Alabama Claims

The Alabama Claims were a series of demands for damages sought by the government of the United States from the United Kingdom in 1869, for the attacks upon Union merchant ships by Confederate Navy commerce raiders built in British shipyards during the American Civil War. The claims focused chiefly on the most famous of these raiders, the CSS Alabama, which took more than sixty prizes before she was sunk off the French coast in 1864.

After international arbitration endorsed the American position in 1872, Britain settled the matter by paying the United States $15.5 million, ending the dispute and leading to a treaty that restored friendly relations between Britain and the United States. That international arbitration established a precedent, and the case aroused interest in codifying public international law.

The British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston and Foreign Secretary Lord John Russell failed to stop the Alabama from putting to sea from the shipyards of John Laird Sons and Company in Birkenhead. The United States Legation in London had explicitly opposed this, and the American Minister to Britain, Charles Francis Adams, charged that the ship was bound for the Confederacy, where it would be used against the United States.

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