The Last Battle of the Civil War Happened in Alaska
Most people think the American Civil War ended when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia on April 9th, 1865. They are only partly correct. While Lee stopped fighting, some forces didn’t get the word about the surrender, and the last shot fired in the Civil War actually happened right here in Alaska. It is a true story that is so far-fetched it reads like a novel. It is the tale of the CSS Shenandoah, a Confederate warship that fought the last battle of the American Civil War off the coast of Alaska on June 27, 1865, exactly 159 years ago today.
During the Civil War, Union forces successfully blockaded southern ports with a fleet of warships. This was done to prevent the Confederacy from exporting cotton or importing war materials that were unavailable in the South. The blockade was a successful tactic and hurt the South’s ability to fight the war.
In 1863, the Confederate government decided to use a similar tactic. Southern agents purchased a newly constructed ship, built in Scotland intending to make it a commerce raider to attack ships supplying whale oil, an important commodity to Union industrial facilities. The vessel was a completely modern vessel for the time, with a combination of sail power and an auxiliary steam engine.
After the purchase, the ship was sailed to the Portuguese port of Madeira, where it was delivered to a crew of Confederate sailors and their captain, James Waddell. They armed the ship, changed its name from Sea King to the Shenandoah, and recommissioned it as a warship in the Confederate Navy.
The Shenandoah had some initial success, sinking 6 Union whaling ships in the South Atlantic, and then headed north for the Pacific whaling grounds. On April 3rd, 1865, the Shenandoah came across the Union whaling ship “Hector” near Micronesia and sunk it, but also came away with maps showing the exact locations where the American whaling fleet hunted for whales in the Bering Sea.
After sinking the Hector, the Shenandoah sailed towards Alaska, while a few days later and halfway around the world, Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9th, bringing the major hostilities in the Civil War to an end.
Unaware of Lee’s surrender, the Shenandoah arrived in the Bering Sea and sunk its first victim on May 28th, a Union whaling ship named the Abigail.
On June 21, the Shenandoah captured 2 ships that had recently set sail from San Francisco. The captain of one of the ships notified them that the Civil War was over, but Captain Waddell thought this was a lie being told by a captain desperate to save his ship and both of the whalers were sunk.
During the remainder of June 1865, the Shenandoah sank or captured 20 of the 58 Union whaling ships hunting for whales off the coast of Alaska, but on June 27th, the Shenandoah captured the whaling ship “Susan & Abigail”. The captain had newspapers that confirmed that Lee had surrendered on April 9th, but it also reported that Confederate President Jefferson Davis urged Confederate forces to keep fighting. Captain Waddell decided that since President Jefferson Davis had not surrendered, the Shenandoah would also continue to fight.
That changed on August 2nd when the Shenandoah encountered the Barracouta, an English ship that delivered newspapers to Captain Waddell confirming the final surrender of all Confederate troops, along with the capture of President Jefferson Davis, meaning the Civil War was officially over.
This put the crew of the Shenandoah in a predicament. Their actions as a Confederate warship were legal under maritime law, but after the Confederacy ceased to exist, every ship the Shenandoah sank was an act of piracy, making every member of the Shenandoah’s crew a pirate. The governments of most countries in the world had strict laws against piracy for which the penalty was hanging. Returning to any port to surrender, would be a sure death sentence for the crew of the Shenandoah.
The one country that was an exception to this was England, which had remained officially neutral during the Civil War. The crew of the Shenandoah decided their only chance at avoiding the hangman's noose was to sail back to England and ask for leniency. The Shenandoah left Alaska and sailed back to Liverpool, England arriving there on November 7th, 1865. Captain Waddell then surrendered his ship to Great Britain.
An official investigation by the British government concluded that the crew of the Shenandoah conducted themselves within the rules of maritime law, and all crew members were released without punishment. Unfortunately for the crew of the Shenandoah, that was not the end of the matter.
When Lee surrendered on April 9th, Abraham Lincoln had advocated for a peaceful reunification of the country. However, after Lincoln’s assassination, there was public outrage and a demand for retribution against the South and its supporters. The recently freed crew of the Shenandoah were faced with an angry public back home who wanted punishment of the crew for their actions.
Faced with prison if they went home, the crew chose to remain outside of the United States for over a decade, becoming men without a country. Eventually, passions calmed, and in 1876 the crew of the Shenandoah were issued full pardons by the Congress of the United States, allowing them to return to America.
The story of the Shenandoah is an amazing one and I took one important lesson away from it. Despite their differences, when the conflict was over, they were able to forgive each other and find peace. Americans involved in today's divisive political struggles should remember their example.
The most interesting part of this story for Alaskans is that much of it happened in our state 159 years ago today. If you want to read more about the Shenandoah, links are provided below, and several informative books cover the ship's story in greater detail.
Citations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Shenandoah
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/confederate_ships/shenandoah.html
Books on the voyage of the CSS Shenandoah:
The Last Confederate Ship at Sea: The Wayward Voyage of the CSS Shenandoah, October 1864-November 1865
A Confederate Biography, The Cruise of the CSS Shenandoah
Last Flag Down – the Epic Journey of the Last Confederate Warship