Arrested
by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles in November 1865, Rear-Admiral
Semmes of the Alabama was simply charged with not surrendering himself
to his enemy after his ship was disabled, though the latter had left him
to drown. Semmes was rescued from the sea by the English yacht
Deerhound, taken to England, and eventually made his way back to
Richmond to serve the American Confederacy once again.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial
Prison Diary of Raphael Semmes
“At
the close of the Civil War many of the Confederate leaders were
arrested and imprisoned. [Returning to the CSA after losing the Alabama
and made a brigadier-general at Danville, Rear Admiral Semmes] was
subsequently paroled under the terms of the Johnston-Sherman convention
of April 26, 1865.
Diary: On the 15th
of December, 1865, whilst sitting with my family, a lieutenant of
marines and two sergeants entered my house, having first surrounded it
by a guard of some 20 men, and presented me with an order for my arrest
from the Secretary of the Navy . . . dated 25 November 1865.
[27 December]: Reached our dock [at New York . . . Breakfasted with [General Jubal] Early on the morning of the 28th.
[28 December]:
Taken to headquarters of colonel of marines and thence to the navy
yard, where I was put in close confinement in the dispensary . . .
[4 January]:
Judge [James] Hughes has had an interview with the President in my
case. My arrest was by a cabal of the cabinet, unknown to the President.
Tuesday, 16 [January]:
The ground is covered with snow this morning . . .The unfinished
Washington monument, speaking of the ingratitude of the nation is seen
nearly in the same direction with Lee’s mansion and the dome of the
capitol, and the latter flaunts the flag, the old flag made new by the
war, which daily covers in their deliberations the faction of the Rump
Congress which daily and hourly proclaims the Southern States to be
conquered provinces and refuses admission to her representatives.
My
newspaper is brought in with my breakfast. It is the National
Intelligencer! But how changed from the days of Clay and Calhoun! I
read in it sometimes such a paragraph as this: “Trial of Raphael Semmes.
(It does not even call me the late admiral, or the so-called admiral,
or the so-called late admiral of the so-called late Confederate States),
“late commander of the rebel steamer Alabama, it is generally believed,
will take place very shortly.
I
do not think I will be speedily tried. This would not be in accordance
with the Bastille system imported from a by-gone age and the French
Revolution . . . Nor do I think that I shall be tried at all, as the
Government has no case and can make none, though it is even now scouring
the “mappings” of Northern commercial cities for evidence against the
pirate. N’importe. I shall be punished.
[Friday, 26 January]:
The Yankees have are getting the people by the gills; they have passed
the bill enlarging the functions of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Silly
people! They fancy that they are governing themselves.
[Saturday, 3 March]:
[Pendleton] Colston came over to-day. Saw the Secretary of the Navy
[Gideon Welles] . . . Mr. Welles admitted that I had been confined too
long, but that it had not been his fault. He regretted, he said, that I
had returned to the country; a good deal of trouble might have been
saved if I had not done so! Humane man!”
(The
Prison Diary of Raphael Semmes, Elizabeth Bethel, Journal of Southern
History, Volume XXII, Number 4, November 1956, pp. 498-499, 502-506,
509)
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