Page "Confederate States Navy" Paragraph 19

The 1856 Declaration of Paris outlawed privateering for such nations as Great Britain and France, but the United States had neither signed nor endorsed the declaration.

Therefore, privateering was constitutionally legal in both the United and Confederate States, as well as Portugal, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany.

However the United States did not acknowledge the Confederate States as a nation and denied the legitimacy of any letters of marque issued by its government.

Union President Abraham Lincoln declared all medicines to the South to be contraband, and that any captured Confederate privateers were to be hanged as pirates.

Ultimately no one was hanged for privateering because the Confederate government threatened to retaliate against Union prisoners of war.