CSS Shenandoah
June 1865
By Phil Kohn
Phil Kohn can be reached at USCW160@yahoo.com
On June 1, 1865, a Federal military expedition begins operating in Virginia and West Virginia to clean out pockets of lingering Confederate resistance.
There is much activity on June 2. President Andrew Johnson lifts military restrictions on trade throughout the U.S., except for “contraband of war.” (“Contraband of war” was a term used to describe runaway slaves that escaped into Union-held territory. These escaped slaves were held as “property” by the U.S. military under a policy developed — with governmental acquiescence — at Fort Monroe, in Hampton, Virginia, in early 1861 by Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler. Since the Confederacy considered slaves as property, Butler, a lawyer, seized on the Confiscation Act of 1861 — passed into law in August of that year — as justification for holding the runaways as “property.” The Act stated that any property, including enslaved people, used by the Confederate military could be confiscated by Union forces. And since the Southern “owners” of the runaways were in a state that had seceded, Butler determined that the Fugitive Slave Act no longer pertained to them and that runaways — “confiscated property” — thus did not have to be returned to their owners. At first, the U.S. military put these “contrabands,” as they were called, to work on military projects for no compensation. However, by mid-October 1861 both the Army and the Navy were paying them wages and issuing daily rations for work performed.) Across the Atlantic, Great Britain withdraws belligerent rights from the Confederacy. This means that the Confederacy can no longer purchase military equipment from Great Britain nor sell or buy goods there. At Galveston, Texas, Gen. E. Kirby Smith approves and signs the convention entered into on his behalf in New Orleans on May 26, finalizing the surrender of the Confederate Army of the Trans-Mississippi. Almost immediately, Smith departs for Mexico to avoid arrest and possible prosecution for treason. That same evening, from Shreveport, Louisiana, Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, who had also commanded the Missouri State Guard and was a principal force in Confederate Missouri from the beginning of the war, departs for San Antonio, Texas. There, he will rendezvous with other Confederates who are refusing to surrender and will head for Mexico. Among this group are: Pendleton Murrah, governor of Texas; Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder, who had commanded the Dept. of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona; Brig. Gen. Joseph O. “Jo” Shelby, commander of the 1st Cavalry Brigade (the Iron Brigade), 1st Cavalry Division of the Trans-Mississippi Department; and several hundred troopers of Shelby’s Iron Brigade.
Confederate naval forces scattered along the Red River surrender to various Union commands on June 3.
June 6 is likewise a day of activity. President Johnson orders the release of all Confederate prisoners of war in the rank of army captain or navy lieutenant and below who are willing to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. In Missouri, citizens ratify a new state constitution that abolishes slavery. And in Kentucky, Confederate guerrilla leader William Quantrill dies of wounds suffered in a Federal ambush on May 10.
On June 8, the U.S. Army’s VI Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Horatio Wright, which missed the Grand Reviews of the Armies in May because of its duties around Appomattox Court House, Virginia, holds its own review and parade in Washington, D.C.
In Chattanooga, Tennessee, on June 9, sparks from a passing locomotive set a building storing military ordnance on fire. The resulting explosion kills ten people.
President Johnson is very busy on June 13. Establishing a policy of trying to quickly restore pro-Union governments in former Confederate states, the Chief Executive appoints William Sharkey as provisional governor of Mississippi. Sharkey, an attorney and judge, had opposed the secession of Mississippi at the start of the war and remained a staunch Unionist throughout the conflict. It is said he was tolerated by his Southern neighbors because of his sterling reputation as a jurist. Johnson restores his home state of Tennessee to the Union, noting that the state has adopted a new constitution and revised its government, which is loyal to the Union.
On June 17, President Johnson names James Johnson (no relation) provisional governor of Georgia and Andrew J. Hamilton as provisional governor of Texas. Johnson, a Unionist attorney, had been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia prior to the war. Hamilton was also a former U.S. Representative, from Texas, who supported the Union before and during the war. Viewed as a traitor in Texas for his pro-Union stance, he was forced by death threats to flee to the North via Mexico in 1862. President Lincoln named Hamilton military governor of Texas in late 1862 with the rank of brigadier general, but Hamilton was forced to languish in Union-held New Orleans until the end of the war because of the U.S. Army’s inability to capture any significant part of the Lone Star State.
Some 2,000 U.S. troops under Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger land at Galveston, Texas, on June 18 to occupy the state for the Federal government.
The next day, June 19, Maj. Gen. Granger pronounces the emancipation of all slaves in Texas (about 250,000) under terms of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The date denoting the occasion becomes known as “Juneteenth” (from the conflation of “June” and “nineteenth”). In June 2021, Juneteenth becomes Juneteenth National Independence Day, a federal holiday.
On June 21, President Andrew Johnson names Lewis Parsons provisional governor of Alabama. Parsons, a native New Yorker who had moved to Alabama in 1840, is a successful attorney and remained a Unionist throughout the war. Despite his Unionist sentiments, he was elected to and served in the Alabama House of Representatives from 1859 to 1861 and again from 1863 to 1865.
