[Doug64]

October 11, Wednesday

Rounding Cape Horn in mid-September on her way to England, CSS Shenandoah was driven off course by a northeast gale and doesn’t cross the equator until today. Now she will take the trades, with smooth going all the way to the western coast of England. “I believe the Divine will directed and protected that ship in all her adventures,” her captain will say.

Despite the evidence of how ruthless the government has demonstrated it can be in pursuit and removal of those it is determined to lay hands on by the execution of even a woman only peripherally connected to President Lincoln’s assassination—mainly Stanton, who had engineered the trial—President Johnson has proved quite as liberal in granting clemency as he had said he would be in his amnesty proclamation. By now, not only have all the arrested secessionist governors been released on their application for pardon, but today so too are such once high-placed rebels as Cabinet members John Reagan and George Trenholm, Assistant Secretary of War John A. Campbell, and even Vice President Alexander Stephens.

[Doug64]

October 12, Thursday

Martial law is ended in Kentucky by presidential proclamation.

This month Jefferson Davis is moved from the incredibly unhealthy casemate he has been held in to a second-story room in the fort’s northwest bastion.

[Doug64]

November 5, Sunday

CSS Shenandoah reaches St George’s Channel west of Wales and drops anchor to wait for a pilot.

[Doug64]

November 6, Monday

The CSS Shenandoah steams up the Mersey to Liverpool, the Stars and Bars flying proudly at her peak. She has covered better than 58,000 miles, circumnavigated the globe, visited all its oceans except the Antarctic, and taken in the course of her brief career more prizes than any other Confederate raider except the Alabama. Anchored beside a British ship-of-the-line, she lowers her abolished country’s last official flag and is turned over to the port authorities for adjudication. Two days later, Waddell and his crew will be unconditionally released to go ashore for the first time since they left Melbourne, almost nine months ago. Looking back with pride and satisfaction on all the Shenandoah had accomplished in her thirteen months at sea, Waddell later writes: “I claim for her officers and men a triumph over their enemies and over every obstacle.... For myself,” he will add, “I claim having done my duty.”

With the surrender of the last quixotic champion of a lost cause, the Confederate Navy at last comes to an end. Altogether, the commerce raiders—the principal offensive weapon of the Confederate Navy—destroyed 257 Yankee vessels, or about 5 percent of the Union merchant fleet. And yet that remarkable performance had no measurable effect on the blockade it was supposed to pull warships away from, or on the Union’s maritime trade. The raiders’ main contributions were to bolster Confederate morale—and to enlarge the annals of sea adventure.

[Doug64]

November 10, Friday

As magnanimous as President Johnson has been in his granting of pardons, there is one sharp reminder today of the claws inside the velvet Federal glove. Captain Henry Wirz, the Swiss-born commandant of Andersonville, has been convicted on trumped-up testimony of deliberate cruelty to the prisoners in his care. He was tried in violation of his parole, as well as of other legal rights, but Stanton had more or less assured a guilty verdict by appointing Lew Wallace president of the court; Wallace had consistently voted against the accused in the trial of the Lincoln conspirators, and Wirz is duly hanged today, four days after the Shenandoah lowered the last Confederate flag.

[Doug64]

November 13, Monday

The 13th Amendment is ratified by South Carolina.

[Potemkin]

November 13, Monday

The 13th Amendment is ratified by South Carolina.

Then it is truly over. The insurrection began here and it ended here.

[Doug64]

Then it is truly over. The insurrection began here and it ended here.

It would have been truly ironic if South Carolina was the 27th state to ratify the 13th Amendment, putting it into effect, but there are a few states left to go. But certainly it can be taken as an end point of the war in South Carolina.

[Doug64]

December 1, Friday

President Johnson revokes the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus for all of the United States except former Confederate states, the District of Columbia, and New Mexico and Arizona territories.

[Doug64]

December 2, Saturday

The Alabama legislature ratifies the 13th Amendment.

[Doug64]

December 4, Monday

The legislature of North Carolina accepts the 13th Amendment, but the Mississippi legislature rejects it.

[Potemkin]

December 4, Monday

The legislature of North Carolina accepts the 13th Amendment, but the Mississippi legislature rejects it.

No surprises there….

[Doug64]

December 5, Tuesday

The Georgia legislature approves the 13th Amendment.

[Doug64]

December 11, Monday

Oregon ratifies the 13th Amendment.

[Doug64]

mid-December

After nearly seven months of seeing no one but the surgeon and his guards—including General Miles, who sneered at him and called him Jeff—Jefferson Davis receives his first visitor, his wartime pastor, who has come down from Richmond to give him Communion and finds him changed in appearance by long confinement, but not in spirit. “His spirit could not be subdued,” the minister later writes, “and no indignity, angry as it made him at the time, could humiliate him.”

[Doug64]

December 18, Monday

The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution abolishing slavery is declared in effect by Secretary of State Seward after approval by 27 states.

[Doug64]

April 2, 1866, Monday

“Now, therefore, I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, hereby proclaim and declare that the insurrection which heretofore existed in the states of Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida is at an end and is henceforth to be so regarded.” Texas only is omitted, its government not yet formed.

Meantime, Johnson has continued granting amnesty to ex-rebels. By today, when he declares the insurrection officially “at an end,” Stephen Mallory has been relieved of long-pending charges of having promoted the willful destruction of commerce.

[Potemkin]

April 2, 1866, Monday

“Now, therefore, I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, hereby proclaim and declare that the insurrection which heretofore existed in the states of Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida is at an end and is henceforth to be so regarded.” Texas only is omitted, its government not yet formed.

Meantime, Johnson has continued granting amnesty to ex-rebels. By today, when he declares the insurrection officially “at an end,” Stephen Mallory has been relieved of long-pending charges of having promoted the willful destruction of commerce.

So it’s finally officially over. But of course, it wasn’t really over - African-Americans could no longer be held in chattel slavery, but their ‘liberation’ at the end of the Civil War would prove to be a false dawn. They would face another century or more of brutal oppression and exploitation, until the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In some respects, the effects of the Civil War and its aftermath are still being felt to this very day….

[Doug64]

So it’s finally officially over. But of course, it wasn’t really over - African-Americans could no longer be held in chattel slavery, but their ‘liberation’ at the end of the Civil War would prove to be a false dawn. They would face another century or more of brutal oppression and exploitation, until the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In some respects, the effects of the Civil War and its aftermath are still being felt to this very day….

Not quite officially over, since Texas isn’t yet back in the Union, but almost. Personally, I count the end of the war itself with Lee’s surrender, and the end of the immediate aftermath with Jefferson Davis’s release from prison. But yeah, we’re still feeling the effects of that war to this day. We’re even getting back, just a bit, the “the United States are” instead of “the United States is,” thanks to Biden’s refusal to enforce our border laws. (It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out in court.)

[wat0n]

Also, slavery was still being practiced in some Reservations and separate treaties had to be signed with them to truly end slavery.