Civil War
Buchanan was the captain of the ironclad CSS Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack) during the Battle of Hampton Roads in Virginia. He climbed to the top deck of Virginia and began furiously firing toward shore with a carbine as the USS Congress was shelled. He soon was brought down by a sharpshooter's minie ball to the thigh. He would eventually recover from his leg wound. He never did get to command Virginia against the USS Monitor. That honor went to Catesby ap Roger Jones. But Buchanan had handed the United States Navy the worst defeat it would take until Pearl Harbor.
In August 1862, Buchanan was promoted to the rank of admiral and sent to command Confederate naval forces at Mobile Bay, Alabama. He oversaw the construction of the ironclad CSS Tennessee and was on board her during the Battle of Mobile Bay with Rear Admiral David Glasgow Farragut's Union fleet on 5 August 1864. Wounded and taken prisoner, Admiral Buchanan was not exchanged until February 1865. He was on convalescent leave until the Civil War ended a few months later.
Read more about this topic: Franklin Buchanan
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil and/or war:
“One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law; where no Law, no Injustice. Force, and Fraud, are in war the two Cardinal virtues.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)