|
|
 |
 |
|
|
• More than three million men fought
in the war.
• Two percent of the population—more than 620,000—died
in it.
• In two days at Shiloh on the
banks of the Tennessee River, more Americans fell than in all
previous American wars combined.
• During the Battle of Antietam,
12,401 Union men were killed, missing or wounded; double the
casualties of D-Day, 82 years later. With a total of 23,000
casualties on both sides, it was the bloodiest single day of
the Civil War.
• At Cold Harbor, Va., 7,000 Americans fell in 20 minutes.
• Senator John J. Crittendon of Kentucky had two sons
who became major generals during the Civil War: one for the
North, one for the South.
• Ulysses S. Grant
was not fond of ceremonies or military music. He said he could
only recognize two tunes. "One was Yankee Doodle,"
he grumbled. "The other one wasn’t."
• Missouri sent 39 regiments to fight in the siege of
Vicksburg: 17 to the Confederacy and
22 to the Union.
• During the Battle of Antietam,
Clara Barton tended the
wounded so close to the fighting that a bullet went through
her sleeve and killed a man she was treating.
• At the start of the war, the value of all manufactured
goods produced in all the Confederate states added up to less
than one-fourth of those produced in New York State alone.
• In March 1862, European powers watched in worried
fascination as the Monitor and Merrimack battled off Hampton
Roads, Va. From then on, after these ironclads opened fire,
every other navy on earth was obsolete.
• In 1862, the U.S. Congress authorized the first paper
currency, called "greenbacks."
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., future chief Justice, was
wounded three times during the Civil War: in the chest at Ball’s
Bluff, in the back at Antietam and in
the heel at Chancellorsville.
• Confederate Private Henry Stanley fought for the Sixth
Arkansas, and was captured at Shiloh,
but survived to go to Africa to find Dr. Livingston.
• George Pickett’s
doomed infantry charge at Gettysburg
was the first time he took his division into combat.
• On July 4, 1863, after 48 days of siege, Confederate
General John C. Pemberton surrendered the city of Vicksburg
to the Union’s General, Ulysses
S. Grant. The Fourth of July was not be celebrated in Vicksburg
for another 81 years.
• Disease was the chief killer during the war, taking
two men for every one who died of battle wounds.
• North and South, potential recruits were offered awards,
or "bounties," for enlisting, as much as $677 in
New York. Bounty jumping soon became a profession, as men
signed up, then deserted, to enlist again elsewhere. One man
repeated the process 32 times before being caught.
• African Americans constituted less than one percent
of the northern population, yet by the war’s end made
up ten percent of the Union Army. A total of 180,000 black men,
more than 85% of those eligible, enlisted.
• In November 1863, President Lincoln was invited to
offer a "few appropriate remarks" at the opening
of a new Union cemetery at Gettysburg. The main speaker, a
celebrated orator from Massachusetts, spoke for nearly two
hours. Lincoln offered just 269 words in his Gettysburg Address.
• Confederate General
Nathan Bedford Forrest had 30 horses shot from under him
and personally killed 31 men in hand-to-hand combat. "I
was a horse ahead at the end," he said.
• The words "In God We Trust" first appeared
on a U.S. coin in 1864.
• In 1864, Ulysses S.
Grant was promoted to Lieutenant General, a rank previously
held by General George Washington, and led the 533,000 men of
the Union Army, the largest in the world. Three years later,
he was made President of the United States.
• Andersonville Prison in southwest Georgia held 33,000
prisoners in 1864. It was the fifth largest city in the Confederacy.
•By the end of the war, Unionists from every state except
South Carolina had sent regiments to fight for the North.
• On November 9, 1863, President Lincoln attended a theater
in Washington, D.C., to see "The Marble Heart." An
accomplished actor, John Wilkes
Booth, was in the cast.
• On March 4, 1865, Lincoln was inaugurated for a second
term. Yards away in the crowd was John
Wilkes Booth with a pistol in his pocket. His vantage point
on the balcony, he said later, offered him "an excellent
chance to kill the President, if I had wished."
• On May 13, 1865, a month after Lee’s surrender
at Appomattox, Private John J. Williams
of the 34th Indiana became the last man killed in the Civil
War, in a battle at Palmito Ranch, Texas. The final skirmish
was a Confederate victory.
• Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first black man
ever elected to the U.S. Senate. He filled the seat last held
by Jefferson Davis. |
|
|
