[Doug64]

June 26, Monday

Lieutenant Commander Waddell’s persistence is rewarded when the CSS Shenandoah steams into a cluster of six whalers lying becalmed off St. Lawrence Island. Five he burns; the sixth he ransoms to take on board the crews of all the rest.

[Doug64]

June 28, Wednesday

Lieutenant Commander Waddell makes his largest haul near the narrows of Bering Strait, where he falls in with a rendezvous of eleven whalers. He puts all the crews aboard two of these, bonded as before, and sets the other nine ablaze in a single leaping conflagration, rivaling with its glow of burning oak and sperm oil, reflected for miles on the ice that glitters roundabout, the brilliance of the Aurora Borealis. In nine months of sailing close to 40,000 miles, the CSS Shenandoah now has taken an even two dozen whalers, along with 1,053 prisoners and another fourteen merchant vessels, destroying all but six of the 38, whose total value Waddell places at $1,361,983 (2020 $21,625,588). Tomorrow he will steam into the Arctic Ocean.

[Rich]

And thanks to the bigots (which was most all Whites at the time) grabbing onto Racial Darwinism, was a bleeding self-inflicted wound on our democratic institutions all that time.

And where were the non bigots in 1865? I look to Europe, to China, to India, to the Muslim World, to Black Africa, to Latin America, no where do I see these multi racial democracies with civil liberties for all. And even the Yankees, do you really think that the Yankee states would have been happy with huge Black African voting blocks in their own states. Even many of the radical Republicans would have been considered hate filled racists, judged by the standards of 2023.

I'm British. In 1900, let alone 1865 Britain was still an Apartheid country, but an Apartheid based on social class. In many of the big country houses if a lower servant was caught the main stars, they were expected to turn and face the wall till the quality had gone past. When the top servants eat their meals, they themselves were waited on by servants, such was the scale of class differentiation.

In China prior to the revolution it was common for the whole house hold to prostrate to the head of the house hold each morning. India wives were burned to death on their husband's funeral pyre's. Every where you look you find the most gross inequality in 1861 or 1865, yet for some reason people get incensed that Southern Whites didn't want equality, that southern Whites weren't over keen to sacrifice their privileges.

[Doug64]

@Rich, you are correct, there were a few but not many. I was speaking to the situation in the US, and didn’t intend to imply that we were unique.

[Doug64]

I think this is the one I accidentally posted much too early, but here it is again in its proper location in the timeline.

June 30, Friday

After a lengthy trial the military commission sitting in Washington finds all eight alleged Lincoln assassination conspirators guilty. Four are soon on their way to the Dry Tortugas, three with life sentences, including Samuel Mudd, a Virginia doctor who had set Booth’s broken leg, and Edward Spangler, a stagehand at Ford’s, with a six-year term for having allegedly helped the actor leave the theater. There, in 1867, Michael O’Laughlin will die in a yellow fever epidemic. Because of his role as a doctor in the epidemic, Samuel Mudd will be pardoned in 1868, and in 1869 Edward Spangler and Samuel Arnold will also be pardoned. The other four get death.

President Johnson names Benjamin F. Perry provisional governor of South Carolina.

[Potemkin]

I think this is the one I accidentally posted much too early, but here it is again in its proper location in the timeline.

June 30, Friday

After a lengthy trial the military commission sitting in Washington finds all eight alleged Lincoln assassination conspirators guilty. Four are soon on their way to the Dry Tortugas, three with life sentences, including Samuel Mudd, a Virginia doctor who had set Booth’s broken leg, and Edward Spangler, a stagehand at Ford’s, with a six-year term for having allegedly helped the actor leave the theater. There, in 1867, Michael O’Laughlin will die in a yellow fever epidemic. Because of his role as a doctor in the epidemic, Samuel Mudd will be pardoned in 1868, and in 1869 Edward Spangler and Samuel Arnold will also be pardoned. The other four get death.

President Johnson names Benjamin F. Perry provisional governor of South Carolina.

Dr Samuel Mudd became one of the most famous victims of a miscarriage of justice in history. Back in the 1930s, John Ford even directed a movie about him. The authorities were in a vengeful mood after Lincoln’s assassination. Anyone even peripherally connected with it was going to get railroaded.

