This site is best viewed using Mozilla Firefox browser.

Veteran Affairs

2011-06-01 10:02:00

Civil War facts and history

Question: I have read most of your answers that you have provided on the Civil War and the roles that Kansas and Kansans played in the same. I would have to believe that far too few know and remember the happenings. I was wondering if you could do some type of an ongoing series that might bring to mind some of the things that happened back then.

Answer: As you may have guessed, the Civil War happens to be a passion of mine. I know for many it’s just a war that occurred many years ago, but there was a whole lot of history…that in my opinion…Americans need reminded of every so often. Over the years, I have found some sites that list items that cause me to ponder a lot of things. One of them is www.legendsofamerica.com. I will share some of these items with you over the next few issues. When one looks at more recent and current military actions around the globe, they may do the same for you. • More than three million men fought in the Civil War, about 900,000 for the Confederacy and 2.1 million for the Union. • An estimated 300 women disguised themselves as men and fought in the ranks. Some even received pensions for their war time service and in their later life lived in old soldiers home. • More than 620,000 people, or two percent of the population, died in the Civil War. • Approximately 6,000 battles, skirmishes, and engagements were fought during the Civil War. • There were over 2,000 boys who were 14 years-old or younger in the Union ranks. • Three hundred were 13 years or less, while there were 200,000 no older than 16 years. • At the Battle of Shiloh, on the banks of the Tennessee River, more Americans fell than in all previous American wars combined. There were 23,700 casualties. • At Fredericksburg in 1862, the Confederate trenches stretched for a distance of seven miles. The troop density was 11,000 per mile, or six men to the yard. • 3,530 Native Americans fought for the Union, of which, 1,018 were killed. • The greatest cavalry battle ever fought in the Western hemisphere was at Brandy Station, Virginia, on June 9, 1863. Nearly 20,000 cavalrymen were engaged on a relatively confined terrain for more than 12 hours. • An Iowa regiment had a rule that any man who uttered an oath should read a chapter in the Bible. Several of them got nearly through the Old Testament. Another Iowa regiment was known as the gray beard regiment for obvious reasons. • There were more Northern-born Confederate generals than Southern-born Union generals. • The famous Confederate blockade-runner, the C.S.S. Alabama, never entered a Confederate port during the length of her service. • 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. • In March 1862, “new” ironclad war ships, the Monitor and Merrimack battled off Hampton Roads, Virginia. From then on, every other wooden navy ship on earth was obsolete. • There were 100 men in a Company and 10 Companies in a Regiment. • Not fond of ceremonies or military music, Ulysses S. Grant said he could only recognize two tunes. “One was Yankee Doodle, the other one wasn’t.” • President Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated. • Missouri sent 39 regiments to fight in the siege of Vicksburg: 17 to the Confederacy and 22 to the Union. • 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 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. • Surgeons never washed their hands after an operation, because all blood was assumed to be the same, nor did he wash his instruments. • Confederate Private Henry Stanley fought for the Sixth Arkansas, and was captured at Shiloh, but survived to go to Africa to find Dr. Livingston. • 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. For the next 81 years, the city Vicksburg did not celebrate the Fourth of July. • Disease killed twice as many men during the war than did battle wounds. • The 12th Connecticut Regiment entered the war with a compliment of 1,000 men. Before it entered its first engagement, sickness had reduced its strength to 600 able bodied soldiers. • On both sides of the conflict, potential recruits were offered monetary rewards, or “bounties,” for enlisting, as much as $677 in New York. “Bounty jumping” soon became so popular, that hundreds of men signed up, and then deserted, to enlist again elsewhere. • For those who were drafted, the law allowed them to pay a substitute to go in their place. Another type of “bounty jumper” was born when men would hire out to more than one draftee and then make a hasty exit once they were paid. The record for bounty jumping was held by John O’Connor, who admitted to hiring himself out 32 times before being caught. He received a 4 year prison term. • Though African Americans constituted less than one percent of the northern population, 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. By the time of the Confederate surrender in 1865, there were more African Americans in the Union army than there were soldiers in the Confederate army. • In November 1863, President Lincoln was invited to offer a “few appropriate remarks” at the opening of a new Union cemetery at Gettysburg. Though Lincoln spoke just 269 words in his Gettysburg address, the main speaker, an orator from Massachusetts, spoke for nearly two hours. • 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. I will list more items for pondering next month, if you have a particular area you are interested in let me know.