Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - *PREVIEW* The CSS Shenandoah

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

This is a preview. To listen to the entire episode support the show on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/135843239?pr=true&cr=true

Today we're going to be talking about a different kind of human detritus, the Confederacy, kind of. Now, when I say the last place, the last location where the final shot of the American Civil War was fired, you'd probably say like, I don't know, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, one of those other places we constantly make fun of, right? Virginia. Virginia. Why not Virginia?

What if I told you it was not any of those places? It was not in the continental United States and it wasn't even on land. Instead, the last shot of the dying Confederacy came from the last ship in the Confederate Navy, the CSS Shenandoah,

and it was fired across the bow of a union whaling ship off the coast of the Aleutian Islands. That's why John Denver wrote that line, Almost heaven, sinking sailboats the revolution. I would have thought it was going to be like

in Brazil or something, like the confederate settler parties. Well, the story does end in Brazil, kind of. Of course. You could probably imagine. I mean, I, there was this article 20 odd years ago that got digitized about a guy who went to Brazil and found a community of like the people descended from Confederates who fled. Oh, yeah, the Confederados.

Yeah. And, and talk to an old lady who was like nearing senility. And he said her accent was like the syruppiest thing you could ever imagine. Like it's just, I can only. So yeah, this is going to go some weird places. I guess the extremity of the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere is going to get, you know, the Confederate. It's went worldwide, I guess.

Well, the Confederates really liked the same places that Nazis did. I was going worldwide in Europe now because every time people fly their flag, they're like, I would be flying a swastika, but the law won't let me. Yeah. A lot of the Confederados, as they came to be turned, ended up in Argentina and Brazil for the same reason that the Nazis did. But we'll talk about those guys at some point in the future. I've always wanted to do a series on the Confederados, and we will at some point.

But before we get into all of this, the history of the CSS. Shenandoah. We have to talk about the Confederate Naval Program in general. Because when the American Civil War started, the Confederate Navy was just kind of an idea. The reason for this is, well, there's many reasons for this, but they boil down to industrialization and loyalty. Most of the federal government's institutions, as much as they existed back during the beginning of the American Civil War, stayed loyal to the U.S. government, which would become more commonly known as the Union during this time period.

This include the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. We've talked about this before. One of the most decorated naval commanders and the eventual commander of the Union Navy, a guy named David Farragut, was a Souther, born and raised. Most Southern Navymen stayed loyal to the Union Navy

during the Civil War. A lot of this is because, like, we've talked about this countless times, I really want to go on and do again, that the U.S. Navy was the only real federal arm of the military at the time. Like the army was still mostly made up of levied militias during a time of emergency where your militia would be made up of, you know, the seventh Tennessee or whatever. Yeah, it's hard to levy a Navy.

Yeah, whereas if you're in the Navy, it's just like, you're in the fucking Navy. And that goes back to the foundations of America where they believed in a very, very small army because of the concept of being oppressed by your own army. and a federalized strong Navy because it's kind of hard to be oppressed by your own Navy. Funny where that went. 1799 and all the U.S. Navy officers of the fledgling United States of America

are embroiled in a scandal with someone named Rotund Leonardo. Granted, both of those bodies, the Army and the Navy were quite small. The United States was not a world power at this time. They were barely even a continental power. The Army was about 16,000 men strong and the Navy had 50 ships.

though 16 of those 50 were purposefully built steam-powered warships of the day. Everything else is kind of tender ships, riverine ships, things like that. Neither of these two things are very powerful. Yeah, carved out log filled with yokels. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that is kind of the Confederate Navy program at some point. It's just the raft that a fucking Tom Sawyer and Hugglery Finn made.

And similar language would be used upon Confederate rafts. Yes, yes. The South was largely in agricultural slave state, which, again, is why they had a slaver's revolt. They lacked industrial power on purpose. And because of that, they could not really produce steam-powered armored warships at any kind of capacity that their northern enemies would. They also lacked any kind of large ships in general. As a society, they didn't really do heavy shipping. Most of that came from the North.

