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Bullwinkle58 -> RE: The Good The Bad & The Indifferent (6/9/2017 3:08:22 PM)
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ORIGINAL: uncivil_servant
quote:
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
Having gone to Virginia public schools in an era where answering "the Civil War" on a history test was marked wrong, and having said public school being a few miles from Hampton Roads where the battle took place, we were steeped in this issue. The retreating USN burned USS Merrimack to the waterline (the dock was flooded to put out the fire by the shipyard-capturing Confederates), and an argument can be made that the ship was abandoned as salvage at that point. But to my knowledge she was never struck from the list either. To your point, and one that drives many Virginians mad, especially recently in the "monument crisis", the Confederacy was never recognized as a nation state by the USA, so having national ships in commission was a non-sequitur. To the victors she always was a United States ship under rebel control, with a lot of unauthorized hoo-haw hung on her main deck.
Me? I always figured it was just newspaper editors' love of alliteration in headlines.
Not to be contrarian to keeping the name Merrimack was more of an insult than anything regarding recognizing the Confederacy. In dispatches and letters the Army of Northern Virginia is referred to as such. Never the Militia of the State of Virginia. Richmond was referred to as the capital of the Confederacy, even though it was not a recognized nation. Members of the Confederate Army were recognized by rank, NOT the previous rank issued to them by the US Government. (They referred to Lee as General Lee, not Colonel Lee).
True. But to me more a matter of convenience. Former Confederate officials were seen as having forfeited their citizenship through treason, and only regained it after the war by mandated oaths, and pardons.
I believe the USN referred to Confederate vessels purpose built as "CSS" ships. What else to call them? I suppose. Today they'd be "alleged CSS ships."
Not calling the Virginia the Virginia but instead the name of the hull the Virginia was built from was a backhanded insult from the US Navy.
Further: Ships we captured from the Barbary States (a government we recognized) were renamed after being captured in the conflict and were never referred to as their former names but as their USS Designation.
This had been accepted practice in all navies for centuries. The RN and the French had a mutual lending library of ships all through the Napoleonic period, for example. Had the ironclad survived and been taken by the USN she would have been USS Merrimack in all respects once more. I doubt the ironcladding would have been removed, however.
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