Semmes's cruise memoir as evidence and political argument

Semmes's memoir of CSS Sumter and CSS Alabama preserves accounts of Confederate planning and naval practice alongside his political arguments. In the entry quoted here, news of Union troops crossing the Potomac into Virginia leads him to portray the Confederacy as accepting a war forced upon it. That is Semmes's account of the conflict and his justification of the Southern cause. The operational detail must be read with that purpose in mind. One interpretation of his career places attachment to Alabama, family, and friends ahead of the more entrenched defence of the Confederacy that he developed after the war. This interpretation still recognises his earlier political commitments.