"From October 1864 to November 1865, the CSS Shenandoah carried the Civil War around the globe to the ends of the earth through every extreme of sea and storm. Her officers represented a cross section of the South from Old Dominion first families, through the Deep South plantation aristocracy, to a middle-class Missourian.
They included a nephew of R.E. Lee, a grandnephew of founder George Mason, a relative of Matthew Fontaine Maury, a son-in-law to Raphael Semmes, and an uncle of young Theodore Roosevelt. One claimed descent from one of George Washington's favorite generals and another from an aid to Washington.
Their mission--commerce raiding or guerre de course--was a central component of U.S. naval and maritime heritage, a profitable business, and a watery form of guerrilla warfare in the spirit of N.B. Forrest, John Mosby, and W.T. Sherman.
These Americans stood in defense of their country as they understood it, pursuing a difficult and dangerous mission in which they succeeded spectacularly after it no longer mattered. Their observations looking back from the most remote and alien surroundings imaginable, along with the viewpoints of those they encountered, provide unique perspectives of the conflict.
Shenandoah fired the last gun of the Civil War, set the land of the midnight sun aglow with flaming Yankee whalers, and, seven months after Appomattox, lowered the last Confederate banner. This is a biography of a ship and a cruise, and a microcosm of the Confederate-American experience."
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