed out.
Twain was up to plenty at the same time in Nevada – coining his pen name, mining, witnessing shootouts, and dodging Confederate agents in Virginia City. He may have found everything in San Francisco relatively quiet by comparison.