1862 CIVIL WAR display newspaper CONFEDERATE NAVY SHIPS Alabama & SUMTER Poster

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1862 CIVIL WAR display newspaper with a front-page illustrated POSTER ENGRAVING of CONFEDERATE NAVY BATTLES involving the 'Pirate' SHIPS 'Alabama' & 'SUMTER' ( Raphael Semmes ). Inside are two detailed reports on the action. #1S-007Please visit our ebay store for printed on the front page other FANTASTIC Americana, Antiquarian Books and Ephemera.SEE PHOTO-----COMPLETE, ORIGINAL NEWSPAPER, the _Harper's Weekly Illustrated Newspaper_ (NY) dated February 1, 1862, with fantastic CONFEDERATE NAVY history!Perfect for framing and display, this historic piece is A COMPELLING addition to any fine CIVIL WAR or CONFEDERATE NAVY or RAPHAEL SEMMES collection.Raphael Semmes ( 1809 -- 1877) was an officer in the Confederate navy during the American Civil War. Prior to this, he had been a serving officer in the United States Navy from 1826 through 1860.During the American Civil War, Semmes was captain of the cruiser CSS Alabama, the most successful commerce raider in maritime history, taking 65 prizes. Late in the war, he was promoted to rear admiral and also acted briefly as a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army. His appointment, or arrangement to act, as a temporary brigadier general from April 5, 1865 to April 26, 1865 was never submitted to or officially confirmed by the Confederate Senate .After appointment to the Confederate Navy as a commander and a futile assignment to purchase arms in the North, Semmes was sent to New Orleans, Louisiana to convert the steamer Habana into the cruiser/commerce raider CSS Sumter. In June 1861, Semmes, in Sumter, outran the Union sloop-of-war USS Brooklyn breaching the Union blockade of New Orleans, and then launched a brilliant career as one of the greatest commerce raider captains in naval history.Semmes' command of CSS Sumter lasted only six months, but during that time he ranged wide, raiding U. S. commercial shipping in both the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean; his actions accounted for the loss of 18 merchant vessels, while always eluding pursuit by Union warships. By January 1862 Sumter required a major overhaul. Semmes' crew surveyed the vessel while in neutral Gibraltar and determined that the repairs to her boilers were too extensive to be completed there. Semmes paid off the crew and laid up the vessel. U. S. Navy vessels maintained a vigil outside the harbor until she was disarmed and sold at auction in December 1862, eventually being renamed and converted to a blockade runner.Semmes and several of his officers traveled to England where he was promoted to captain. He then was ordered to the Azores to take up command and oversee the coaling and outfitting with cannon of the newly built British steamer Enrica as a sloop-of-war, which thereafter became world-famous as the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama. Semmes sailed on Alabama from August 1862 to June 1864. His operations carried him from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico, around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, and into the Pacific to the East Indies. During this cruise, Alabama captured 65 U. S. merchantmen and quickly destroyed the Union warship USS Hatteras off Galveston, TX.Alabama finally sailed back to the Atlantic and made port in Cherbourg, France for a much-needed overhaul; she was soon blockaded by the pursuing Union steam sloop-of-war, USS Kearsarge. Captain Semmes took Alabama out on June 19, 1864 and met the similar Kearsarge in one of the most famous naval engagements of the Civil War.Harper's Weekly was the most widely read newspaper in the United States throughout the period of the Civil War. So as not to upset its wide readership in the South, Harper's took a moderate editorial position on the issue of slavery prior to the outbreak of the war. Publications that supported abolition referred to it as "Harper's Weakly". The Weekly had supported the Stephen A. Douglas presidential campaign against Abraham Lincoln, but as the American Civil War broke out, it fully supported Lincoln and the Union. A July 1863 article on the escaped slave Gordon included a photogra... read more

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