A moment of history

Civil War ironclad’s turret raised

The coral-encrusted gun turret of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor was raised Monday from the floor of the Atlantic, nearly 140 years after the historic warship sank during a storm.

Over this last weekend I listened to a historian, who said that the battle between the Monitor and the Virginia was the pivotal event of the Civil War. Even though they two ships fought to a draw, it was the key strategic victory for the North, which was attempting to assemble a blockade around all Southern ports, indeed all of the south (their Operation Anaconda).

The Virginia was the South's bid to break that blockade. If it had succeeded, there was a good possibility that the British would enter the war on the side of the South. If that had happened, history today would be much...different.

But it didn't, because the Monitor stopped the Virginia. And because of that, the blockade held, the South was starved of resources and resupply, the Brits stayed out, and the North went on to put a torch to the South.

In this light, Gettysburg was a foot note, a "formal" recognition of the inevitable.