For many years after the battle, Confederate Captain Semmes stated that he would never have chosen to test USS "Kearsarge" had he known of her armor-clad protection. CSS "Alabama" had destroyed or captured dozens of Union merchant vessels during her Atlantic cruises; when word of "Alabama"s sinking reached the northeastern United States, many Northerners were joyful. Édouard Manet produced two paintings of the fight, The Battle of the "Kearsarge" and the "Alabama", now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and "Kearsarge" at Boulogne, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. American marine artist Xanthus Smith painted six versions of the naval battle. The most famous of these, a massive work exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition, is in the collection of the Union League of Philadelphia.