A New Flag

Confederate Secretary of Navy Stephen Russell Mallory presented the Confederate Naval flag May 26th 1863.


The Confederate Navy had thirty ships in February 1861, only fourteen of them were seaworthy. Before the end of the war this number would increased to one hundred one. Half way through the war the Secretary of the Navy of the Confederacy Stephen Russell Mallory instituted a new Naval flag on May 26th 1863. The end of the Confederate Navy came on November 6th 1865 when “The CSS Shenandoah” surrendered in Liverpool England.

The End of the Bloody Conflict

The official end of the Civil War was declared on August 20th 1866.

Although many people assume the end of the Civil War occurred when General Robert E Lee and General Ulysses S Grant met in Appomattox in April of 1865, the war continued on for many more months. In April Mosby’s Raiders, and General Joseph E Johnston troops surrendered or disbanded. In May they were followed by Major General Dabney Herndon Maury the commander of Florida and South Georgia, Edmund Kirby Smith, and others. The last battle of the war was fought on May 13th 1865 at the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Texas. The last Confederates to surrender were those on board the CSS Shenandoah, who gave up on November 6th 1865.

President Andrew Johnson made a formal declaration to the end of the war on August 20th 1866. He signed the “Proclamation—Declaring that Peace, Order, Tranquility, and Civil Authority Now Exists in and Throughout the Whole of the United States of America.”

The Last Confederate

The last Confederates surrendered on November 6th 1865, the CSS Shenandoah which had circumnavigated to globe.

The CSS Shenandoah began life on the River Clyde in Scotland where she was designed as a British transport. The Government of the Confederacy bought her in 1864, and she sailed out of London on October 8th of that year. The ship and her crew went out to intercept ships on the West Coast, Latin America, and in the Far East. It wasn't until August 1865 that the crew of the Shenandoah learned from a British ship that the Civil War had ended four months earlier.

The HMS Donegal excepted what would be that last surrender of the Civil War from Captain James I Waddell of the CSS Shenandoah. She had been at sea for one year, and 17 days, and traveled 58,000 miles, having the honor of flying the Confederate flag for the first and only time around the globe.