“The Old Rip of the Shenandoah”

The below is an editorial cartoon which appeared in Harper's Weekly, Dec. 9th 1865, which depicts Captain James Waddell as Rip van Winkle.  The cartoon pokes fun at how long it took for word to reach Waddell that the war had in fact ended.  Waddell and his men aboard the CSS Shenandoah had been disrupting Federal commerce -- particularly whaling vessels -- around the world, and had been largely out of touch with news from the homefront.  In April 1865, the same month that Lee surrendered to Grant, the Shenandoah captured four ships in the Caroline Islands of Micronesia.  On November 6, 1865, Captain Waddell surrendered the Shenandoah in Liverpool, England, the final decision of the Civil War.