[Doug64]

July 1, Saturday

James H. Lane—jayhawker during the “Bleeding Kansas” years and early in the war, later US general and senator, and the target of Quantrill’s bushwhacker raid on Lawrence, Kansas—for reasons understood only in the dark crypts of his mind, takes out a revolver and fires what is perhaps the last shot of the jayhawker-bushwhacker war—into his own mouth.

New Hampshire ratifies the 13th Amendment.

[Doug64]

Dr Samuel Mudd became one of the most famous victims of a miscarriage of justice in history. Back in the 1930s, John Ford even directed a movie about him. The authorities were in a vengeful mood after Lincoln’s assassination. Anyone even peripherally connected with it was going to get railroaded.

Very true. The case of Mary Surratt is no better, if not even worse.

[Doug64]

July 4, Tuesday

Lieutenant Commander Waddell, searching the Arctic Ocean, discovers that he has abolished the whaling trade, so far at least as his one-time fellow countrymen are concerned. Narrowly escaping getting ice-bound, he turns back and passes once more between the outpost capes of Asia and North America. Propeller triced up to save coal, he crowds on all sail and sets out for the coast of Baja California, intending to make prizes of the clippers plying between Panama and San Francisco. By today the CSS Shenandoah is clear of the chain of the Aleutians and back into the ice-free waters of the North Pacific.

[Doug64]

July 7, Friday

On a hot, oppressive midsummer day in Washington a large crowd gathers in the Arsenal grounds at the Old Penitentiary Building. Four graves are dug, four prisoners brought in, and four hanged: Lewis Paine, an ex-Confederate soldier who had made the knife attack on Seward, George Atzerodt, an immigrant carriage-maker who had lacked the nerve to attempt his assignment of killing the vice-president, David Herald, a slow-witted Maryland youth who had served as a guide for the fugitive in his flight, and Mary E. Surratt, the widowed proprietor of a boarding house where Booth is said to have met with some of the others in planning the work only he carried out in full. All are in their twenties except Mrs. Surratt, who is forty-five and whose principal offense appears to be that her twenty-year-old son had escaped abroad before he could be arrested for involvement in the crime. An outcry has gone up over the decision to execute Mrs. Surratt and several efforts were made to have the sentence changed, but to no avail. Until the very last it is hoped by some that there would be presidential intervention in the case of Mrs. Surratt, but it isn’t forthcoming.

[Doug64]

Not exactly a lot, but a reminder that the aftermath isn’t quite over.

July 13, Thursday

William Marvin is named provisional governor of Florida by President Johnson.

[Potemkin]

Not exactly a lot, but a reminder that the aftermath isn’t quite over.

July 13, Thursday

William Marvin is named provisional governor of Florida by President Johnson.

It could be argued that the aftermath of the Civil War lasted until the 1960s. In fact, even the current arguments over the fate of statues of Confederate ‘heroes’ could be seen as part of that aftermath. The Civil War died hard….

[Doug64]

It could be argued that the aftermath of the Civil War lasted until the 1960s. In fact, even the current arguments over the fate of statues of Confederate ‘heroes’ could be seen as part of that aftermath. The Civil War died hard….

Very true.

[Doug64]

July 24, Monday

Ford’s Theatre in Washington is rented by the US Government for $1,500 a month. The building will be purchased by the government for $88,000 in July 1866 and will be turned into offices of the Adjutant General’s Department. On June 9, 1893, a section of the front of the building will collapse, killing 22 and injuring 65.

[Doug64]

Late July

Jefferson Davis’s health has declined and declined, from neuralgia, failing eyesight, insomnia, and a general loss of vitality. Passing his fifty-seventh birthday in early June, he has had to wait until more than two months after his arrival to be permitted an hour’s daily exercise on the ramparts.

By this time, prominent Northerners—especially those in the legal profession—have seen the weakness of the government’s case against Davis and the other Confederates being held. One who sees it is the Chief Justice who would rule on their appeal in the event that one is needed, which he doubts. “If you bring these leaders to trial it will condemn the North,” Chase warns his former cabinet colleagues this month, “for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion.” As for the rebel chieftain, the authorities would have done better not to apprehend him. “Lincoln wanted Jefferson Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason. Secession is settled. Let it stay settled.”

