– 1865
On
this date in 1865, the Confederate ship C.S.S. Shenandoah
finally stopped fighting the Civil War, more than three months after
Lee surrendered his Confederate army!
You
see, the ship had been in the Pacific Ocean, finding and attacking
Union whalers and other merchant vessels. This is a kind of warfare
called “commerce raiding,” and it's meant to steal wealth from an
enemy, to make the ocean unsafe for enemy ships—unsafe for whaling
or trading—to discourage and maybe even terrorize. The Shenandoah
burned or scuttled most of the ships they captured, and bonded
the rest to be used carrying prisoners to Brazil. (The prisoners were
the ships' crew and passengers who wouldn't join the Confederate
navy. Many men did join the Shenandoah's crew!)
Being
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, back in the 1800s, meant that
Captain Waddell and the other officers aboard the Shenandoah
were pretty cut off from news. However, on June 27, Captain Waddell
was shown a newspaper article about Lee's surrender. However, the
same paper contained Confederate President Jefferson Davis's
proclamation that the war would be carried on with renewed vigor.
So
Waddell continued to attack whalers—capturing ten more before he
heard that Confederate generals Johnston and Smith and Magruder also
surrendered, and that Mr. Davis and his cabinet had been captured.
At
that point, Captain Waddell disarmed the ship and went back to
England to surrender his ship.
Hmm...back
to England?
Captain
Waddell did not go back to the United States because he feared that
he and his crew would be tried and executed as pirates. I mean, what
they'd done on the high seas WAS piracy, pretty much, but it was
supposedly LEGAL piracy, if you look at it from the Confederate
government's point of view.
Waddell
suspected that Yankee courts would not see it from the Confederate
point of view!
Also,
the C.S.S. Shenandoah was built in Scotland as a British
trading ship. So Liverpool, in Great Britain, was home for the ship.
(By the way, the Shenandoah was the only Confederate ship that
circumnavigated the globe.)
When
did the war REALLY end?
I'd
always accepted that the U.S. Civil War ended when Lee surrendered on
April 9, 1865. Apparently that is the “official” ending date.
However,
other dates are:
- the last battle of the Civil War was in Texas on May 12 and 13.
- the last significant Confederate army to surrender was Cherokee Brig. General Stand Watie and his Indian soldiers, on June 23.
- the very last Confederate surrender was Captain Waddell's surrender of the Shenandoah—which happened months after he disarmed and started back to England. Apparently the ship didn't reach Liverpool until November 6, 1865!
Also
on this date:
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