The World Turned Upside Down: A U.S. Warship Named After a Confederate Victory

With the proliferation of Confederate battle flags on specialty number plates in nine states (which however can now be nullified due to a Supreme Court decision on June 18); with the Confederate flag still flying alongside the American flag in the capital of South Carolina, scene of the massacre in a black church in Charleston the night before; a new vignette in the North-South culture wars appeared in the form of an item on 18 June on BBC World News America: "One of the Navy's most powerful missile cruisers, the USS Chancellorsville has arrived in Japan. Significantly, the vessel is not a replacement for another ship but an addition to U.S. forces."

According to the website civil war.org, the battle of Chancellorsville, 30 April-6 May 1863, resulted in a resounding Union defeat. The site states: "[Robert E.] Lee's victory at Chancellorsville is widely considered to be his greatest of the entire war."

Though naming a United States warship after a Confederate victory is a rarity, according to Wikipedia, one may question the propriety of its being named as such at all. To put it bluntly, "Whose Navy is it?"