In the Bering Sea, the Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah — under Lt. Commanding James Waddell, who is unaware that the war is over — chases and captures four U.S.-flagged whaling vessels and a cargo ship in seven hours on June 22. The victims are the whalers Euphrates, Jirah Swift, Milo and William Thompson, all of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and the barkentine Susan Abigail, of San Francisco, California. The crews, numbering some 200 souls, are transferred to Milo, which is released under a ransom bond of $46,500. The other four vessels are burned. (A ransom bond is a document that obligates the vessel owner to pay the Confederate government the agreed-upon amount for the release of the vessel. Needless to say, the U.S. government does not recognize the bonds’ legality.) In Washington, D.C., Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles announces that the blockades of the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coast will soon be ended.
On June 23 at Doaksville, Choctaw Nation, in Indian Territory, Brig. Gen. Stand Watie, a Cherokee chief and the highest-ranking Native American in either Army, surrenders his First Indian Brigade — comprising several hundred Confederate Cherokee, Creek, Seminole and Osage cavalry — to U.S. Army Lt. Col. Asa Matthews. Watie’s is the war’s last large Confederate fighting unit to surrender. (Because the various tribes were individual treaty allies of the Confederacy, Indian troops were not covered by any of the earlier Confederate surrenders.) On the same day, in Washington, D.C., President Johnson announces the end of the U.S. naval blockade of the Southern states that had been in effect since April 1861. Over the course of the war over 300 steamships attempted to run the blockade. Of these 136 were captured and 85 were destroyed. Around 1,300 runs were made, with roughly 1,000 being successful. Because blockade-running profits were so lucrative, and the risks so great, most vessel owners made only one or two runs. Some, though, were more daring — and successful. The steamship SS Syren made 33 blockade runs — the most of any Southern blockade runner — between Charleston, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina, and Nassau, the Bahamas, between November 5, 1863, and February 18, 1865, when she was captured while berthed at Charleston. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Samuel DuPont dies suddenly at the age of 61. DuPont had been in virtual retirement since his failure to capture Charleston, South Carolina, in the spring of 1863. (DuPont felt the city could not be taken by a naval force alone but that a land force would also be needed. The Navy Department, however, disagreed and gave him direct orders to proceed, which he did. A year later, an even-larger naval force (also without the support of land troops) failed as well, effectively proving DuPont correct in his original assessment.)
President Johnson on June 24 removes trade restrictions for states and territories west of the Mississippi River.
On June 25, CSS Shenandoah captures and burns the whaling ship General Williams, of New London, Connecticut, near St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea just south of the Bering Strait. The whaler’s crew is taken aboard Shenandoah.
CSS Shenandoah captures six more U.S. whaling ships, all out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, in the Bering Sea on June 26. Burned are the whalers: Catherine, Isabella, Gipsey, William C. Nye and Nimrod. The whaling bark General Pike is ransom bonded for $30,000, loaded with 292 prisoners and sent off to San Francisco, California.
The first major, post-war reorganization of the regular U.S. Army begins on June 27. With most of the U.S. Volunteer organization already mustered out of service, or about to be, the size of field forces are rapidly reduced, as well as the numbers of officers and generals to lead them. Garrisons are maintained in the Southern states to keep order and enforce the policies of Reconstruction.
On June 28, just south of the Arctic Circle, CSS Shenandoah captures and burns two U.S. whalers: Brunswick (on its unlucky thirteenth voyage) and Congress, both out of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter, Shenandoah comes upon a fleet of nine U.S. whalers, many of which are at anchor. Covington (Warren, Rhode Island), Favorite (New Haven, Connecticut) and Hillman, Isaac Howland, Martha, Nassau and Waverly (all of New Bedford) are burned. The whaling ship James Maury (New Bedford) is bonded for $37,600 and held by Shenandoah for transporting prisoners to the United States. The bark Nile (also New Bedford) is bonded for $41,000, loaded with 222 prisoners and sent off to San Francisco.
In Washington, D.C., on June 30, the military tribunal headed by Maj. Gen. David Hunter that has been trying the eight alleged conspirators in the Lincoln assassination returns a verdict of guilty for all of them. Four — Dr. Samuel Mudd (who set fugitive John Wilkes Booth’s broken leg), Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlen (who were not involved in the actual assassination plan but who had conspired in earlier attempts to kidnap Lincoln and bring him to Richmond in order to exchange him for Confederate prisoners) and Edmund Spangler (a stagehand at Ford’s Theatre, charged not as a conspirator but with assisting Booth’s getaway after the assassination) — are to be imprisoned. Spangler — an unwitting participant: Booth had asked him to hold his horse — is to serve six years in prison, the other three are sentenced to life. The other four conspirators — Louis Powell (who was assigned to kill Secretary of State William Seward), David Herold (who guided Powell to Seward’s home, as Powell was unfamiliar with Washington, and then rendezvoused with John Wilkes Booth in Maryland), George Atzerodt (who was assigned to kill Vice President Johnson but got cold feet) and boardinghouse owner, Mrs. Mary Surratt — are to be hanged. The decision to execute Mrs. Surratt is a controversial one, as her only connection with the assassination seems to be owning the boardinghouse where the conspirators held their planning sessions. More recently, however, some scholars opine that Surratt may well have been aware of the plans to kidnap or kill Lincoln. President Johnson names Benjamin F. Perry as provisional governor of South Carolina. Even though Perry was a sitting Confederate States District Judge since 1864 and had served in the South Carolina House of Representatives since 1862, Johnson named him because of the strong Unionist views he had expressed prior to South Carolina’s secession.