[Potemkin]

Late July

Jefferson Davis’s health has declined and declined, from neuralgia, failing eyesight, insomnia, and a general loss of vitality. Passing his fifty-seventh birthday in early June, he has had to wait until more than two months after his arrival to be permitted an hour’s daily exercise on the ramparts.

By this time, prominent Northerners—especially those in the legal profession—have seen the weakness of the government’s case against Davis and the other Confederates being held. One who sees it is the Chief Justice who would rule on their appeal in the event that one is needed, which he doubts. “If you bring these leaders to trial it will condemn the North,” Chase warns his former cabinet colleagues this month, “for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion.” As for the rebel chieftain, the authorities would have done better not to apprehend him. “Lincoln wanted Jefferson Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason. Secession is settled. Let it stay settled.”

Words of wisdom. Putting Jeff Davis on trial would have effectively been putting the North on trial. Nothing to gain, and potentially a lot to lose. It’s the same reasoning which led Lenin to refuse to put Nicholas II on trial after his capture by the Bolsheviks. In fact, Nicholas II’s capture created a major headache for the Bolsheviks - they couldn’t just release him, they couldn’t put him on trial, and they couldn’t hold onto him forever. They finally cut the Gordian Knot the same way Alexander did. What would the US government do with Jeff Davis…?

[Doug64]

Words of wisdom. Putting Jeff Davis on trial would have effectively been putting the North on trial. Nothing to gain, and potentially a lot to lose. It’s the same reasoning which led Lenin to refuse to put Nicholas II on trial after his capture by the Bolsheviks. In fact, Nicholas II’s capture created a major headache for the Bolsheviks - they couldn’t just release him, they couldn’t put him on trial, and they couldn’t hold onto him forever. They finally cut the Gordian Knot the same way Alexander did. What would the US government do with Jeff Davis…?

In the end, talk a big game before cutting him loose--and in the process, make him more popular after the war than he ever was during the war (after the first few months). No Gordian Knot cutting for us! Though to be fair, Davis wasn't the existential threat to Washington that Nicholas II was to the Bolsheviks.

For alternate history buffs, there's actually a novel based on the premise that a far-sighted German recognized that the Bolsheviks were a different kind of threat and organized a rescue of the Romanovs. The Romanov Rescue. (I haven't read it, so I can't vouch for its quality.)

[Doug64]

August 2, Wednesday

For a month the CSS Shenandoah has held its southward course, sailing well out of sight of land, and then today encounters the English bark Barracouta, less than two weeks out of Frisco. Newspapers on her tell of Kirby Smith’s capitulation, two months ago today; Jefferson Davis is in prison, and the Confederacy is no longer among the nations of earth. Despite earlier indications, the news comes hard for those on board the Shenandoah. “We were bereft of ground for hope or aspiration,” her executive officer writes in his journal this night, “bereft of a cause for which to struggle and suffer.” Lieutenant Commander Waddell now is faced with the problem of what to do with his ship and his people: a decision, he will say, “which involved not only our personal honor, but the honor of the flag entrusted to us which had walked the waters fearlessly and in triumph.” Though he orders the battery struck below and the crew disarm, he is determined to avoid capture if possible. Accordingly, after rejecting the notion of surrendering at some port close at hand, where treatment might be neither fair nor unprejudiced, he decides to make a nonstop run, by way of Cape Horn, for England. The distance is 17,000 miles, very little of it in sight of land, and will require three full months of sailing, never speaking another vessel from start to finish lest the Shenandoah’s whereabouts become known to Federal skippers who by now are scouring the seas under orders to take or sink her.

[Doug64]

August 29, Tuesday

President Johnson proclaims that even articles declared as contraband of war can now be traded with states “recently declared in insurrection.” The proclamation will take effect September 1st.

Late August

Jefferson Davis is allowed to read the first letter from his wife.

[Doug64]

Missed a couple:

September 14, Thursday

At Fort Smith, Arkansas, representatives of the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Osages, Seminoles, Senecas, Shawnees, and Quapaws sign a treat of loyalty with the United States, and renounce all Confederate agreements. Additional Amerind groups later do the same.

September 21, Thursday

A treaty is signed with the Choctaws and Chickasaws calling for peace and friendship and abolishing slavery.