CIVILIAN FLAG OF TRUCE: CSA #7-R pair 5¢ blue tied RICHMOND / Va. // SEP 1 / 186 from engineer of the Confederate gunboat Merrimac to his wife Mrs. Julia W. Ramsay, Charlotte, North Carolina with endorsement “Via Flag of Truce from Norfolk”. This was an inner envelope (outer envelope discarded at exchange point per mandate), not all of which bear censor markings. [VA] [NC] $800.

H. Ashton Ramsay, C.S.N., Chief Engineer of the C.S.S. Viriginia (formerly and popularly known as the U.S.S. Merrimack) wrote of the famous battle in Harper’s Weekly, February 10, 1912: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24612/24612-h/24612-h.htm#THE_MERRIMAC_AND_THE_MONITOR.  Colonel Ramsay was a native of Washington and was appointed from the District of Columbia as an assistant engineer in the U.S. Navy just before the beginning of the War. He resigned to go South and joined the Confederate States Navy. He aided in building the Virginia, previously called the Merrimack (often erroneously called the “Merrimac” including by Ramsay himself). It was the first ironclad ever used in warfare. Her defensive armor was a sheathing of steel rails, and her powerful iron ram created consternation in the Federal fleet when she steamed out of the James River into Hampton Roads in 1862. The Virginia rammed and sank the Congress and the Cumberland, but her career of destruction was checked by the appearance of the Monitor.