Review of "Memoirs of Service Afloat" by Raphael Semmes

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I haven’t read much specifically devoted naval aspects of the Civil War, as this book is.

It’s definitely worth the time to start here and here.

The book is Semmes memoirs.  The beginning of the book goes through his reasons for joining the Confederacy – standard, but concise and well-argued Lost Cause.  The book then goes on to describe his time on the Sumter and the Alabama.  It concludes with his eventual arrest and release.

Semmes was a “pirate”, “commerce raider”, or “normal naval officer” depending on your point of view.  The North had a relatively large navy and the South had almost no navy.   Much of the book is devoted to refuting charges of piracy.   One should remember that the Civil War was one of the first wars in which steam powered ships were used.  Steam allowed for effective blockades, so that the North was able to blockade the South very effectively through almost the entire war.

It’s also worth noting that the North was a commercial economy and that many Northerners were farther removed from the war.  To address these issues, any belligerent in the position of the South would have used its minimal navy the way that the South used Semmes.

The few warships that the South had were used to disrupt Northern commerce (what else could they do).  They had no ports to send captured ships to, so they burned captured ships once crew and appropriate cargo were unloaded.  In doing so, Semmes brought the war home to many parts of the North that were otherwise immune and hurt the Northern economy.

It’s good strategy.   Anyone else in the same position would have done the same thing (as the US in the Revolutionary War).   I really can’t comment on whether it’s “honorable” or not.  It just is a fact that it would happen.

The book is also interesting for the long discussions on international law.  Semmes was often given de jure recognition as a belligerent.  The laws of war seem so much more binding in the mid-nineteenth century than in the twentieth century.  Northern and Southern ships would actually be in the same (neutral) harbors at the same time and not end up fighting each other.   Such real neutrality seems to have disappeared in the future.

When I read the Lost Cause stuff, I’m often struck by how correct the Lost Causers analysis and predictions are.  For example, Semmes often discusses the war as the logical outcome of the fact that the North was settled by Puritans and the South by Cavaliers – someone should write a book on that.  A Semmes prediction about how—if the North won—the North would move on and take over the Spanish was spot on, as well.   Semmes predictions about Reconstruction and Northern (Puritan) desire to put slaves above white Southerners without actually helping to improve the lot of the freed slaves are hard to argue with if you read Reconstruction history.

The Lost Cause literature is always worthwhile reading, since it is a reminder that if the South had won, the Lost Cause wouldn’t be a myth, it would be “history”.   Similarly much of the current “history” is purely myth.  The answer is somewhere in between – and the Lost Cause literature helps to point out the parts of the puzzle that is mainstream Civil War history that don’t fit.  Nevertheless, the Lost Cause isn’t the whole story either.  The whole story is much more complicated.