CSS Virginia was the first steam-powered ironclad warship built by the Confederate States Navy during the first year of the American Civil War. She was constructed as a casemate ironclad using the razéed original lower hull and engines of the scuttled steam frigate USS Merrimack. When the Commonwealth of Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the Gosport Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia became threatened. Rather than allow this important US military base to fall into Confederate hands, orders were sent to destroy it. On 17 April 1861, the day Virginia seceded, Engineer in Chief B. F. Isherwood attempted to get the frigate Merrimack's engines lit, but secessionists had blocked the channel by sinking light boats between Craney Island and Sewell's Point the previous night. On 20 April, before evacuating the Navy Yard, the U.S. Navy burned Merrimack to the waterline and sank her. The Confederacy subsequently salvaged and reconstructed the vessel as CSS Virginia.
CSS Virginia became one of the most significant warships of the Civil War period through her participation in the Battle of Hampton Roads in March 1862, where she opposed the Union's USS Monitor. This engagement marked a revolutionary moment in naval warfare and military history.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
Union: ~121; Confederate: ~2
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.