How did all that work out for them in the end?
Privateers sailing under Confederate Letters of Marque did do some damage to commerce for the first few months of the war. The 1852 Declaration of Paris outlawed privateering as a form of piracy. Both the British and French signed this treaty. If they captured a Confederate privateer, they were obligated to try the crew for piracy. Lincoln said that captured privateers would be tried on piracy charges. In addition, the privateers, were forbidden to sell their captured ships and cargos in most European ports. The ever strengthening blockade of Southern ports by the Union Navy, closed these ports to the privateers to sell their captured ships. By early fall 1861, most of the Southern holders of Letters of Marque, surrendered them to the Confederate government. They chance of being hung for piracy and unable to sell captured ships pretty much ended privateering for the Confederacy.