We talked about this before in our episode about. the rail chase where most Confederate rail was very small gauge rail that went to simply the north and to the coastal areas where it'd be offloaded onto other ships owned by northern companies.

The South's entire economy and limited industrial base was solely based around the exploitation of slaves. None of this was conducive to a war effort. Nobody tell them that or any of the people that still worship them.

But the South was completely dependent on the North for everything when it came to exporting that exploited wealth, right? So the ships in the South are mostly small riverine ships, obviously through the Mississippi Delta, things like that, or very small coastal ships. They didn't exactly have a blue water navy on hand. And when the secession happened, not really many people were thinking about building a Navy. like in the beginning of the war the South captures the Norfolk shipping yards but most of that was burnt down by the union

during the retreat from Norfolk and from the skeleton they do eventually build an ironclad famously we did an episode on the ironclad battle you can go listen to that but the Confederate government wasn't really focused on a Navy for a very simple reason virtually

no one in the Confederate leadership was a Navy guy because the South didn't really have a sailing tradition, like the Northeast would, for example. Their sailing tradition was riverine boats, things like that. Your river casino boats, things, you know, dudes and white summer suits and bolo ties would enjoy your occasional Florida swamp man. Yeah, it's the difference between the writing of Mark Twain on the master and commander.

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Though just because that happened, it didn't mean there was not a secretary of the Confederate Navy. That guy was Stephen Mallory, who was given command of virtually fuck all. Though weirdly enough, nobody else in the Confederate government really seemed interested in helping him, which did have a weird plus side. You see, we've talked a bit before how the Confederate government works, mostly factionalism. It was the white boy version of the Lebanese government, right?

All these different factions within states and then within a central, Confederate government, quote unquote, all constantly bickered and argued. There was no way this government was ever going to function. By the definition of how it worked on paper, some states could literally just tell the central Confederate government, go fuck yourself. We don't want to do it. This would lead to all kinds of logistical and supplied nightmares during the war, which was absolutely never going to be one. But it also didn't lend itself to being able to build an effective Navy. But because of those people didn't really have an interest in building a Navy, that left Mallory to kind of do whatever the fuck he wanted, which meant the secretary of the Navy in the

Confederacy was the one department in the cabinet that was not constantly tearing itself up from infighting because nobody gave a fuck about it. Yeah, you got to conceptualize a boat as like a bathtub floating down the river with a giant cannon on it. That would be better than some of the things they end up with, to be fair. Ah. Though in the beginning, Mallory was literally starting from nothing. As secretary of the Confederate Navy, a cabinet-level position, the band was even given an office. Instead, in the beginning, Mallory was largely starting from nothing to the point that he

was not even given a real office in Montgomery, Alabama, the first seat of the Confederate government. Instead, his department, the department of the Navy, would have to meet in an unfinished multi-purpose office on the other side of town. Like, the Confederate Navy having to work out of a, like a Wii work or something. Yeah, the more things change, the more they stay the same, man, exactly. You have to go to the satellite campus for our Navy. Yeah, yeah, I have to go to the satellite campus for the, like, Montgomery Community College

to have my cabinet meeting. Don't worry, guys, I only could get the space for 90 minutes. Mallory was also not a Navy man. He was a lawyer, but most importantly, a senator from Florida, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis's buddy. That's important for two reasons. Jefferson Davis mostly built the Confederate government out of his friends, and he made sure those friends are from different Confederate states

to kind of force this incredibly ununified force around something looking like unified government that never worked. And he needed a guy from Florida, and he happened to be friends with a guy from Florida, who was Stephen Mallory, therefore he got the job. But Mallory was smart enough to realize he was not suited, for this position. So he reached out

to a friend of his James Dunwoody Bullock. What a fucking name. We're gonna get some strong southern names here. But yeah,

Dunwoody. I think I would drop that one. Now, Bullock was in the U.S. Navy for 15 years before resigning

his commission to do what else but work in the private sector out of New York City. Of course. Yeah. But when secession

hit and the South created its own shitty country, he closed up shop and ran to help in any way he could, which largely meant being kind of an agent for the Confederate Navy.