Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter

As commander in the Confederate Navy, Raphael Semmes decimated his Yankee opponents. As commander of the Sumter, he destroyed eighteen ships in six months (in 1861). In the next year, after taking command of the Alabama, he began the famous cruise during which he captured sixty-nine vessels and inflicted a devastating blow on the sea-carrying trade of the North. His destruction of the mercantile marine during his cruise in the privateer Alabama so embittered northern public opinion against him that, although he was pardoned with other prominent Confederate leaders under the amnesty proclamation of President Johnson, his political disabilities were never removed.