The Final Confederate Surrender-- Part 1: "Star By Star the Galaxy of Our Flag Had Faded"

From the Nov. 6, 2015, History by Christopher Klein.

On August 2, 1865, the CSS Shenandoah came across a British ship, the bark Barracouta.  Irvine Bulloch, CSN, boarded it and returned with devastating news.  The Confederacy had surrendered, and not recently, but several months earlier.  This was confirmed by newspapers the ship had aboard.

The Shenandoah had been cut off from the outside world as it pillaged the New England whaling fleet in the north Pacific and Arctic oceans.  Some of them had mentioned that the war was over, but that might have just been them trying not to have their ship destroyed.

Now, with it in print, surrender became all too real.

Cornelius Hunt, on the Shenandoah,  sadly wrote:  "Our gallant generals, one after another, had been forced to surrender the armies they had so often led to victory.  State after state had been overrun and occupied by the countless myriads of our enemies.  Star by star the galaxy of our flag had faded, and the Southern Confederacy had ceased to exist."

--Old B-Runner